Gibb River Trip 2025 Blog #8

THE LAST LEG

Well I should probably rename this trip as Jack and I have decided to can the GRR and Arneham Land part of the journey. The Kimberly region of WA has had a late monsoon season and a lot of rain has been dumped on the Gibb River Road making it a mess with swollen creek crossings and churned up road. In reality we could probably still manage it but because of some closures a lot of people have delayed their trip along it and are now flocking to the area. Eeek, we’re not interested in cueing up to visit the stations and gorges, maybe another time.

The Arnhem Land part of the trip was always an add-on but is booked out and because it would be impossible for us to give an exact date to arrive there is no way we could guarantee our arrival for the booked dates. Plus an explosion in the fees we decided to give the GRR & that part of the trip a miss.

That means that we no longer have to travel further north than we are and can make our way back across the bottom half of the country. We’ll save the GRR for another day, probably attack it from the north as the south can consider itself well and truly done, which was the main focus of the trip anyway.

Last Night we stayed at Paynes Find (another gold mining town) and drove further north this morning. This was the Moon early this morning.

Truck spare parts.

The Roadhouse at Payne’s Find.

Have a look at this truck Luke, how many wheels can you count, I reckon there’s 108. These trucks are even longer than the maximum allowed here at 60 metres (with a special permit). There are quite a few.

Currently we are in a little Aboriginal Boarding School called Karalundi, about 50Kms north of Meekatharra. The school has set up a camping ground at the front to get some extra revenue. This is a school started by the 7th Day Adventists to assist these kids that come from turbulent homes. 

Meek has a reputation of lawlessness and vandalism. Itinerant aboriginal kids stealing and causing mischief. Reading reviews from fellow campers has put us off staying in town and driving through you can see the evidence of this. During school hours there was a gang of kids loitering around the town and although they weren’t causing a problem this was probably because there was a police car parked on the other side of the road.

Karalundi is a nice quiet Christian school and alcohol and smoking is not allowed, so I’m drinking inside the van watching the test cricket and Jackie is outside writhing with withdrawal symptoms because she’s not allowed to smoke. This is a very stressful time for me, mainly because Australia just lost their 4th wicket for 70-odd runs, I mean why OH WHY did they pick Khawaja in the team, and then to pick Green who hasn’t played in 2 years! This is the World Championship! Lucky I have plenty of beers to watch it with.

Plus Jack looks like she needs to be put into a straight jacket. I might buy her some nicotine patches tomorrow.

Tomorrow we head back south through Meekatharra again, dodging the hail of rocks thrown at us and we’ll move on to Wiluna, another Outback town. We will have to retrace our steps back though Kalgoorlie (YIPEE another peek at the SuperPit) but there is an abandoned mining town that is supposed to be pretty good, called Gwalia, so we’ll have to explore that one.

Meekatharra to Wiluna 180Kms of dirt road. 

2 trucks pulling this train engine.

Meekatharra picture theatre.

There is going to be some serious car and van cleaning when we get home. Update: I spent 3 days cleaning the car and 2 cleaning the van. Still not done.

A mini-superpit at Leonora. This is the backyard of the mine manager’s cottage. You wouldn’t want to kick your footy over the fence, it’s about a kilometre to the bottom.

Some of the abandoned cottages at Gwalia ghost town.

This is what’s left of the p[ublic swimming pool at Gwalia. Closed in the 50’s due to contaminated water (poliomyelitis).

The original mine head at Gwalia.

The old pub at Gwalia. In the 60’s they closed the gold mine and everyone just jumped onto the train, left their stuff in the houses and went south tp Kalgoorlie. It’s sort of spooky.

This is the mine manager’s cottage at Gwalia where Herbert Hoover was working in his 20’s. He went on to become the president of USA.

Leonora (Gwalia) mini SuperPit.

Another shot of the windmills at Penong on the way home,

I couldn’t resist another peek at the SuperPit at Kalgoorlie. It truly is breathtaking.

This is what y one of these dumpsters looks like if it was on the road.

that’s the bucket of one of the loaders, worth well over a million $$$

Well we made it home, albeit a bit earlier than we had anticipated but that’s OK, I’m already planning the next big one. This time we’ll go from the north, book Arneham Land well in advance and try to beat the monsoons on the GRR.

We’ve been home for a few days now and have spent the time cleaning and unpacking. When we left Perth we covered 4,500 Kms in 8 days, 13,363 Kms all up in 6 weeks. Not our biggest road trip but it’s up there.

I did some fairly long drives to get home in that time, early morning and nights are definitely the worst as the kangaroos are everywhere. We were lucky that we didn’t hit any this time but it was close a few times.

 

Blog #7

This edition of the blog is dedicated to The World’s Greatest Man, R.I.P. There is a valid reason for this despite blatant adoration. Keep reading.

