Bell Gorge and end of the road

4-5 July

Bell Gorge is a further 10km drive from the campground, a pretty corrugated track but better than others we've been on.  It's about a 1km walk in, a really nice walk with a big variety of palms, gums, boabs and I finally saw a 'Kimberly Rose' which is another name for the red-flowers of the sticky kurrajong.  The track opens out onto some fairly flat rocks and large pool of water which is the top of a waterfall.  This falls into Bell Gorge below.

It was great up here, way above the water, where we could see the orange rock walls, boabs along the top and water monitor down in the river.  We both felt we were in "classic Kimberly" country.

Once we'd returned to the Gibb, we were crossing the King Leopold Range and the scenery was quite fascinating.  The photo below, from a lookout, shows the expanse of the country we travelled across today - the clouds of dust are vehicles on the Gibb River Road.

The termite mounds up here are quite distinctive

We did it, the whole Gibb River Road, the only means of seeing all those wonderful places

And the Troopy excelled, not a single problem

Reaching the end of the Gibb means reaching the town of Derby, WA.  It's very hard coming into a town, even a smallish one like this, after spending just over 2 weeks away from 'civilisation'. However, we need fuel and a bit more food and water so we can go bush again.  

Derby's a sprawling sort of town, population about 5,000 and set on King Sound.  There are heaps of large boab trees, many protected.  It's not a pretty town, though is clean and has all the facilities the population would require.  There's a long jetty and depending what time of day/night you're there, you can see the huge tidal variation.  Today's was about an 8 metre difference between low and high tide and this can be seen to some extent in the photos here.

High tide last night

Low tide today

View through our window this morning 6.15am

View through our back door this evening 5.30pm

Boabs and termite mounds near our bush camp, Derby

Tomorrow we'll be leaving for Windjana Gorge and from there will go and see Tunnel Creek and do a cruise on Geikie Gorge near Fitzroy Crossing.  We never plan how long to spend in any one place, we just see how it feels at the time.  So we may take a week in this area, but once we feel we've seen as much of the inland as we can we'll head for Broome.  We won't have any internet until then, so for now that's all folks :)