Robert and Judith's Gap Year: June 1-3 The West Kimberley

We passed through Halls Creek after filling up with petrol and having a look around. Most exciting thing that happened was the Princess got a cuddle from a little aboriginal girl. Both seemed to enjoy that.

We went on to an established free-camp site at Mary River to stay the night. What a busy place. There were over 30 vans staying here. Of course we set up next to the one with the noisy generator. How we hate generators! Fortunately for both he and us, the generator was only on for an hour or so at dusk. We can understand why it is popular at Mary River. The park is set well back from the road and is next to a beautiful creek. Tried my luck with the metal detector and did my bit for cleaning up the environment (i.e. no gold again.) Funny thing happened on the way down to the river - Spike fell into a hole. His eye sight really is starting to fail him. We only laughed a little bit. We had a lovely refreshing swim in the river shallows.

The entrance to the Mary River camp site

The busy camping ground, but still plenty of room

The hole that gobbled up Spike

Spike bounces back after his traumatic fall

The next major town is Fitzroy Crossing. The Fitzroy is a mighty river. The town is not. We filled up with petrol and had lunch before moving on. About 40km out of the town, the local cops are behind us and then pull us over. "Do you know you were speeding? Our radar shows you were doing 120kph." What a joke. I have never been over 95kph while towing the van and mostly hover around 85 kph. We have the GPS that also confirms the speed at which we travel. We laughed at him, but disappointingly he was serious and wanted to stick with his story. Big concession from the cop that he wouldn't book us this time. Big concession from me too - I won't take him to court this time. What an idiot! Kinda makes you lose respect for the police unfortunately.

We targeted the next free-camp site listed in our book at Ellendale. On arrival, we saw lots of vans again, but this time no compensating features of being away from the road or next to a river. We went to a clearing on the side of the road about 100 metres away and stayed the night in a quiet and secluded spot. Looked like this spot was once a storage point for all sorts of things - av gas, water, sand and screenings. Way better than squishing in amongst all the other caravans and motorhomes.

The next day we went into the town of Derby. Derby is famous for the largest tides in Australia. It can be as much as 10m between low and high tides. Derby also has an enormous boab tree that was once used as a prison. We thought we might stay a night or 2 here, but we didn't. We had a picnic lunch in the park, where Pricess fell asleep on the rug. We thought about going on a trip to the Horiozontal Falls (like rapids that flow between islands as the tide changes), but it was booked out for the next few days - its the start of a long weekend in WA. One of the 2 caravan parks was booked out. We decided to leave and travel on towards Broome.

The prison boab tree. The inside of the trunk is hollow and could hold a dozen people or more.

Princess having a quiet snooze at Derby

We found a clearing off the main road that backed onto a lake. That was a nice place to stay about 70km away from Broome. We were surprisingly interrupted by a local of Belgian decent, who came by to pick out some water lillies from the lake. We had a good chat with him about the local area and world affairs. We had another surprise visitor around midnight - this one was not so welcome. A noisy car drove into the clearing, stopped long enough for us to wake up and ponder what the hell might happen next, but then thankfully drove off again. All part of the adventure. Next, we move on to Broome.