Travelling the Gibb River Road

Pretty much a driving day today. Having done it, I think I can safely say that the Gibb River should be more famous for its road than its water. Well, at this time of year anyway. The Gibb River was so disappointing that they didn’t even bother having a sign on it, although as Lynne pointed out, that could be because they were sick of replacing it for the trophy collectors.

This morning I ran down to the riverside campsites for dawn, not realising that it was 5km away. I missed it, but didn’t miss much. When I got there, it was a stunning place. I was a little lucky in that I arrived for the running of the tide back into the creek at the river intersection. When this happens, there are schools of jumping fish skipping along the top of the water. I didn’t get a chance to investigate, but apparently they are a common spectacle. I’d guess they were 15-20cm, but quite plump, so they put on quite a show.

The Gibb River Road is, at the moment anyway, quite wide, relatively flat and with few rocks and corrugations. In places it is compacted mud, and so is quite like bitumen. The steeper sections have been sealed, I suspect to cut down on maintenance. Far from being monotonous, the country changes often. There are quite distinct sections of low woodland, quite dense, open grasslands, wattle-dominated scrub, spinifex (but not much of that), rock farms, rolling hills and dramatic cliff-lines. We had to negotiate the Durack River crossing but it was shallow (and I think I managed to do it without getting wet at all by checking out the picnic areas), and all other crossings were dry. We saw the odd billabong with birds and flowers. I even managed to catch a rainbow bee-eater in flight which is quite a dramatically colourful sight.

We’ve been playing tag with several groups for the last few days. One group is a convoy of three couples. One has an old standard caravan, the other two have new off-road campers. The couple with the old caravan, the missus insisted that they “take enough stuff to fix it”. Funnily enough, every time we have passed them they have been fixing the new ones. And they don’t muck around. The first time we found them by the side of the road with the new off-road van up on blocks, and one of the guys crawling underneath with a welder running off a generator. He was fixing a cracked axle housing. The next time the off-road camper trailer had a flat. The old faithful caravan has apparently not skipped a beat.

Along the way this morning we stopped off at Ellenbrae, another station making a side income through the tourist trade, advertising scones and a public toilet. We partook of both, and spent some time surveying the gardens and the finches at the bird feeder. We also read the brass plaque memorial to two brothers who had killed themselves in separate accidents in their 30s and 40s. One crashed a helicopter, the other a Harley Davidson.

Lunchtime saw us turn off the Gibb River Road heading for the Mitchell Plateau. As expected, the road turned sour. The rocks have almost completely disappeared, but the corrugations are awesome, if you like that kind of thing. For those of you not familiar, corrugations build up on a road with a loose surface. They are about 0.5m apart, and probably of the order of 50mm deep, but the bad ones are deeper. The weird thing is that they are soft, and you can kick them flat with your foot, but hit them with a wheel and you eventually shake yourself to pieces. If they aren’t too big, you can happily do 60km/h and the whole show just hums along. When they get bigger, that plan falls apart rapidly and you come to a shaking, juddering halt. I’ve not had a satisfactory explanation for their creation, but I believe that they are created in the same way as ripples form on water when a breeze goes over the top. The breeze is created by the cars going over, raising the dust and creating a sort of fluid. However, where on a pond the ripples go flat when the breeze stops, the ripples set when the fluid is basically sand. At least that is my theory.

Tonight we find ourselves at Drysdale Homestead. Yet another working station blurring the lines, as they offer a campground, bar and mechanical workshop. Also the most expensive diesel of the trip so far, at $1.98. Basic, adequate, and a good deal cheaper than Home Valley, which was anything but basic.

The good news for tomorrow is that we only expect another 100km of corrugations. The bad news is that then we turn off onto a road that is generally described as much worse and rough. Still, can’t be that bad, we are surrounded by lots of people here whom I suspect we will see up the road tomorrow.