Around Kununnurra

Tues 28 April…… We are up and running again with yet another new tyre. Fortunately all the ones we have replaced have been the original tyres so we are now well shod! By the time we’ve got the tyre changed and done a bit of shopping, most of the morning had gone, but we have decided to drive out to Wyndham which is the most northern town in Western Australia. In fact it is closer to Timor and Bali than it is to Perth! It also claims to have the largest Salties in the world on it’s mudflats. It is 100K to Wyndham, so a good hours drive but on the way we see a sign for The Grotto . Wondering if Santa is at home we go and have a look. It turns out to be an amazing place with no reference to it in any of the local Guide books. It’s a big quarry like hole in the ground, a very steep decent with 140 steps, cut out of the rock face, some concrete but no hand rail and decidedly dodgy! We scramble down to find a hidden, large, very deep water hole hidden from the top, 300feet deep it said on the legend. There are a couple of people down there swimming, but we didn’t take our bathers down and it’s too far to go back up for them ,so we give the swim a miss and carry on on our journey.
There is not a lot there at Wyndham except mudflats and an unusually large Police station for some reason. There is also a crocodile farm that we didn’t visit. There is a sign for the five rivers lookout which is a 10 min drive up a very steep and winding road. At the top we look out over the salt marshes and mud flats not particularly inspiring but we could see a long way. That was where we got the info about being closer to Bali than Perth. We have nice drive back to Kununurra and as the sun gets lower in the sky the East Kimberly Ranges change colour and appear to change shape in the shadows. Many of the places round about were locations for the film Australia in fact the actors and all the crew were based here in Kununurra. We have visited a couple of the sites but mostly the film was shot in 4WD country. It seems the director liked the colours of East Kimberly and the way they change with the light.