For one thousand kilometres we drive across an arid and seemingly lifeless landscape, and then suddenly – a lush and verdant plain rises like the oasis it is. What a difference water makes.  Kununurra (pop 7,000, tripling in the tourist season and harvest times) exists because of the Ord River Irrigation Scheme. Everything you want to know about the development of the dam, the irrigation scheme and agriculture it makes possible you can read here. Every litre that irrigates the agriculture between Kununurra and the coast is gravity fed and metered – there’s a 14 degree slope to the coast. Damming the Ord river creates Lake Argyle which when full, and it usually is, has a volume of water equivalent to 21 Sydney Harbours.

Now, none of us knows how much that is, but we can visualise one Sydney Harbour. So this is 21 of those with a resident population of approximately 25,000 crocodiles. There is so much consistent water in this part of the country that, from time to time, they (Perth politicans) bend their minds to how they can pipe water south. It fries their minds, as the cost to develop a 3,000 kilometre pipeline to Perth, with pumping stations and other infrastructure, is more than the current desalination system.

Confusingly, the Ord River below the dam on Lake Argyle, is also known as Lake Kununurra. We board a boat to travel the 55kms up river/lake to the dam. What a trip – it the closest to a jet boat trip without being on a jet boat as we go up the rapids. We see crocs, rock wallabies, sea eagles, egrets, snake birds, and scores of catfish to name a few. The river side is at times sheer rock and home to the sprightly rock wallabies, sandy shores for crocodiles to lay their eggs, or festooned with rushes and other vegetation.

We fly over this area, including the Argyle diamond mine, now closed, in 2018 – that story and photos of this and the stunning Bungle Bungles in my blog

While we are up this way there’s some outback driving to do. We are staying about 20 kms out of Wyndham, and I see there’s a road out west across the dry salt flats (see map below) that could conceivably link via the Karunjie stock track and then south to the Gibb River road at the Pentecost River. We can’t find anyone who has been out there to tell us the state of the road, but of course that doesn’t stop us. We guess it’s rough but then we have the mighty Landcruiser. Oh how we laugh.

We venture forth leaving our good sense at the gate and travel on. We get to the gate onto El Questro property and the track is not getting any better.  We continue, but not for long – less than four kms in 15 minutes. This is a seriously rough cattle track and we have no idea what the actual distance is. Somewhere we find some sanity and turn back, probably saving search and rescue a day’s outing.

On the way back we stop alongside the river: it looks like you could walk on it, it is so thick and murky. Scott throws a lure, while I keep a keen eye out, visualising the moment a large salt water crocodile powers out of the depths and drags him under.  I hasten to add this is a worry, not a hope. I imagine myself driving alone for the rest of the trip and returning home with no body to bury.

One morning we are up early – yes, again – to take the tag-a-long tour with local guide Alfie out to the Marlgu billabong, an internationally recognised wetland of 36,000 hectares with more than 20,000 birds across 180 species. You can imagine a lush garden of Eden in the wet season, and even now there are hundreds of lovely birds from rainbow bee eaters to Jabiru to the black and white Magpie Geese to he statuesque brolga, ibis and herons.

This part of the trip also affords us a day out at the Kununurra Agricultural Show. What a day. It’s difficult to drag Scott away from the hall hosting the baking competition; we tour the vegetable competition, marvel at the endless varieties of melons, gasp at the size of the biggest pumpkins; check out the dodgems, where the locals perfect their driving technique; the side shows, where there are more stuffed animals than in the British Conservative Party; see food in the form of candy (fairy) floss, fries and fizz. Remember this is a small country town, so the events are more of the novelty variety like haystacking, and our favourite, the Cowboy Challenge: a timed event where the cowboy, or in this case several cowgirls, have to get out of their swag, wash their face, put on boots and hat, eat breakfast (a dry weet-bix (vita brits) and glass of tomato juice), carry a poddy calf (that’s bobby calf to you NZ farmers, but for the purpose of the event it is a weighted bean bag calf) to the ute, roll a big bale several metres, ram in a couple of warratahs – that’s fence posts not the NSW rugby team – then crack a bullwhip three times, and to finish off, what else, drinking a can of beer. It’s fair to say many a bloke won his heat coming from behind and taking the win at the last hurdle.

So that concludes this Kimberley adventure – next stop, Northern Territory.