We survived the Gibb River Road!.

This blog entry comes to you from Broome.  The Gibb is now behind us and we have reached the coast on the opposite side of the country. 
The Gibb - is a hard road. 
The Gibb - makes things break on your car.
The Gibb - is very dusty and corrugated.
The Gibb - is no place for people without prepared vehicles.
The Gibb - has awesome gorges and waterfalls and wildlife that you don't see anywhere else.
The Gibb - has incredible places to camp where you feel like you are the only people within a hundred kilometres of anyone else.

Me 12 feet off the ground at the start of the Gibb River Road.  (don't anyone ask how Mal got me up there - it's a heavily guarded secret)

The view from our campsite at Home Valley on the Gibb.  The full moon over the Kimberley's was an awesome site.



The Gibb claimed our Anderson Plug (the electrical connection between the car and the trailer that charges our camper battery as we drive so when we stop we can power our fridge overnight off the camper trailer - without one you can't keep your fridge food cold which could mean that you have no food for the duration of the trip!), 2 D shackles off the trailer chains (they help hold the trailer on to the car) and the radio aerial - we lost the top section one day and then the middle section the next day.  It just wobbles so much that it snaps and sheers off.  Anderson Plugs are  not easily sourced on the Gibb River Road but at a roadhouse I managed to chat up the resident mechanic (while Mal waited round the corner with the car) and he gave me the last one that he had.  Yay for us.  Mal rewired it that night in the searing afternoon heat and the dust and we managed to restore our power.  We are both coming home to apply for Recognition of Prior Learning with CIT in the Auto Electrics Cert IV course.  The D shackles were lost a day apart and Mal wired our last and final one on with such precision that the whole tow bar would have to fall off before we lost any more.  We have discovered that with gaff tape and cable ties you can fix anything.  We had nick named our aerial Dolly Parton ( it had a lot of wobble going on) and we lost her top half on the first day.  The next day her middle section looked like it might go west before we did so we gaffed it but it was all too much for her and she sheered off leaving us with Dolly's stubby little legs.  The radio works - with crackle, but we can still transmit and receive - handy when one needs to pass "Cheryl and Bob" on the highway.  The Gibb river experience called on all our patience, planning, map reading and life skills to get through to the other end.  We had to make some hard decisions about which things we would see and which things were going to take too much of a toll on the car - it came down to risk management a few times and I confess to be disappointed not to have made it to Mitchell Falls but not so disappointed that I can't move on.

The gorges are amazing, the scenery second to none and you really have to see it to "get it".  The girls swam in waterfalls, we witnessed amazing sunsets and camped in the most wonderful places away from traffic and people.  We crossed the mighty Pentecost River - a long and reasonably deep river crossing - and many many other creek crossings.  We would have lost count of the number of wet crossings we did if Eloise hadn't been diligently counting them in the backseat. 

We are now in Broome for a little while.  We need to stop for a week or so to de-dust, rest a little and enjoy life in a bigger town for a bit.  We love drinking fresh milk again and having showers.  We have been for a camel ride, driven on Cable Beach, swum at Cable Beach, and we have only been here a day and a half! 

The car and the crew on Cable Beach.  Note the shorty aerial and the back flare that is still gaffed on since our time in Katherine!  Gaff tape is a wonderful thing.

Unbelieveably, we were camping at a camp site called Silent Grove on the Gibb River Road and a girl walked past that I thought I recognised from the playgroup I was in when Rach was born.  I shook my head and decided I was dreaming, but amazingly, it was her!  She is here travelling for 6 months with her family and doing roughly the same route as us.  We had a couple of chats and swapped blog addresses - we are bound to see them again some time as they are due back for the start of Term 4 as we are.  They are heading to Broome in a couple of days - they are more hardy than us and were still going strong on the Gibb River Road when we left them.

So, to the good, the bad and the ugly - The Good this week - making it over the Gibb River without a single flat tyre and without any serious mechanical issues.  The bad - dust, corrugations, dust, corrugations, dust, corrugations..............  The Ugly - the German tourist at Windjana Gorge who went too close to the freshwater crocs and got her hand savaged and her arm bitten - there is no telling some people.  She had an unexpected trip to the Derby hospital that evening.  She just wanted to have a photo up close and personal with a croc - well she got that and more.

Dream Stealers - plenty of them this week - the road to Cape Leveque is impassable (sure, that's why accomodation is tight there and lots of people are turning up in our campsite having just been there), Coopers Tyres are rubbish (sure, we just did the Gibb with Coopers without a single flat which is unheard of), Broome is so busy you can't get a site for the night (sure, that's why we are happily sitting in our van park with a powered site and intend to be here for a few more days yet).  You will recall that last week the Dream Stealers reckoned that the Gibb was terrible - well, it was pretty tough but we did it without major mechanical issues and are triumphant in having made it.  The other comment was that the road to the Mitchell Falls was terrible - well, they win that one.  The road to Drysdale (which is half way) was  very testing and we decided that we wouldn't go any further and the next day turned back towards the Gibb happy at having tried, disappointed at having not made it, and sure that we had made the best decision.

We have all settled into a happy routine and are all enjoying the road trip.  There is so much to see and there is never a boring day - the girls are happy to listen to their ipods on long travel days and they seem to sing everywhere they go and when they are doing any jobs.  You can hear them in the shower blocks and as they unload the car and as they blow up their air beds.  Sometimes they even sing in harmony!

The girls at Galvan's Gorge.  Hard to get them to move on!  It really is a case of scenery overload - it's almost too much for your eyes to take in after a while.  We have seen some truly beautiful and stunning sights.
Love from Dusty, Busty, and the two Lusty's