Day 27: Timber Creek to Kununurra

 Today's drive is 230km and takes us out of the Northern Territory and finally, into Western Australia. The NT section of the road is pretty rough, with lots of flood damage that has sort of been repaired. Once we enter WA the road quality improves significantly.


The scenery also begins to change and the countryside slowly becomes more rugged. 





About 50 km out of Kununurra we come to the quarantine checkpoint for entry into WA. They have strict biosecurity rules to protect their agricultural industry from pests imported from other states. The check is very thorough, with the inspector checking all opening hatch areas on the caravan and storage areas and the fridge inside the van. We had checked the regulations ahead of time and had either cooked vegetables like potatoes, peeled onions and garlic and either ate or disposed of fresh salad vegetables and fruit. They also confiscated our supermarket bought honey.

We arrived in Kununurra about 40 minutes later. The are a few issues with youth crime in Kununurra, so we booked into the only caravan park that is completely fenced and locked up. It is also within walking distance of a shopping centre with a Coles Supermarket. It is an older style park, but quiet and the amenities are well kept and clean.


Settled into our spot

Once we have completed setting up, we walked down to Coles to restock all of our fruit and vegetables. We had lunch in cafe near the supermarket before heading back to the van.

Next was a visit to the Visitors Information Centre to get some ideas on how to get the most out of the next 3 days we are in Kununurra.


There was no shortage of things we can do, so we will now work out a plan. Kununurra is a relatively new settlement. It was gazetted in 1961, and built for the sole purpose of being the settlement for The Ord River Scheme, an ambitious scheme to form a huge irrigated agricultural area. The scheme involved damming the Ord River by building the Ord River Diversion dam, allowing water to be stored and diverted for irrigation. There was enough water to irrigate about 750 square km of land.





Ord River diversion dam

The second phase of the project was building another dam (the main dam) holding back the waters of Lake Argyle. It was completed in 1972 this resulted in the flooding  of Argyle Downs Station and the creation of Lake Argyle. Stage 3 of the scheme is yet to be completed and involves expansion of the irrigation area across the border into the Northern Territory. We look forward to having a look at the growth of the irrigation areas a fresh produce they produce.

My old employer, CSR Ltd, took a huge gamble in the early years of this development, gerowing sugar cane and building a sugar mill to process it. Sadly the economics didn't work out, despite the farming being perfect for sugar cane.

There is still a lot of the day left, so we went for drive to look around and ended up at the diversion dam, quite an engineering achievement. We didn't sight the resident crocodile who is apparently often seen near the spillway waiting fo dinner to arrive from upstream. There were a lot of people fishing there and a local we had a chat to showed me photos of a few of the barramundi he and his sons had caught yesterday. It is not legal to fish here but that doesn't seem to matter.

Our drive took us past the golf club, so naturally we called in to have a look, It is a unique look, green fareways and brown greens !



Sand scrape greens are the go despite the nice green fareways





A majestic Boab tree in the golf club carpark

There is still time to see more, so why not the famous Ivanhoe Crossing, an causeway built across the Ord River, which can be crossed in the dry season, depending on water levels. At the moment the water levels are too high and the crossing is closed, much to the delight of the local fishermen.


The road closed gates are open, but the two large concrete blocks across the road make it clear it is closed





With temperatures in the low 30 C 's we are grateful to be out of the Winter temperatures back in Sydney.




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