Friday 17 August – Gosh this waking at a few minutes past 6 in the morning is becoming a   habit.  I didn’t go to bed last night until midnight as I thought I’d sleep in – and I did until 5 past 6!!  Ridiculous.

We left a bit after 9am for the 100 km drive to Wyndham – the northernmost town of the Kimberley and still an active port in the export of cattle and mineral ore.  About halfway along the drive we saw the turn off to Hall’s Creek – where we are going tomorrow, then about 20km after that we saw a signpost to the Grotto.  Now a lady I was talking to on a visit to the toilet block last night said that we must go to the grotto, so we took  the turn off and arrived at the carpark a couple of kms along the road.

The sign describing the walk to the grotto said that part of the walk was down 140 man-made steps, and the water in the grotto was around 300 ft deep.  It sounded interesting, so off we went.  A short way along the initial track we stopped for a bit to watch two young boys – they looked about 8 and 10 who were having a lesson in abseiling.  Their parents were there, but they were in the capable hands of a fellow tied in with an adventure tour company who was very good dealing with them.  Over the time we were there they both did a couple of descents – very confident.

The rocky cliff we descended.

Then we got to the steps which were extremely steep and started to go down.  Grant was ahead of me as I am very slow, and about three quarters of the way down he was waiting for me as there were a couple of very deep steps which he knew I would have difficulty with.  I thought I had met my Waterloo with these steps, because even if I could get down them, could I get back up them on the return climb?

So Grant said he would go on down and see what it was like.  About four or five minutes after he went further I decided that I could do it, so I gingerly climbed down and clambered my way to the grotto – very scared, as if you slipped the outcome wouldn’t have been very good.  It was a pretty spot, so we hung around there for a bit before the climb back to the top.  The two boys were still abseiling, which gave me a good excuse to have the odd rest on the way up and watch them, but we eventually got back safely, hot, relieved and sweaty.

Wyndham is different!  In the literature we have acquired about the area, it is described as a small frontier town that typifies the diversity of the region.  It looks as if it is in a time warp – remaining in about the 1950’s.  On the way into town we passed the dusty gravel racecourse where tomorrow’s Wyndham Cup is the big event, and I heard on the wireless this morning that they are hoping for 800 people to attend.  The buildings in the town were old, dilapidated, many on stilts, and most having metal grilles on their doors and windows.  We had a look at the port area, then tackled the touristy things – the pioneer cemetery, the Residency (a stone house built in 1888 for the first magistrate, but the mortar used for the stonework was of very poor quality so the building eventually started falling apart.  It was never lived in, as it was too remote and because of the dangerous aborigines.), dreamtime park (a group of large statues depicting an aboriginal family and their animals), the five rivers lookout (where you get an amazing overview of the five major rivers – the main one being the Ord - as they reach the sea), the big concrete crocodile which is at the entrance to the town, and the Afghan cemetery (where the early cameleers are buried, often with their camel).  We also tried to find the giant boab tree without any luck.

The view from the lookout.

As we drove back to the main road from the Afghan cemetery we had some interesting interaction with a couple of aborigines we had noticed as we drove in. They were sitting in the creek bed drinking XXXX, and as we drove back the fellow was waving at us to stop.  Grant pulled up and the fellow started yabbering at Grant in his lingo, when the woman told him to talk properly, and when he again rattled off in his language, she told us that he was crippled and could he have a lift into town.  As we had left town, Grant just said we weren’t going that way, so she said thanks and wished us a ‘have a good afternoon’.  We did wonder how this crippled fellow actually got to the creek bed, or was his handicap the result of the consumption of the contents of the box of XXXX beer.

We did a bit of shopping once we were back in Kununurra, ready for the next leg of our trip, then relaxed for the rest of the afternoon with the odd cuppa and a bit of a snooze on Grant’s behalf.