The Gibb River Road

The Gibb River Road

It’s been a fair while between posts due to the lack of internet access on the Gibb River Road (who’d have thought it?).

We’ve been travelling for ten days between Kununurra and Broome and have covered about 1700 km’s.  The road itself was much easier than we were expecting; long sections of good gravel and relatively easy corrugations. It is however, notoriously hard on tyres and although we did not have a problem (we were running at a fairly low 26 psi), we heard of plenty of people who did and in fact had to stop and help out an elderly French couple in a hired Troopy who had done 3 tyres in as many days (but when we checked they were running at 45 psi).  However, before I thrill you further with more talk of tyre pressures and the like, here is the story of our journey along the Gibb River Road...

First stop was El Questro Station – according to some, the largest station in Australia and also a ‘Wilderness Resort’ complete with shop, bar, and accommodation priced between $17 for a ‘bush’ camp-site and several thousand for a room in the ‘homestead’.  I’ll let you decide which one we opted for.  Just the same, a nice place to stop over and we stayed for a couple of nights before moving on to some more genuine bush camping (no bar!) down the road at Russ Creek.

Moody Weather Over The Kimberley

About half way along the road we had the option to turn left and detour a few hundred km’s north to the beautiful Mitchell Falls.  The road up to there is rougher than the Gibb and we had been experiencing a few short thunder storms over the last few days, but we reasoned that as long as it didn’t rain anymore whilst we were up there, then we should be OK.   

We camped at Drysdale River Station the night before and were treated to an impressive lightening show.  It was clear the next morning that a fair bit of rain had fallen on the road to Mitchell falls but as we had decided to leave the camper- trailer (now affectionately known as the “anchor-trailer”) at Drysdale and sleep in a high quality, 3-man, $50 tent that we had bought a few days earlier in Kununarra, we weren’t overly worried. The drive up was still a bit of fun as much of the road had several inches of standing water on it.  Not an issue in itself of course, but still a bit tense as you just never know when you are going to hit a deep pot -hole or a patch of mud.  Still, at least it wasn’t actually raining...  Until we drove into the campsite at Mitchell falls, that is, whereupon the heavens opened and we ended up sitting in the car for an hour waiting for a break in the weather so that we could rig up a make-shift shelter to take refuge under.  At one point we went for a bit of a drive a few km’s back down the road, but the going was tough – like driving on grease – so we made our way back and waited patiently for sunshine.

The weather did clear and after a bit of food and an adrenaline rush when our camp was visited by a couple of funnel-web spiders (quickly dispatched with a six foot tent pole, but that night we did put on long trousers and shoes...and tucked our trousers into our socks J), we all squeezed into our 3-man tent for an uneasy night’s sleep.  It was all worth it though when we awoke to beautiful sunshine and made the very enjoyable 8km round trip trek to the falls. We had no more rain that day and in fact the road back to Drysdale was easier than the trip up. 

Next up was Manning Gorge where the main excitement was a striped brown snake about a metre and a half long, that slithered over a neighbouring campers foot one evening.  No sooner had the screaming finished. than Elliot was over in their camp, reptile book in hand, confidently pronouncing it to be the venomous, but not dangerous (how does that work?!?), Brown Tree Snake.  True to its nature, it proceeded to climb a nearby tree so we are assuming Elliot was on the mark again and could rest easy.

The journey along the Gibb River road is really all about walks to gorges, springs and falls.  By this point in addition to the above mentioned Manning Gorge, we had visited a number such as Zebedee Springs (busy thermal springs), Emma Gorge (long hot walk, very cold water at the end... beautiful!), Little Merton Falls and Big Merton Falls and of course Mitchell Falls.  It is possible to get a bit ‘gorged-out’ along the way, but if this happens; be sure to make the journey to Bell Gorge and Windjana Gorge and your appreciation for gorges will be rekindled!

Don't look now Elliot, but...

We stayed at the National Parks campsite at Windjana which is a well run and neat spot with the beautiful and towering gorge walls as a backdrop and a large population of freshwater crocs.  (It also has flushing toilets and solar showers – what luxury!)  It’s close enough to Derby and Broome for a weekend visit and so probably gets busy in the middle of the season, but at the end of the season it was pretty quiet. As it was such a nice spot, we decided on a two night stay.  This gave us the chance to make the short drive down to Tunnel Creek, which turned out to be one of the highlights of the Gibb;  you get to wade through underground pools of up to waist deep water, through a kilometre and a half of pitch black limestone tunnels, whilst five different species of bat fly overhead and, very occasionally, you spot a pair of shining amber discs as your  torch light is reflected in the eyes of one of the freshwater crocodiles that you are sharing the cold dark pool with.   OK, so thinking about it; this might not be everyone’s cup of tea, but we had a ball!

Tunnel Creek

Just to prove it was nearing the end of the season, on our second night at Windjana, and last night on the Gibb River Road, a sizable thunder storm passed overhead at around midnight, causing the whole site to flood to a depth of six inches or more in places (a bit of an issue if the waterproof sides of the floor of your camper trailer only extend to about three inches high).  As the lower area of the trailer rapidly developed into our own indoor paddling pool, we quickly relocated everyone and everything onto the top bed for a cramped and soggy night’s sleep.  Whilst we were mid clean-up the following morning, the park ranger came around to let us know that, though they were not forcing us to leave, they had closed the campsite and the road in, and that the Gibb River Road could well be closed anytime soon, so unless we wanted to become semi-permanent guests, we might want to consider beating a hasty retreat...  We did just that and a few hours later we were cooling off in the pool as the sun set over Broome’s beautiful Cable Beach...

So, that’s the story of the Gibb River Road for us. Undoubtedly the best way to experience the stunning Kimberley region and well worth another visit!