Long morning covering a good chunk of the unpaved 665km Gibb River Road, an extremely bumpy and monotonous dirt road through the heart of The Kimberly, enlivened only by an unexpected stop for scones, and an emergency stop to take a good look at a frilled-neck lizard, involving a bit of tree climbing.
From the campsite we took a small pulley boat across to the start of the Manning Gorge Track, pretty dull in itself but worthwhile at the end, with great swimming spots and light filled as the sun set.
Finished what turned out to be a very eventful day, with pretty much everything that could go wrong, going wrong, though thankfully with few permanent effects. In no particular order – a milk carton exploded in the back resulting in a rancid mess, the engine had issues and lost half it’s power (thankfully later fixed), I dropped my camera and came close to corrupting the memory card, and the door handle nearly fell off the truck.
Walking back from the gorge I was too busy talking (a rare occurrence) and got myself and my companion lost. We shouted to others who we thought were on the path, but turned out they were also lost and thought we were on the path! Made it back before sunset which was better than another member of the group, who we took sometime to establish wasn’t actually back at the campsite. Those who went thought that he was hiding at the site, and those who stayed behind thought he was hiding on the track. Eventually we established that neither group were joking and that he was actually lost. Thankfully about ten minutes later, 1.5 hours after we made it back, he emerged from the darkness, pretty sweaty and stressed but otherwise fine.
