Wednesday September 7 to Friday September 9

Wyndham and more......

With Trent away for a few days the children have been allowed to take turns sleeping with me. We do not usually have children in our bed as I am such a light sleeper and I am sure they will keep me awake all night. But, we are on holiday...what’s another “special treat”....Emily is first as I know she is the calmest sleeper and I use her as the ‘guinea pig’. All good. Then Jake’s turn, he is a busy sleeper as indicated by all his sheets being pulled out of the mattress each morning....then it is Jasmine’s turn....to say she is a busy sleeper is an understatement...... after having pulled her foot out of my kidney during the night, then out of my underwear I am later woken to her asking me where she should be lying in bed as she was upside down! Off to sleep we go, well I try to go, as Jas lies there laughing and laughing, finally I ask her what is so amusing in the middle of the night. She tells me she is laughing at something she remembered happened in the movie she had watched that day (Ratatouille)! Eventually she overcame the laughter and we slept til about 6am. I looked forward to having the bed to myself for two nights before Trent’s return!

The children and I did a day trip to Wyndham. A small and quiet town an hour north of Kununurra. It is a port town and still exports iron ore and nickel from near by mines. In years gone by it was ‘the’ town in the area but the damming of the Ord River has brought huge growth to Kununurra and there is not much happening in Wyndham these days. We did drive up to “Five Rivers Lookout” but smoke haze limited visibility.

We headed back through town via the “Dreamtime” statues. Large bronze statues of an aboriginal family and indigenous animals. The children were more interested in an older aboriginal couple selling engraved boab nuts. The man was engraving a boab nut and Jake was closely observing his technique (as we had collected boabs to engrave). After some bartering we bought one of the boab nuts which we hoped would help support this couple who had made a makeshift house under a shelter with no walls or roof!

We headed off to the Prison Boab tree, 20 K’s off the highway on an unsealed road. At the start of the road was a sign stating the road was open (often closed during the wet season) and that the King River crossing was “OPEN” today.....I wasn’t sure about tackling the river crossing but friends had been through and hadn’t mentioned it. So off we went. We drove over mudflats and followed the river for quite a while, the river was quite big in parts so my adrenalin levels were rising as I was wondered what I was expected to cross. We finally came to the crossing. After 100m of rocky driving I realised we had just been through the crossing! No water!! Now, more relaxed, we found the prison boab tree just around the corner. The tree is described to have been used by police in the late 1800‘s to lock up prisoners temporarily. The massive trunk was hollow and easy to climb in. We drove a little further (as instructed by our friends) to see the land where the movie “Australia” was filmed at “Digger’s Rest Station”. Beautiful country, on a clear day the contrast of the orange rock, green trees and blue sky would be amazing.

As we drove back out we stopped to view some aboriginal rock art in a shelter on the under side of an overhang. A lot of the aboriginal art is done in areas of rock like this as they do not get exposed to the harsh rain/wind/sun. We then headed off on another unsealed road to see Parry’s Lagoon Nature Park, a wonderful closed in viewing area to observe a lagoon full of amazing birds and (that day) a saltwater croc. We saw Jabiru’s, Brolga’s, Egret’s and many more. Initially the croc was spotted about ten metres away almost fully submerged and very still. Eventually he started to move and within a minute we saw him get a bird (from the surface of the water) and the bird was gone in a matter of seconds. We felt lucky to have seen nature at work (sorry bird!). We hung around as the croc seemed to continue hunting and the children got very caught up in which bird he was targeting and if the bird would see him and get away. It was all quite exciting but after a while the croc went under and we lost him. We then headed back to Kununurra via a little known swimming hole (Molly Creek) that was great. The kids were happy as their day had been completed with a swim!

Upon Trent's return we headed for the Bunlge Bungle's.