Author: Mrs A
No travel stats today as we stayed still – hurrah! In spite of this, we still were up and about at 5.45am, our body clocks not yet adjusted to Western Australian time. We had a celebratory BBQ breakfast of bacon and eggs, before putting on our hiking shoes and climbing up to another lookout, this time overlooking the Ord River.
We are staying amongst incredible scenery which supports much bird life. From our perch up on a rocky outcrop overlooking the river and gorge below, we saw Whistling Kites soar past us, talons grasping twigs for their nest building, and red winged parots flying by, squawking.
After returning to camp we decided to visit the infinity pool. It’s crystal clear and high up on the cliff overlooking the lake, views stretching forever. I jumped in – it was freezing! Apparently, because the warm surface water is constantly running over the edge, it takes a long while for the pool to heat up – I’m guessing we are about 5 months early!
After a light lunch we headed over to the restaurant to watch an early 1970s documentary about the history of the damming of Lake Argyle…it was about 30 minutes too long (yawn), but gave us some idea of the scale of the job involved before we jumped on a sunset cruise on the lake.
This is no ordinary reservoir. It was dammed in 1970/71, and is the size of 19 Sydney Harbours – classed as an inland sea. When cyclones hit these parts during the summer months, it is not unusual to see waves of up to 3 metres on this lake! Our cruise set off at about 2.30pm and we covered little more than about 5% of the lake by the time we were returned to shore at 6pm. We saw more kites, and on one island a community of rescued rare Walleroos who hopped over to check us out. A fish feeding session revealed some of the residents below the surface. And of course crocodiles – all of the freshwater variety, more nervous of us than interested in taking a bite.
The sunset was lovely, accompanied by many stories, facts and figures, plus glasses of wine or beer, cheese and biscuits. It was a great way to spend a 31 degree day – apparently tonight is meant to drop to a chilly 16 degrees – how will we cope?! Ah well, first world problems…
Our key learning on the caravan today is to not let the water tanks run too low. Apparently that is what we have done, and it has resulted in our water filter becoming clogged (with whatever nasties lurk at the bottom of water tanks!) and the water flow is very slow as a result. A quick call to ZoneRV, the caravan manufacturers, has seen them organising a replacement to be sent to our next location, Kununurra, where we will be on Friday. Now we need to learn how to replace it. Fortunately we are in a location surrounded by seasoned caravanners who are willing to offer a hand, so hopefully tomorrow we will learn a new skill.
Every day’s a school day (to quote a regular blog reader ;-))….
