Day 31 – El Questro to Fitzroy Crossing

Sorry folks, I've had no internet or phone service for three days, so you have a few days to catch up on!

Off at 7.00am, saying goodbye to El Questro – we really enjoyed our time here. Back through the two water crossings with the van again (yikes!), and out onto the Gibb River Rd, then back to the Great Northern Highway, for the turn off to Halls Creek and Broome.

Bit of a last minute change of plans this morning. We were going to drive to just past the Turkey Creek Roadhouse and go into the Bungle Bungles (from the fairly new caravan park located 1km of the Great Northern Highway). But it’s a 50km track into the park, over five deep river crossings, and a very bad, corrugated road, and we were informed that the park rangers would not let any vehicle in that wasn’t a high clearance 4WD. The other issue is that the caravan park had very dodgy reviews (love our WikiCamps app), stating that several people had come away with tics (of the cattle tic variety). So, we decided to give it a miss this time, as the guided tours in were ridiculously expensive $285 per person, no discount for kids! So we decided to leave it for next time we visit, when they will probably upgrade the roads and facilities a bit more.

Once again on the Gibb River Road we came across an animal – well a big Kimberley Brahman bull actually. We were glad we didn’t hit him with the car. There are no fences up here anywhere, just cattle grids across the main roads, to keep the livestock contained.

So we pressed on stopping at Turkey Creek Roadhouse to fuel up and then stopped at the tiny old goldfields town of Halls Creek. The visitor centre here had a really good shop, lots of handmade local things, and lots of gold nuggets to buy if you wished, but at $10,000 or so each, they were a bit pricey for my budget today.

Halls Creek is a town of considerable size for these parts, boasting a hospital, school, pharmacy, general store, butchers, hardware store and a few other buildings. We were also pleased to see a large new aquatic centre  - so good to see something positive for the community in this remote outback town.
Once again around the visitor centre there were lots of aboriginal children around, either playing ball, or most just sitting around watching the tourists come and go in and out of the visitor centre. The mum in me couldn’t help wishing that they were all over the road at the very nice looking primary school. With school attendance at around 50% around these parts, I wondered what would become of all these little lives.

We arrived at Fitzroy Crossing at about 4pm after a long day on the road (9 hours, 700kms) and checked into the Fitzroy River Lodge Caravan Park. Time for a swim in the pool (with bananas hanging in bunches from the palms around the pool which greatly amused the kids) , and a good feed of barramundi and chips for tea.