Halls Creek & Fitzroy Crossing

This week began with a wait for an air conditioner fixer to repair a leaky line and re-gas our van A/C.  Kununurra wouldn’t have been the place for us to choose to need a repairman but the only refrigy guys in town were actually very helpful, and fixed it in no time.  I am still a bit concerned how a metal pipe full of refrigerant could corrode after less than 2 years use.  When we returned to Kununurra we decided to try another van park and checked into the Big 4 Discovery Lake Kununurra.  The sites are large, plenty of large shady trees, good pool, and the park runs for several hundred along the shores of the Ord River (the lake behind the Diversion Dam).  It is very pretty, cool breezes from off the lake and the water pressure in the van is the best we have had anywhere.  They have canoes and tinnys for hire and the staff are very friendly.  

View over the Ord from Kununurra Big 4 Van Park

Ivanhoe Crossing where the crocs reckon the Barra gather (?)

And to top it off the Golf Course is right next door.  I wandered around 18 holes and enjoyed the hit; my first game for a while and it showed.  The greens are oil sand greens but I think the sand is iron ore.  Several times I hit onto the sand only to have the ball bounce off the other side.  The upside was that they putted like concrete – fast and straight.  A brief drive out to Hidden Valley was another chance to see miniature gorges and more red rocky hills right close to town.  A drive out into the irrigation areas was also interesting and I still do not understand the sandalwood plantations.  The trees are supposed to grow for decades but I saw a lot of dead wood and dead trees in the plantations.  The mango trees looked pretty full of fruit and the harvest season is close but a few weeks late this year.  Ivanhoe Crossing is a low level concrete crossing of the Ord a few kilometres downstream from town and has about 500mm of water over it at the moment.  It was a popular spot for anglers so I joined the throng and together we all caught nothing.  The causeway was the most popular spot to cast a lure but standing in running water over my knees 100m from either bank casting into water where the barra should be and the freshwater crocs don’t even bother to hide themselves was not for me.  About half of us fished from along the banks among the tea trees and pandanus palms.  It was a great way to spend an afternoon despite the no fish bit.  We have finally seen rain and the weather was beautiful for a couple of days after – we are lucky because they were the 2 days we were waiting for the A/C man to arrive.  There have been cool breezes and great sunsets with the cloud around.

With a cool van again we made our way out to Halls Creek.  It is a very interesting drive with rocky mountain ranges all the way.  It is such different and majestic scenery that we haven’t yet tired of watching it.  In amongst all that geology there has to be some minerals and indeed we passed an iron ore mine, a nickel mine, and the Argyle Diamond Mine entrance also.  And of course Halls Creek was a township founded out of a gold rush in the 1800’s.  There was not much gold to be found and it was all over in 18 months but there were some great stories left behind including one about a miner whose mate fell ill and he, Russian Jack, walked his mate 300km across country to Wyndham seeking medical help.  The barrow was a stone wheeled bush barrow made of sticks and a gal tray and his path led back through those majestic ranges I just mentioned.  A lot of people were attracted to the area expecting to find gold because of the numerous quartz veins appearing across the surface of hills south of Halls Creek.  We drove out to see one of these named the ‘China Wall’ which is a quartz vein about a metre thick standing on its side across a hill several hundred metres long.  The surrounding sandstones have eroded away leaving the quartz sheet protruding several metres into the air. Further south we visited the site of the original township on the banks of a small creek which has permanent water from springs.  Further south is a roadside campground near a large permanent pool that is fed from a spring running out of the rocky ridge.  Nearby and several km’s off the main dirt road along a rough bush track, we found the last attraction we wanted to see in the Halls Creek area, it was Sawpit Gorge which also had a permanent waterhole.  The gorge was small and of dubious quality for the rough tracks required to get into it.  There was a group of young indigenous boys swimming in the waterhole with their 2 white leaders.  They were having a great time and insisted that I take a photo of each of them jumping off the rock but then quickly lost interest in seeing the photos and went back to trying to drown their guides.  We heard them before we saw them as when we parked in the parking area (as you do), we heard loud music before I had turned the engine off.  When we got down near the waterhole they had their troopy parked in the creek bed with a large stage speaker with an IPhone hooked up to it hammering out tunes for the whole gorge to appreciate.  Never mind, it was great to see them so happy.  We pulled the plug on a visit to the Wolfe Creek meteorite crater which was another 100 odd km’s along the same dirt road.  

China Wall outside Halls Creek - approx 1m thick

from far creek bank - wall runs over the hill

Caroline Springs

Original Halls Creek township Post Office, made from spinifex & ant hill

Palm Springs - water runs in from hills to the right

Sawpit Gorge

Sawpit Gorge range cut through

The Halls Creek van park was clean and quiet and we would stay there again.  We had been advised not to stay in town but we had no trouble and felt secure in the park.  There is a distinct lack of grass in Halls’ Ck with the van park sites being concrete and red pea gravel but the pool was cool and the van park shop sold everything.

