Thursday, May 19, 2011

To El Questro and Beyond


 We started yesterday in Katherine, where we had slept after visiting Kakadu National Park. We had a great Australian breakfast at the Coffee Club on the main street, which seems to be the town’s premiere establishment. We then had to find a doctor for Andrew for what seems to be an ear infection, and thankfully the Australian health systems works, he saw a doctor quickly and we were on our way. We traveled the Victoria highway (notwithstanding its name, another two lane road) through Gregory National Park (full of savannah and beautiful escarpment) all the way to the border with Western Australia.






At the border, they have a quarantine of fruit, vegetables, plants and flowers, and there is a quarantine station at which we had to stop. There are apparently all sorts of insects they are trying to keep out.

We continued on to the town of Kununarra, which is known as the gateway to the Kimberley, and armed with further information from the Visitors Center, we headed north to the Gibb River Road, a rough wilderness road which cuts across the Kimberley, and we went as far as the El Questro Resort and Homestead, which is a huge tract of land (18,000 sq. kilometres) containing a resort and working ranch where we spent the night. It was absolutely spectacular, and this morning, we took a choppa (for those of you who don’t speak Australian, that’s a helicopter) ride around the El Questro lands, visiting spectacular gorges, valleys, waterfalls, and escarpments, and seeing the damage done during what they refer to here as The Wet. In certain cases, water levels had risen up to three meters, causing huge flooding. In fact, when we were driving to El Questro along the Gibb River Road (which is still closed in parts), we had to do several river crossings in our vehicle (thankfully a sturdy 4WD Land Cruiser), where the water was almost a meter deep. It was really spectacular, not to mention lots of fun.











The El Questro area is absolutely beautiful, this is really big land country, mostly savannah dotted with trees, full of mountains, escarpments and gorges.




El Questro itself was fabulous, they have various accommodations including tents, camping, bungalows – and the homestead, the latter being very high end luxury. We opted for the bungalows and had a couple of great meals to boot. At lunch, we saw a couple of beautiful of kookaburras.


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