On the road Katherine to Kununurra, Western Australia

Katherine is a busy regional centre, especially  during the dry season when thousands of tourists like ourselves, along with the grey nomads, stop at one of the seven or more camping grounds. At this time, a camp site is not easy to find and we ended up with one the back perimeter of a nice one but with a long walk to access the amenities. That's the price of enjoying freedom travelling!

Victoria Highway

We were soon cruising happily towards the west on the Victoria Highway, our destination for the day being Kununurra in Western Australia. Controlled burning was evident along the highway as well as spontaneous fires, perhaps started by windblown embers. At these places we came across some small marsupials, a couple of snakes and larger lizards on the road but happily we did not add to their problems. Where fires were still flaming, birds of prey circled, grabbing the small animals as they tried to escape death.

A constant warning and reason not to go ahead with our trip from almost all of our friends was that the road trains were humongous, drove as if they were the only vehicles on the road and we would certainly be at least terrified, if not killed. In reality, we saw relatively few road trains, only two in the whole 17,000 km trip that had five wagons, all drivers were courteous, let us pass indicating on a hilly part that the way was clear and were happy to chat while waiting for coffee at a roadhouse. That we were towing a unique little caravan may have added interest to their trip as quite a few of them gave us a toot, even as they sped past while we were off road at a rest site.

Victoria River Roadhouse

The Victoria River and the Gregory National Park offer walks, bird spotting, river cruises and other activities however, with limited time, we regretfully had to continue. For those with more time, the Roadhouse also had a well grassed, well equipped camp ground. Reasonably priced too, at $12.50 pp for a powered site. The setting was quite spectacular with the mountains and red earth on both sides and the only permanent river in the area cruising through.

Victoria River

Some ninety kms further down the road we stopped again at Timber Creek Roadhouse to refuel. Diesel was nearly $2 a litre!

Timber Creek Roadhouse, Northern Territory

Saddle Creek, a further one hundred and seventeen km from Timber Creek was our lunch stop. Saddle Creek is a popular free camp boasting pit toilets with BYO loo paper, water, covered tables, fire pit and rubbish bins. We arrived there around 1.30pm and it was almost full of caravans of all descriptions nestled in the shady spots, their occupants gathered for a chat and to scratch their heads at our ensemble of Toyota LWB van, self converted to a camper and Teardrop caravan towed behind.

Saddle Creek, free camping

There is another free camp in this area the Jarrnarm Campground in the Keep River National Park. We weren't keen to take the thirty km dirt road to get to it so we carried on towards the State Border. I do think that the Keep River National Park would be a great place to explore however, given that we are not nomads, grey or otherwise, with a timeless itinerary we had to prioritise our itinerary and activities.

Western Australia - Northern Territory Border

The border crossing was like an invisible line drawn in the sand. Flat red - yellow sandy soil holding scrubby trees some housing what seemed like hundreds of squawking galahs.

Galahs

Galahs are also known as rose breasted cockatoos and you can see them in most places in Australia, including our neighbourhood where they seem to chase off the smaller parrots. I've heard the expression, "Don't be a big galah! "said to someone who was being very strident and rowdy. I guess it comes from the raucous racket made by just a couple of these birds.

Galahs

Fruit, vegetables , honey and so on cannot be brought across the border so, while at Saddle Creek we had emptied our fridge and boxes of these items. After the friendly customs lady located a lost carrot we were soon wheeling the last few kilometres to Kununurra where we planned to stay for two nights.

Lake Kunnurra

Happily we had arrived early enough in the day to secure a shady campsite beside the lake at Lakeside Resort.