Tunnel Creek

We again took our time getting going this morning.  It was such a lovely, shady spot, and Grant took the opportunity to get some things sorted out on the car, ordering parts to be collected at various post offices in Western Australia. I did some more washing and chatted with the receptionist who said at this time last year it was 45 degrees in Fitzroy Crossing.  It's not that today.  It's beautiful weather, warm but with a lovely cool breeze.

The boys had a great time down at the Fitzroy River, climbing over mud flats and up along red dirt banks.  The river  is just a small stream at this stage in the dry season but it overflows it's banks annually, and flooded the hotel early this year. 

We saw three brolgas fly past, with their long grey necks stretched out, making the weirdest noise, a cross between a goose honk and a crow screech.  They were huge and looked like they were going to drop out of the sky. Later I saw them standing in the shallow water, cooling off their legs and looking much more elegant.  The river bed was very rocky and I could feel my feet getting bruised as I walked along.  Not sure how the kids can do it.

Up the road a bit from Fitzroy crossing we turned right onto the Leopold Downes road, a rough dirt road that joins with the Gibb river road further north. We let the air down in our six tyres and headed off on this very corrugated and rocky road with our caravan.  This was the first time we had taken the caravan on such a bumpy road and we kept stopping to check that things weren't being thrown around too much inside.  At our first creek crossing with water, Grant  stopped and Joseph and I were walking through it, checking the depth for Grant, when this four wheel drive came hooting along, pulled around Grant and straight through the water, told us which side of the creek to drive on, and then whizzed away.  He was gone before I could fix my thongs that had been sucked apart by the mud.  In comparison, we crawled along the road at about 60 km/h and took a fair while to reach where we were going.  

We made this turn off the Great Northern Highway on the advice of Mark and Donna, who said we should definitely visit Tunnel Creek.  I'd never even heard of tunnel creek, but off we obediently set today. When we pulled into the car park at the foot of some more rocky cliffs, it didn't look like there was much to see that was different from the other places we had been. (apart from the very stylish toilet block) The first sign that this was going to be a new experience, was that as we came closer to the tunnel entrance, the breeze about us became cool - almost like air conditioning.  The limestone cliffs, touted to be part of an ancient coral reef, changed into a marble-like rock of pink, white and chocolate.  In places the rock had been rubbed incredibly smooth by the number of hands that had used them as hand holds in the clamber for the entrance. Later I was speaking to a tour guide at the tunnel with his group, and he said he couldn't work out how we got a whole pile of marble (a few people thought it looked like Jasperite) in a coral reef.....any ideas Dad?

We passed some people on our way in who told us to make sure we didn't miss the fresh water crocodile in the small side cave, just a hundred meters in.

Then we were in a large, cool cave with high ceilings, damp walls, and water on the floor.  The river has carved a tunnel through the rock and we walked the 850 meters or so out to the other side.  The really spooky thing was that it was almost pitch black (our torches were not very bright) and we had to wade through icy water up to our waists (or our necks, if you are Oskar) A few times we weren't sure if we were using the right part of the stream, or whether we were unwittingly heading into deep water, but it was amazingly beautiful and awesome.  the feeling of pure relief to see the faint light in the distance as you round the corner waist deep in cold water in the pitch dark is not to be under estimated! 

We never did find the fresh water crocodile, not that I was looking too hard, but we saw some little fish, fruit bats hanging from the ceiling in one place where the roof had caved in, and some lovely black and purple butterflies at the other end.

We passed another family coming in on our way back through the tunnel, so we weren't completely nuts taking Cooper in.  We stuffed all our shoes with newspaper then headed up the road a bit further where we are camped for the night, at Winjana Gorge.  We are right next to a towering, black cliff face.  It's quite impressive. Also impressive are the flushing toilets, something I have not seen for a while.  It seems to be a day for nice toilets...

We met Rowan and his wife Akiko who are a young couple out here while Rowan teaches in an aboriginal community for a year.  He is finding it tough and had two regular students last term.  He has other students that come and go, but that was his core group. He really likes taking photos with old cameras, and showed us his old japanese box brownie. (it wasn't called a box brownie, but that's what it looked like.) He said they take a while to take each photo.

After dinner, Joseph taught us Texas holdem poker - but it was Dominic who beat us all.
Now everyone is safely tucked in, with the cool breeze blowing and the moon shining down.