Peter and Christine's Australian Road Trips

After a relaxed start at The Billi Resort, we drove down to Cable Beach and had brekkie at a beautiful seaside café called Zanders. After we ate, we wandered down onto the beach. It was a glorious morning. The surfers were pretending to surf but there was very little in the way of breakers. I don’t think you’d get me in the water – looked far too dangerous for my liking!

Out onto the highway and we set off for Fitzroy Crossing. Our first stop, just past the turnoff to Derby, was at a typical outback roadhouse called Willare Bridge Roadhouse and Caravan Park. We loved the row of Boab trees along the highway.

Our next stop was to check out one of the biggest Boabs in the area. Massive was an understatement. It even had a huge hollow inside – you can see how big with the comparison shot of Peter. It distressed me that so many people felt the need to vandalise it.

Between there and Fitzroy Crossing there wasn’t much to distract us. We stopped at another Boab so Peter could try and find some of the fruit. This particular exercise was because we had purchased two carved ones, when we were sitting at dinner the night before in Broome, from a few persistent indigenous locals.

We arrived in Fitzroy Crossing, where we were glamping in a basic way, again. Tim, Moira and Peter went for a drive up to Geikie Gorge where they were fortunate to arrive just in time to capture some beautiful sunset photos on an almost perfectly still evening, thus the reflections were almost mirror-images.

We left Fitzroy Crossing the next morning and headed out across the red dusty plains and hills towards Kununurra. Just as we left, the odometer rolled over to 80,000, making it 9,100km since we left home, an average of approximately 414km per day. I have often, in chatting with fellow travellers, described our whirlwind tour as a flying trip around Australia, in a car! Although it has been a quick trip, it has been a wonderful trip, the driving, the places we’ve seen, the forces of nature we have witnessed, the might of man we have observed, but, particularly, the time spent with family – with Caitlin, Matthew and Lincoln on Cocos Islands, then travelling with Tim and Moira on the West Australian/Northern Territory leg of the journey. These times with family are precious and have been wonderful experiences for us.

The landscape continued to change, and the formations of the ranges varied at different stages during this drive. At one point, we noticed some cars parked up on a ridge in front of us and we discovered a lookout called Ngumban Cliffs. The views from here were awe-inspiring and took my breath away. The huge boulders, the jagged edges of the mountain tops, and the huge spread of the valley out to blue mountain ranges in the distance.  For quite some time, I have been trying to capture one particular raptor and I almost did here. It is a Black Kite. I also stumbled across a mini termite mound – my ugly feet were used for size comparison! By the way, the oval in one photo is marking two vehicles passing on the highway below, just to give you some idea of how high up we were and the enormity of the size of the area we were photographing!

The termite mounds started to appear again, but, for some reason, these were all mini termite mounds. They looked so cute dotted across the landscape.

As well, as usual, there were some standout landscape features that caught my attention – they are just so amazing, unique and eye-catching, I can’t help myself!

In Kununurra, we stayed in an old-fashioned well-worn motel, with adequate facilities, but a marvelous bed, called The Kimberley Croc Motel! We spent very little time there anyway, except to sleep for two nights. The day in between was to be of the biggest highlights of our whole trip!