Keep River National Park

Keep River National Park is a small park near the NT/WA border. It’s the start of the Kimberley so there are some small sandstone beehive rock formations similar to the Bungle Bungle formations. The campground is about 40kms into the park.

Cockatoo Lagoon

 The temperatures are very hot during the day – so we started our rides while it was still dark (using our Ay-up lights). Our first ride was to Gurrandalng camping area where there was a 2km walk that had magnificent views of the sandstone rock formations (Rients’ photographs). There were also lots of interesting plants along the way (Donna’s photographs). Our second ride was to the Jenamoom walk – which runs along the banks of the Keep River to an aboriginal site used by the Miriwoong people for shelter. We did the Jarnem walk from our campsite before packing up the ute and heading off to Kununurra.
 

Early Morning Ride

Judbarra-Gregory National Park

Judbarra-Gregory National park is situated south of the small township of Timber Creek, off the Victoria Highway. It is a massive park, but most of it consists of difficult 4WD tracks – so we only drove about 50kms in to the Bullita Homestead Camping Area. The scenic drive in consisted of huge boabs, thousands of termite mounds and open woodland. We were lucky enough to catch a slide show about the parks history conducted by the park rangers at night (using a generator on the back of their ute for power).

East Baines River

Lunch stop

We did a bike ride out to Limestone Gorge Camping area. The road was  corrugated and dusty, with some dry rocky creek bed crossings – but the fat bikes handle it all really well. Riding is a great way to slowly take in the scenery.

Bike repair Stand

Elsey National Park

Hot Springs

We drove from Butterfly Springs Campground in Limmen National Park to Jalmurark Campground in Elsey National Park. Elsey National Park is situated is near Mataranka, and features the Mataranka Thermal Pools, walks along the Roper River and, best of all, great riding opportunities on the fat bikes. Day one we rode along the Roper River to the Mataranka Thermal Pools, had a quick plunge in with the crowds and rode back again. Day 2 we rode an interesting loop to the Mataranka Falls and back via an old stock route. The campsite here is spacious and quiet and even has solar hot showers!

Limmen National Park NT

 We drove from the Heartbreak Hotel Campground at Cape Crawford to Limmen National Park. The park itself is 290kms of dirt road with a range of camping spots. Our first camp was at Southern Lost City. The walk among the rock formations was absolutely stunning. The columns of stratified sandstone really do look like an ancient city.

 

We then had two nights of relaxing bush camping at Butterfly Springs, the only safe spot for swimming in the park, due to crocodile danger!  

Brisbane to the NT Border

30^th June – 12^th July 2016

Finally the ute is packed and we are off on our big adventure around Australia. We decided to drive the inland route via Longreach and Winton to Lawn Hill National Park and then north through Hells Gate Roadhouse to the Northern Territory border.

Gayndah Camp 

We really felt we had made it to country Queensland once we had turned west at Rockhampton and the roadside billboards were advertising breeds of cattle.

It is great seeing that a lot of the old buildings still exist in the smaller country towns, such as Gayndah, which claims to be the oldest town in Queensland.

 

Bladensburg Camp

Our first National Park camp was at Bladensburg NP, 17kms SW of Winton.  We had a great camp next to the river gums. The landscape was a contrast of floodplains, river gums and gidgee scrub – fantastic for riding the fat bikes.  

Lawn Hill Gorge

Kayaking the Gorge

We finally made it to Lawn Hill National Park, a destination that we have been wanting to visit for a long time. The Gorge was absolutely worth seeing – especially by canoe. We walked to Upper Gorge Lookout the first day, and then hired a canoe the second day and paddled to the upper end of the Gorge.

 

There was a threat of unseasonal wet weather so we decided to drive the dirt roads north of Lawn Hill just in case rain set in. We drove 520kms from Lawn Hill, via Hells Gate Roadhouse, to Borroloola, in the Northern Territory.  The whole drive was on corrugated dirt roads (even though 300kms of it was on Australia’s Number One Highway!