We continued west along the Victoria Highway, through Timber Creek and over the mighty Victoria River which flows on out to the Timor Sea. Our early explorers from Europe would sail up as far as Timber Creek, but the river is not deep.

The view in the photo below is from just above the Timber Creek township.

We also stopped at the Gregory Tree. This is an old Boab where the explorer Augustus Gregory set up camp in 1855 for a year of two. As was the trend in the day, he carved the dates into the tree. It’s also a sacred site, and well fenced off – not a great photo.
BUT – there are some good lookers nearby that I’ll treat you to. (I hugged these ones of course)

We crossed the border into Western Australia and lost all our fruit and vegetables to the quarantine man again. We stayed right on a lagoon of Lake Kununurra and a nice breeze kept the mozzies at bay.

Well I’ve had a day or so of internet access and some time on my hands, so thought I’d upload some videos. They take a long time to put up, so some are not so new.
I’ve fixed the one of the Croc eating the wallaby:

The next one is from Alice Springs – in the rain. I think we were all going a little crazy this day.

And here’s the Todd River flowing –

More tomorrow. WiFi modem nearly flat, computer nearly flat, and I need a shower!

Please bear with me as I indulge my passion for the stunning Boab trees. These are my absolute favourite tree. Even better than the Ghost Gums.

They are found here in the Victoria River and Fitzmaurice River basins in the Northern Territory, and, as everyone knows, all across the Kimberley. As it’s the dry season, they have all lost their leaves – being a deciduous tree. They all have a different personality. The shapes vary from classic bottle shape, to quite consistently fat all the way up the trunk, to almost grotesque and deformed. And they all deserve a hug!
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We had decided to head south from Victoria Highway down Binns Track (which actually goes all the way to Alice) for about 45km to get to Limestone Gorge. The road is dirt, with hardly any corrugations, but lots of Dips – dry creek crossings. Dips are good for making the boys feel sick when they’re reading.

Unfortunately the Gorge access road is closed due to consistent flood damage, so we stopped at nearby Bullita Homestead Campground.

This is the Boab tree on the turnoff to Bullita, below

Now isn’t that just that just the most gorgeous tree? I just LOVE Boab trees!

The surrounding bush was filled with red termite hills, and Kapok trees – they’re the ones with the yellow flowers below.

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To get to the Victoria Highway that takes you to WA, you have to head west from Katherine. Darwin is way more north than you think. The whole Kimberley is further south than Darwin. So back to Katherine we go – along with the entire travelling population. The Cars Towing Anything car park in Katherine is a sight to behold. So we joined the crowds of Nomads in their caravans/motorhomes/fifth wheelers and Europeans in their Britz/Apollo/Maui Campers and did our chores in “town” before heading for new frontiers in the west.
The landscape around Victoria Highway (you’ll note – nowhere near Victoria) soon changes to rugged cattle country, with extensive escarpments of red, craggy outcrops, well treed, but with little undergrowth.

We stopped just west of Victoria Downs Roadhouse to do a short walk and started chatting with some Nomads who had also stopped for lunch there. It was MY turn to meet someone we know. Turns out this lovely couple was from Torquay and used to be my customers at Torquay Pharmacy. Small world indeed. John has already run into people he knows: we saw two competitors from the Alice Springs event in Kakadu, and then he also ran into (and then had a morning MTB ride with) two other riders from the same race in Darwin one morning.
But back to the walk! It was at Joe’s Creek and took us right to the base of the escarpment. The view from there was like an amphitheatre of red rock surrounding the valley below where the wet season would see the Joe’s Creek run.
Here’s a great view looking through the palms:

 The palms above us constantly rustled in the breeze, and we kept looking behind thinking someone was there.