5 June - Broome to Windjana Gorge via GRR
After a fairly peaceful packup and a last chat to our lovely neighbours we headed out of the campground all the way to the pearl showroom to purchase my birthday present. Lil and I had chosen some keshi earrings day before so while boys checked out the largest round pearl in the world - 22mm, the transaction was completed and mummy happy! Thought we had better follow suit of all the other 4wd’ers and reinflate tyres for bitumen before we lost one to a blowout and then finally we were off on our Gibb adventure!
Stopped at the prison boab tree out of Derby, which sadly was actually used as an internment stop for ‘blackbirding’ stolen aboriginals for pearl divers around Broome. Reading about the termite mounds which, like the boab trees, are sacred and sometimes they buried their dead inside them and not long after they were covered up by the mound inhabitants. Makes beautiful sense when now we look at them and they do look like family groups hugging each other. The famous Gibb River Road started quite tamely on bitumen for first 100km. Cattle station country mainly, lots of kurrajongs as eucalypts nowhere near as predominant as I thought they would be. Arrived at Windjana at a very civilised time and setup amongst the v established grey nomad brigade who had already been there for quite a few hours! Will have to get away at sunrise if we want to get any good campsites! Matt’s Walking Tours has diversified into offering nighttime skywalks, kids have an app that pinpoints the stars and planets so they went for a bit of a wander tonight looking at the stars.