Ngumban Cliff to Gibb River Road

We were up at sunrise and were at the town of Fitzroy Crossing before 8 am. We had to wait until the Visitors Centre opened just half an hour later. It was then that we found out that a few national parks in The Kimberly’s were still open unlike they told us in Kununurra! 

The good thing was that those parks were reasonable close to where we were. The Geikie Gorge was only 10 minute drive from town.  

After seeing a fair amount of gorges in Australia we weren’t too impressed with this one. We walked around for a bit but it was already too hot for that.

From Geikie we drove to Derby. Every time we'd turn the air con on some ants would sky rocket from the air vents and land on our lap or in our face (they are hard to get rid of once they've invaded your car).

In Derby we visited the Prison Tree. This is a massive hollow Boab Tree (also called Bottle tree because of its shape) which in the early days was used by white settlers as a prison for kidnapped Aboriginals who were forced to become slaves and work on nearby pearl farms. Next we drove to the jetty in Derby where we found out that this place has one of the highest low and high tide variations in Australia. Can you imagine what 11 meters would mean in Northern Europe?

Not sure what to do from here, we went to the Information Centre and before we knew it we found ourselves on our way to Windjana National Park. It was a bit of a detour but at least the park was still open! Most of the track was sealed with only the last 80 km dirt road.

We had set our mind on a free camp spot near the river which meant that the next morning we had only about 30 km of driving left to get to the first National Park. We set up camp and whilst having dinner suddenly the wind picked up and out of nowhere a little fire on the other side of the river started, blowing little sparks everywhere. Not feeling completely safe we decided to go back from where we came from and about 50 km down the track we parked next to the road and stayed there for the night. Although there wasn’t much traffic (there were a few farms and mines in this area) for safety reasons we didn’t sleep with the back door open like we normally do. 

As a result we were swimming in our own sweat during the night. I can’t remember ever being that warm. Somehow we managed to get a few hours of sleep though.