Saturday 08 July 2000

As we have not yet fixed a meeting with the Department of Agriculture and the travel agent needs to contact Singapore Airlines, we are having a short break to kill the weekend.  We initially thought we could explore Keep River National Park BUT that is in the Northern Territory and we wouldn’t be allowed to bring our fruit and veg back into Western Australia! 

Changed our minds and decided to go and see what El Questro Station is like.  This means that we will have travelled all but 25km of the Gibb River Road.  Our German cyclist friends, Josef and Barbara, were on their way out of the ‘Station Drive’ (16km) as we turned in.  Stopped to catch up with them.  We will hopefully meet them again back in Kununurra.  As it is the school holidays and a weekend the station is apparently very busy so we went straight to the Station Store to book our secluded bush camp – very expensive camping with no facilities!  We also booked in for tonights BBQ and for a boat to take us up the Chamberlain Gorge tomorrow.  Unfortunately, we arrived at our secluded campsite to discover that there were already two other tents and a washing line installed so we had to return to the Store.  The brakes failed on the approach to the Store so I sorted out the campsite while Fred investigated – 1 back brake pipe had fractured near the end.  Sealed off the rear brakes with vice grips and need to return to the store at 16:00 when the guy who has a brake flaring tool should be around!  Brake pipe fixed and will be fitted by Fred tomorrow. 

Drove from our secluded bush camp to the central area for out evenings entertainment.  The BBQ was fantastic – all you can eat steak, fish, salad and dessert.  Excellent food.  Entertainment involved a ‘covers’ singer and a genuine ‘bushman’ – aussie cowboy, who spun a yarn while demonstrating his rope and whip skills!  Beer was rather pricey!