Once the heat of the day was subsiding, we started the 7km walk in to Windjana Gorge.

This place is famed for being a classic example of world geology – being the remains of an ancient reef complex. It’s about 3.5km long, and runs along the Lennard River bed, with walls of up to 100m high on either side.

We were all a little (a lot, actually) underwhelmed by the gorge. Perhaps because we’ve seen such dramatic landscape lately, and also as we had to trudge several kilometres on thick, gravelly river sand. Our legs are aching!
The best part was seeing at least 20 freshwater crocodiles in the many pools along the way. The freshies are passive and prefer to eat fish, rather than us. Which is nice.

Leaving camp by 7.15am, we arrived at Tunnel Creek soon after 10am. We passed through the Leopold Ranges, which were quite spectacular.
Tunnel Creek flows through the Napier Range in a remarkable natural tunnel more than 750m long – hence its creative name. You disappear into the black tunnel, and need a torch to see your way over the rocks and through the pools.

There are permanent pools along the way, and in the middle of the tunnel the roof has caved in and daylight shines through.

There are bats hanging around (!!!),

and I saw yabbies in the water pool.
It really is an amazing quirk of nature.

It’s an hour or so back to the Gibb River Road (south) from Drysdale River Station, and then we continued west. The corrugations continued too. At least you get to pause now and then to check on other travellers that have pulled over. Lately, there’s been the spare tyre that dropped off a trailer, the stone guard over a gas tank that came loose, the flat tyre with bonus damaged rim, and the pipe that connected the gas to the engine that came off – unfixable – and the guy had no petrol left to switch to, being the same guy who was sure he could fix it. But actually couldn’t.
The Barnett Range loomed up on our left, a nice surprise after so much flat terrain.
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Now any mother reading this will know that a child’s diet wouldn’t be complete without good old BBQ shapes, but I’ve never, ever paid $5.50 a box! And the boxes are squashed. This was at Drysdale River Station, where diesel was $2.40/L and petrol was $2.45/L.
We just don’t know how lucky us city folk are.

We caught up with Anne, who owns the Station, for a yarn about the days before tourism changed the life of a cattle station owner in the Kimberley. Her husband, John, was away grading road on another station.

We haven’t seen a lot of wildlife so far, but we did spot this water monitor on our walk to Mitchell Falls. He was in a billabong next to Mertens Creek, filled with these lilies.