Unreliable witnesses are everywhere.  We had met a garrulous, youngish couple at Savannah Lodge who were issuing their own Gibb River Road (GRR) report, invited or not.  They had a new Nissan Patrol with big stickers all over the sides announcing YNOTTravel (sic) on Instagram or Twitter or somesuch.  In any event, they talked about how tough the road was, how impossible it was to get diesel (their car is petrol), how likely we were to run out of water and probably die (OK, no-one actually mentioned dying).  What a bunch of dunces!  Almost every dire circumstance they mentioned, and almost every “fact” turned out to be rubbish.  Maybe terror’s what sells on the socials 👎👎.  Certainly terrified Lesley!

That’s not to say that our GRR journey was without misadventure.  Back in March ’22, at the ToyotaLandCruiserClub 4WD course, we’d been taught never to over-tighten a shackle (U-bolt to some) because they can get locked.  Being obedient and long-memoried students, we did as told, but on the many bumps one of our shackles worked loose, thus dropping one of our safety chains, thus knocking out some of our wires, thus destroying lots of important links between ATGANI and the tug.  We remained blissfully ignorant until we stopped at Ellenbrae, so they can’t have been too important – only trailer brakes and battery charging!  A temporary fix was effected but it took some little time and effort.

That was nowhere near as exciting as the massive BANG during a creek crossing.  We exchanged expletives and agonised looks but nothing stopped working so we pressed on – it’s the spirit that made ANZAC.  ATGANI has electric steps (of course it does!) but pressing the button just generated grating metallic noises and worse, no steps.  A dusty crawl under the van, a bit of bush engineering, some work with the Irish screwdriver, a replacement bolt and, eh voila, it worked.  No drama!  Most of this could have happened on Parramatta Road?

Crucially, ATGANI remained structurally strong (as if we doubted) and covered the whole journey with ease and just a bit of dust.  But who cares about the van, what about the trip itself?  Wonderful! 

We’d decided to spend a handful of days at El Questro Station (not Home$tead) and had pre-booked a couple of activities.  They were all great but nothing could beat the helicopter (R44) ride to Amaroo Gorge.  We flew over various gorges and possible swimming places for hoi polloi but not for the likes of us (that day anyway).  Landing on a bit of flat rock at the top of a waterfall system, we were guided down to the first swimming hole, given an esky for refreshments and then deserted.  You can’t get there except by flying so we felt as if were the only two people on earth.  Magical, sparkling water falls, crystal clear swimming holes, sun shining, warm rocks to lie on…and a promised gourmet luncheon experience in the esky.  Unbelievably good – even a rubbish ham and cheese roll disguised as “gourmet luncheon” didn’t take away the gloss.

Sunset at Buddy’s lookout was another knockout.  An African Safari type truck took about 10 of us up a track to the top of one of the many lookouts where we were told a few stories, ate a few snacks, had a couple of drinks and watched, maybe, our best sunset this trip.  We were able to see the Homestead in the distance but that’s as close as we got. 

The road in and out of El Questro was long enough and bumpy enough to make us put the tyres down.  Annoyingly, there was then 30km of bitumen before we got to the real GRR, so put the tyres up again (which is a bit of a faff) or drive much more slowly on the hardtop (which was annoying for cars behind)?  Eventually, we hit the dirt and whilst it wasn’t the worst bit of road we’ve been on, it was in our bottom three and cemented its reputation by going on for ever.  First stop was about 150km away at Ellenbrae station – a working cattle station, but famous for its scones!

After lots of time spent on the aforementioned running repairs, we sampled the scones the next day – pretty good but sadly, they’ve missed the memo that says scones are only a medium for jam and cream, as the j&c serving was a bit miserly👍.  Apparently, scones were introduced after someone serving was horrified to discover that she was selling “Home Brand” fruit cake as “home made” fruit cake.  Unbelievably, last season, they made and sold over 22,000 scones!

We stayed at each of our stops for 2 nights to let yesterday’s bumps and bruises ease off before tomorrow’s onslaught began.  It’s also necessary, because almost the entire purpose of the trip, apart from saying you’ve done it, is to visit, and for us that means swim in, the various gorges and waterfalls along the way.  In fact, a short summary of the adventure is:  drive on a rough dusty road; have a swim in a beautiful gorge; repeat.

Next stop for us was Manning Gorge, our favourite so far.  A busy and dusty campground with a delightful swimming hole gave us late afternoon relief and the opportunity to assess tomorrow’s trip to the gorge.  It’s only a couple of kms of manageable, rocky hike to the gorge but you have to start the journey by swimming across the Manning River – too deep to wade.  A plastic half 44 gallon drum, doubling as a boat, is supplied to get your gear across and it gets ferried back and forth by whoever needs it, all day long.  One of the major benefits of the set up is that when you return from the gorge, all hot and sweaty again, you still get one more swim.  Perfect. 

We’d chosen an early start to beat the heat and the crowds and someone had even retrieved the drum!  The gorge itself is a good sized waterfall, flowing into a beautiful big lake, with access points all around as long as you could manage the rocks.  Our rock scrambling skills had improved dramatically over the last month, so we could, and therefore swam in the beautiful clear water, dunked ourselves under the waterfall and retreated to a sunny ledge for coffee.  Bliss.

All along the GRR, there are places to stop or to take a side trip to a gorge or a lookout.

We were moving a bit faster than some, taking just over a week, but had heard that Mt Hart Wilderness Lodge was worth the visit, so off we went.  About 50km off the GRR and on the same sort of road, it gave us a terrific grassy and shaded campsite plus, of course, another gorge and swimming spot – a couple actually, but we only made one.  This was quite a commercial tourist operation with a bar and a restaurant, an airstrip and helicopter flights, catering for groups in 4WD buses from Outback Spirit, Inspirations Outdoors and several others, housed in cabins or tents, presumably depending on price.  We met a German family, travelling independently, who had hired a 4WD fully decked out for off-grid camping, and who were spending 6 weeks in the north of Australia – they said they were loving it and why not? We even met another Torus van – I think that’s 4 in total now.

Several of the waterholes were reported to have “a couple of small freshies; nothing to worry about”, but we saw no crocs at all.  The biggest swimming hole we went to, Sandy Gorge, was completely deserted when we arrived so our swimming adventure there was all a bit nervous – the girl wonder does not believe the “not dangerous” label and this place looked perfect for them.  Our only real wildlife encounter anywhere was when a snake swam across one of our swimming sites, about half a metre from Lesley’s shoulder.  Arrrggghh!  I think I’ll get out now. Good swimmer though. 

The road itself, pretty much after Manning Gorge (Mt Barnett Roadhouse), had improved dramatically so it was nice that we were heading from worse to better – life’s often not like that.  About 100km out of Derby, we were back on the bitumen, blew up our tyres and set our sights on distant Broome.  We’d managed to get a few nights at one of the caravan parks on the water in Broome – we’d been told: your site isn’t actually on the waterfront, but you can see the water, but there is some construction work going on in the park, but it’s not really near your site – hmmm.  Broome’s, and therefore our, available options were limited so we took it, and anyway, how bad could it be?

But what of the two time loser, I hear you ask.  Well, embarrassingly for the second time in a month, I fell off the top of our gas bottles while opening our front hatch.

Experience is “that quality which allows you to recognise a mistake when you make it again”.  Well, I was experienced by now…and it hurt this time too!  At least I already knew what could possibly go wrong.