Wyndham to Wolfe Creek Crater… travel, cooking and car repairs!

The Wyndham Caravan Park is a haven of shady trees. They even have a resident donkey which just wanders around, expecting food and water off everyone! At night we heard the stock cars racing around on the salt flats, preparing for racing in Kununurra.

During the next few days we did all the touristy things! The best tourist spot is the Five Rivers Lookout, it is best to visit it at sunset with a chilled bottle of wine. It is very popular so arrive early.

We decide to leave our boat and trailer at the Wyndham CP while we do a 1000 km detour to Wolfe Creek Crater via Bungle Bungles (correct aboriginal name is Purnululu which means sandstone). Some serious traveling but The trip was definitely worth it! The drive there is through some spectacular mountain and flat lands. The first day we stayed at Halls Creek CP. We were amazed at what a busy, wealthy town it was… There was a butcher, chemist, hardware store as well as 2 supermarkets, a nice cafe and a huge hotel/ motel. Everyone caters for the tourists. At the caravan park we met a guy riding from Darwin to Perth on a pushbike to raise awareness of men’s suicide in rural/regional areas. His brother had suicided.

The next day we drove into the Bungle Bungles, it is only 50 km off the main road but it takes a couple of hours. The National Parks leave it as a 4WD road… it is all up, down and around, lots of corrugations,sand and several river crossings. We did the Mini Palms and Cascade walks on the western side. All walking tracks are along the stony creek beds, hard walking, but once you get into the chasms it is cool and the orange colours are great. The next day we drove to the east side. This is the side that looks like all the tourist brochures! There is a place called Cathedral Chasm, 50 metres diameter that has been eroded by the water, stones in the wet. Breathtaking area to be in, one third actually has a roof! Interesting geological history, the area has experienced meteors, glaciers, volcanic and water erosion over a few million years.

We then headed further south and drove out on the Tanami Desert road to visit Wolfe Creek Crater. Amazing depression left by the “falling star”, all around it is flat as flat as possible. We walked down the steep crumbling inner slope so we could stand in the middle of the 200 metre deep, half a kilometre wide crater. That night we drove back to Halls Creek but we went 15 km out of town to where the original gold strike and town was. We stayed at Caroline Pool a beautiful lagoon used by the old town as their swimming pool and sports ground. It was a really nice place to stay, no facilities but there were six others camping there.

On our return to Wyndham we spent several days exploring the best way to fish/crab in the area. There are hundreds of square kilometres of salt flats so the only place you can put your boat in the water is at the ramps. You can only use the ramps about an hour before top of tide and about 2 hours after top of tide; otherwise they are too muddy (try 30-50 cm depth mud) to use. We explored the main Gulf and up the King River. The water is constantly muddy brown from the rushing in/ out tides with 6 metre difference. We did manage to catch two green mud crabs (a new type of crab we have never seen before) and one fish.

So we were ready to leave when we found we had a busted rubber boot on our CV joint. So no going anywhere till that gets fixed. Ron ordered the part from Melbourne on Monday morning via email and Auspost had it Wednesday afternoon. Fabulous service! Of course no mechanics in town and if you go to Kununurra you have to wait 3-4 weeks for a plain old, easy service! Ron used the Internet to find a YouTube on how to do the job and he learnt it off by heart. So Thursday morning we go driving around to find something to support the car once the wheel is off. No luck so we go into a huge yard full of wrecked cars and this little old lady comes out (her son and daughter are in to stock car racing). Ron asks if we could hire safety jacks for the day, she says yes just go in the shed, find them and borrow them for the day. We were told not to be silly about paying for them! The ones they had were old so she said to go next door and ask the welding engineer if he had better ones… So off we go! The guy next door offered us his hydraulic jack instead! He also offered us a section of his concrete floor shed to do the job. He put all his tools at our disposal and even offered his help! Wow I can’t imagine that happening everywhere! It took us about 4-5 hours. After that he offered Ron a shower to clean up and beers!

We stayed several weeks in Wyndham, time enough for me to set up my gas oven. A bit of a luxury when your accommodation is a two person tent and a tarp! But we enjoyed the cooked scones, biscuits, crab pizzas and fish lasagnas.