John and the boys decided to paddle down the Ord River from below the dam wall at Lake Argyle. This is promoted as a two day paddle in the tourist blurb, but they plan to do it in 6-7 hours. That’s a Jacoby thing. We had an early start and drove up to the dam wall – about 70km. Being up there early made for the perfect light to see the enormous Lake Argyle.

Built to create an irrigation area in the Ord River Valley, Lake Argyle is 2000 sq. kilometres – Australia’s largest man-made lake. Apart from the farming it supports, there is also a huge recreation industry based around water sports, and the ever growing tourism industry.
I dropped the boys just near the small hydro electricity plant at the dam wall.

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We continued west along the Victoria Highway, through Timber Creek and over the mighty Victoria River which flows on out to the Timor Sea. Our early explorers from Europe would sail up as far as Timber Creek, but the river is not deep.

The view in the photo below is from just above the Timber Creek township.

We also stopped at the Gregory Tree. This is an old Boab where the explorer Augustus Gregory set up camp in 1855 for a year of two. As was the trend in the day, he carved the dates into the tree. It’s also a sacred site, and well fenced off – not a great photo.
BUT – there are some good lookers nearby that I’ll treat you to. (I hugged these ones of course)

We crossed the border into Western Australia and lost all our fruit and vegetables to the quarantine man again. We stayed right on a lagoon of Lake Kununurra and a nice breeze kept the mozzies at bay.

Well I’ve had a day or so of internet access and some time on my hands, so thought I’d upload some videos. They take a long time to put up, so some are not so new.
I’ve fixed the one of the Croc eating the wallaby:

The next one is from Alice Springs – in the rain. I think we were all going a little crazy this day.

And here’s the Todd River flowing –

More tomorrow. WiFi modem nearly flat, computer nearly flat, and I need a shower!

Please bear with me as I indulge my passion for the stunning Boab trees. These are my absolute favourite tree. Even better than the Ghost Gums.

They are found here in the Victoria River and Fitzmaurice River basins in the Northern Territory, and, as everyone knows, all across the Kimberley. As it’s the dry season, they have all lost their leaves – being a deciduous tree. They all have a different personality. The shapes vary from classic bottle shape, to quite consistently fat all the way up the trunk, to almost grotesque and deformed. And they all deserve a hug!
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We had decided to head south from Victoria Highway down Binns Track (which actually goes all the way to Alice) for about 45km to get to Limestone Gorge. The road is dirt, with hardly any corrugations, but lots of Dips – dry creek crossings. Dips are good for making the boys feel sick when they’re reading.

Unfortunately the Gorge access road is closed due to consistent flood damage, so we stopped at nearby Bullita Homestead Campground.

This is the Boab tree on the turnoff to Bullita, below

Now isn’t that just that just the most gorgeous tree? I just LOVE Boab trees!

The surrounding bush was filled with red termite hills, and Kapok trees – they’re the ones with the yellow flowers below.

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