Regular readers of my various columns, minutes and other stuff I write will acknowledge that Warnie is (was) the greatest human to ever walk on this Earth and in this blog I’m going to reveal a fact that I only became aware of during this trip. 

Did you know (no, you didn’t) that there is a huge area of Queensland & South Australia that has been named the Warnie Volcanic Province (WVP) after the discovery of a massive Jurassic Era volcanoes there. Yes, it was named after Shane Warne and more accurately it was named after the Warnie East Well that was first to discover the area.

How fantastic is that? Warnie is still saving lives everyday with the Shane Warne Legacy Health Check.

Currently Jack and I are in Perth, nice park here right next to a pond which has allowed me to finally get some decent photos of my favourite duck. If only I had discovered it I would have named it the Australian Shane Duck.

 These beautiful birds spend a lot of time preening themselves and if you looked as good as they do then why not?

Male.

Female

Cute duck eh?

Today we went into Perth city for a look around. Discovered Murray Street which must be where the super-rich hang out. Lois Vuitton, Chanelle, Christian Dior, Rolex, Cartier, Leica and the best gadget shop I’ve seen in ages.

Lots of Bentleys, Porches etc. parked here and once I had bought my camera filter that I was looking for and spent my paltry $90 weeks decided to head back to the van, leaving the drool-smeared shop windows to the better healed clientele.

A little bit of excitement today as I witnessed a pedestrian getting cleaned up by a bicyclist in the middle of the city. Actually the rider came off worst with a few scrapes etc. I caught the action on my dash cam as I was parked by the road. Once I worked out they were OK I sent them a video copy of the crash which turned out to be a mistake on my part as these 2 snowflakes were messaging each other all day (with me included) making sure they were OK and “reaching out” to each other. Other comments were “Oh, how am I going to tell my wife?” And “I’m going home for a hot bath and a Nurofen”  you’d think it was carnage on the road. I just thought it was funny. Wanna see the video? I thought so.

Today we are jumping on a ferry to Rottnest Island which is how early Dutch explorers pronounced Rat’s Nest, after the tiny cousins of the kangaroos that live there that we call quokkas . Yes, more kangaroo-based wildlife. Most overseas visitors don’t realise that we have so many. Wallabies, wallaroos, potaroos, Pygmy-a-roos, rock wallabies, tree-climbing roos, smashed-by-road-train-roos etc. 

I’m looking forward to meeting up with these little fellas, apparently they can fit on a hamburger bun no problem!

Anyway, I don’t really care if Dick Van Dyke can’t tell the difference between a rat and a kangaroo, these little scavengers are cute as a button.

Rottnest Island.

Speaking of Dutch explorers, they not only brought their mis-identifications to our country but also our worst serial killer on the ship Batavia which was wrecked on the Abrolhos Islands just off the WA coast. Jeronimus Cornelisz was a truly nasty piece of work and he killed hundreds of his own people on this tiny island. You can Google the whole story and I think there is a movie about it called Batavia. Not a bad claim to fame from a country that plunged itself into depression over a bloody tulip!

I called him “our worst serial killer” because we welcome all immigrants to our country with open arms. We’re very inclusive here.

Monday and I finally caught up with my cousin Margaret and her husband Jeff in Bunbury. Jackie met with her cousin Sue in Perth on Saturday so we’ve been keeping our family ties alive.

Tuesday will see us head outback again with our first stop being Paynes Find (pop. 26), then on to Meekatharra, a notorious community in the middle of WA. What is it notorious for? Most Aussies can guess but we’ll leave judgement until we have a look for ourselves. We’re going to stay in a remote aboriginal community a bit to the north. 

This skink may be small but given time he’ll grow into a full-sized croc and he’ll rip your bloody arm off!

Ibis or more commonly known a “Bin Chicken’.

Australian Wood Duck

Shelduck trying to catch the morning sun.

Egret.

If this is a skink then it’s the biggest I’ve seen.

You can’t tell me that this Quokka hasn’t had his photo taken before.

More oyster catchers. How hard could it be? Oysters are notoriously slow runners.

Lots of lizards on Rotto, beautiful winter’s day at about 24°C has brought them out to get some sun. Most of them are laying around on the road. Saw a snake too, I think it was a brown (for the O/S readers the brown snake is deadly, definitely in the top 10 in the world).

Here is a black swan shaping up to attack me. For some reason I am an attraction to aggressive swans. I learnt my lesson a long time ago, never, ever mess with ‘em and if they get too aggressive there is only one way to get out alive… marry her.

Swans aren’t always aggressive, here’s proof.

Dusky Moorhen

There’s a little town in the middle of nowhere called New Nocia that we pulled up at for a coffee. They have a monastery there, this is only a part of it. They actually made a documentary about the place available at SBS On Demand called ‘Mission’. It’s about an art robbery there so we’ll be looking that up later.

Here come a couple of big ones, 8.4 metres wide according to their pilot escorts. I pulled right off the road. If you watch closely you’ll see the first one flatten a white road marker.