We spent another morning watching the scenery roll by.  West of Halls Creek the ranges drop away and the country becomes more flatter and scrubby but a couple of the smaller ranges we came through were just spectacular.  There were a couple of great photo opportunities but unfortunately nowhere to pull off and park.  Fitzroy Crossing is indeed a crossing of the Fitzroy River.  The river is wide and looks it would be wild in the wet but at the moment it is an impressive wide sandy/rocky riverbed.  Not far out of town on a sealed road is Geike Gorge formed by the Fitzroy River cutting through large limestone hills.  Out here the river has large bodies of deep permanent water where they are still running boat cruises at the end of the dry season.  The biggest pool is several km’s long and runs north of the junction of the Fitzroy and Margaret Rivers.  The river bed in the gorge is several hundred metres wide with huge areas of coarse river sand.  It was a tough walk, 2k’s each way in the deep loose sand, but the views were worth it.  The quartz intrusions into the limestone cliffs set up some really pretty layers of coloured stone where the limestone surface has been eroded away from the thin quartz layers and the surrounding limestone has been weathered in ripples or scalloped.

Gieke Gorge 18kms out of Fitzroy Crossing

Limestone cliffs with wet season high water mark

Junction of Margaret and Fitzroy rivers at cliffs end

A day trip north towards the Gibb River Road let us see Windjana Gorge and Tunnel Creek.  These are the other 2 places that the girl at the Qld/NT border told us about and we are glad we took her advice.  Despite the 150km each way trip (109km of dirt), it was a great day.  The country west of Fitzroy Crossing flattens out and we noticed a long line of ranges to the north.  This turned out to be our destination – the Napier Range.  Windjana is formed where the Lennard River cuts through the range.  Similar to the Geike Gorge, the river has cut through the limestone range and has built a large sandy river bed with deep permanent pools, lush vegetation and high limestone cliffs.  The range is the remains of a shoreline (Devonian) reef along the edge of an inland sea from 380 to 350 million years ago.  The inland sea bed is still in the shape of the basin that dips and rises from the Napier Range for 150km south and 200km west to near Broome.  The walk along the gorge is a bit difficult with quite a bit of walking in sand but thw views are worth it and the limestone cliffs on either side are spectacular.  The pools of water are large and must be warming up at the end of the dry season as there are quite a few dead fish in the river bed.  I wandered down to get a close look and confirm that one of the 600mm long fish on the waters edge was indeed a fresh water Barra. It was and it was also being closely watched by 13 freshwater crocs lying within 25m and all with their noses pointing my way for some reason.  They looked harmless.   A colony of fruit bats were making a racket in the trees and we wondered what fruit they found out in these dry parts.  We also came across a small colony of Ghost Bats in a small cave near the entrance of the walk.  Adding weight to the sea reef story was a very impressive fossil in the limestone cliff of a hard shelled sea creature.  The fossil was about 200mm long and very clear.

Fossil in limestone cliffs at Windjana Gorge

Lennard River exitting the Napier Range

Croc food

Great views to be had at the end of the Windjana Gorge walk

Entrance tunnel to Windjana Gorge

Near the Gorge are the ruins of the original cattle station homestead built from limestone blocks and antbed.  The homestead became empty when the sheep and cattle business went broke and became a Police Station when there was quite a bit of unrest between the white settlers and the original owners due mainly to the settlers insisting on setting up camp on mostly sacred sites.  One of the aborigines, Jandamarra, who worked for the police as a tracker against his own people then turned against the coppers was killed near his hideout at Tunnel Creek. 

Station / Police Station ruins

Tunnel Creek is a must see if you are in the area.  It is a cave system formed by a creek that has cut under the limestone range rather than cutting through it.  The tunnel is 750m long and can be walked through its entire length.  The walk is through water and across sandbars and the limestone cave floor and snakes its way through the range through high and low caverns with good examples of stalagmites, stalagtites, columns, and sheet flows of limestone.  A small aboriginal art site is located on the far outside cliff wall and there are 5 different types of bats calling the caves home.  The water is mostly only knee deep is beautifully cool and clear and I was surprised to see small fish less than 100mm long swimming in the pools in the middle of the cave system; i.e. in the dark.  I guess they get washed in during the wet season and stay for the dry.  Water runs into the caves from several places along its length and drips from the roof/walls.  

Tunnel Creek west exit from the inside

Cute reflections - luckily 30 minutes before the bus arrived

Large east side exit cavern - the 40 deg heat starts 20m outside this room

It is a pretty special place and you can really feel the big drop in temperature as you enter the caves.  When it is 40+ degrees outside, the cave entrance feels at least 15 degrees cooler.  We were very impressed with this piece of nature that is so different from the surrounding area.

p.s. Jandamarra managed to hide from the coppers for 3 years in the Tunnel Creek caves before he shot at the entrance to them.