A day trip from Kununurra to Wyndham

" Western Australia - A Great Place " the sign at the border had proclaimed ! We agreed! Kununurra had proven to be such an interesting place that we had extended our stay and decided to spend a day driving to Wyndham, the most northern town as well as the oldest, in Western Australia. While planning our itinerary I had read several blogs saying that a visit there was a waste of a day however new acquaintances in our holiday park had sung its praises so off we went.

The Grotto

We were not disappointed. Our first stop some seventy kilometres from Kununurra was the Grotto. In the wet season there is an awesome waterfall, we had been told, so I was looking for hills for the water to fall down. There seemed to be not a hill in sight when we rounded a bend and met a sign "Grotto." A left turn took us up a bit of a hill to a rocky plateau. Initially it looked like the area had been paved with slate tiles! Where was the waterfall and bottomless pool of crystal clear water we had been told about?

Steps down to the Grotto Pool

A short walk over the rocks revealed a deep fissure in the earth with steep vertical cliffs. To get to the water, steps had been cut out of the rocks, cemented in places. One hundred and forty of them. I watched as a young couple slowly climbed the last set, arriving very hot at the top and saying that the water experience was well worth the steep climb back. If I had been a few decades younger I wouldn't have hesitated going down myself!
[The Grotto is seventy kilometres from Kununurra and thirty kilometres south of Wyndham.]

Fires, spontaneous or of the precautionary burning of fuel type, had been a common sight for us on this trip. While in Kakadu we had been told of the birds of prey that picked up embers and dropped them in unfired areas then hovering to pick up the small mammals and reptiles that fled from danger. A great hunting strategy!  Here we were able to stop the van to watch these wonderfully clever birds in action.

No escape for small animals fleeing the fire

Wyndham began life in 1860s as a result of the Gold Rush at Halls Creek. Then it was a busy port with boat loads of gold miners arriving, heading first to some of the six pubs before leaving to seek their golden fortunes. The Halls Creek gold rush was a very short one and Wyndham soon became a small, cash poor town, existing to service the new pastoralists.

Lookout Hill - Wyndham

Our interest in Kununurra and Lake Argyle was an engineering one - the building of the Ord River Dam in the 1960s. This massive water harnessing project created Kununurra and breathed life again into Wyndham, which took up its former role of port and supply centre. By the 1980s the dam construction was completed and things had again become quiet in Wyndham. We felt its silence as we stood at the lookout and gazed across the now grassy covered mudflats.

Cambridge Gulf, Wyndham

 Wyndham is the point where five rivers, the Durack, Pentecost, King, Forrest and the Ord merge, flowing into the Joesph Bonaparte Gulf and the Timor Sea. Today the mudflats stretched mostly waterless before us, leaving us to create our own images of the five rivers in full force, filling the vast mudflats with the tremendous energy that rejuvenates life here in this often dry and dusty country.

How amazing it would be to see that!

Wyndham