We are on holiday!

Wednesday 10th August 2022

We had a blissfully cool night – at some point I even had to get up, turn off the fan and unpack a doona! 😆 Otis and I headed down to the boat ramp for a morning walk and spotted a decent sized crocodile off the boat ramp, justifying my paranoia about not letting the kids anyway near the waters edge (even though we kept seeing people fishing there!). We then packed up camp and were off by 10. I’m not sure we would camp here again, since I’m pretty sure Richie caught the only barramundi here, but if we were to site 16 is my pick of the campsite, with shade, tent space and a fire pit.

We stopped in nearby to see ‘Gregory’s tree’, which I misinterpreted to think it was a large boab that perhaps was used as a shelter for explorers. However it turned out to be a boab with a date carved in it in 1856 by Thomas Baines during an expedition with Augustus Gregory, which was not quite what I had talked it up to be to the kids! Had I realised I doubt we would have taken the corrugated detour to get there. Anyway we read a few signs about the base camp they set up while exploring the area, using the Victoria River to boat supplies in, and the indigenous significance of the area. It’s interesting to imagine the difficulties that must have been faced by those exploring these harsh regions.

We drove on, enjoying the boabs in the landscape in their strange shapes, whilst we made our way through the last of Conrad’s walnuts that had travelled from Braidwood with us! We eventually arrived at the WA border, where we stopped and declared the little fresh food we had left – a bag of carrots, a bag of peanuts and a piece of turmeric. They all got the thumbs up, and we were off to Kununurra.

We decided to try our luck on an early check in, thinking 1pm was close enough to 2pm, though it turns out in WA 1pm is actually 11:30am, so they were a little surprised to see me! Luckily we were good to go through – we have rented a cabin at one of the caravan parks for our one night stop over. A rather security conscious caravan park it seems, you park outside then on payment are given a remote to open great big gates to get in and out of the park. The cabin is nice, with two bedrooms and a proper kitchen, though it was a bit more expensive than I would have preferred so I’m glad it is nice! Sadly the swimming pool was out of action, the worst part being that I had talked up the swimming pool to the kids. 😬 Though I am secretly relieved to not spend an afternoon in a caravan park swimming pool! 🤫

With most of our food well secured in the trailer, I was glad to find milk and rice bubbles in the cabin to keep the kids happy while I put on washing, and we had showers to remove the layers of red dust and sunscreen. For those following my super interesting clothes washing saga, our clothes came out clean, so I am now holding Maytag responsible for the filthy state of our clothing!

We drove to a cafe where we sat under big mango trees with a coffee. Bonnie got a sausage roll and Otis got a slice of chocolate cake…..a perfectly sound lunch in my books. 🙃 Then we went to Coles, with the idea we stock up on fresh foods before going back to camping. This plan had a major fail though, as the fresh food section of Coles was mostly bare! I suppose we are just one of many travellers stopping at Kununurra to restock on fresh produce! We were able to get mandarins, kiwifruit and apples, potatoes and an iceberg lettuce at the bargain price of $3.50 (admittedly I don’t usually buy them, but I think they were going for $7 when we left Braidwood,😂)! We also bumped into our camper neighbour at the shops, just to further enhance Richie’s paranoia! 😉 We stopped in at a souvenir shop and bought the kids t-shirts before we headed off to the park.

We packed away the shopping, including the ice cream that we will probably have to binge on tomorrow morning given our freezer space situation. 😁 Then whilst we probably should have done something to wear the kids out and see the sights, it was incredibly hot and we instead checked out the DVD library at reception and the kids spent the afternoon watching tv in the air-conditioning and eating toasted sandwiches while I sat outside with a glass of wine, reading about what we could be doing in Kununurra! 😆

I really felt like salad for dinner, so Richie made a very simple chicken salad, given the salad ingredients we had were limited to an iceberg lettuce and carrots that have been travelling with us a little too long! Then we enjoyed the novelty of sitting on the couch watching bad tv until much too late! 😁