Time for a long awaited coffee break

 Heading out of Kununurra we realised that we didn’t see everything that we wanted to see, looks like Kununurra will be one of those towns we will revisit on another trip. 50km down the road we turn left towards the bungles, there is a camp on the corner as we pull in for smoko we spotted Ned & Gae, & Alan & Donna set up, so a drive by just to stir up the dust, well we better stop now they recognised the van. A few heckling remarks & we set up for the night some more travel storeys while we watch the footy on TV (yep that’s bush camping).

 Leaving the next morning the road to the Bungles had a few narrow bridges to cross as we got to one bridge there was a van on the side of the road, “O” no its smashed, the car was parked off to one side, this isn’t looking good so we stopped to make sure everyone was ok, as I walked back to the damaged van the people came out of the van (what was left) their ok still very shaken it happened the day before & they were still waiting for a tow truck to take the van back to Kununurra. As they crossed the bridge the day before a road train was coming the other way he miss judged the speed of the truck, the car made it over the bridge but the van didn’t & the truck parked in the left hand side of the van right up to the wheels & ripped the van off the car they were lucky to not be hurt. It took hours for a crane to lift the truck out of the van, this shook us all up how your trip can change so quickly so far from home.

 

Bungle Bungles

 We arrived at the gate into the bungles then went another km down the road to the free stay on a creek, there we set up to leave the van & go into the bungles for 3 days. The road in was very windy & undulated with 8 water crossings a comfortable speed was around 40 km. The first 7 km of walks were the opposite end of where we were camping so a bite to eat, grab our water & we’re off. The walks are mapped out so you’re not back tracking too much & the visitor centre advises you on the time of day for each walk. The first walk was to a lookout through a dry river bed between the bee hive domes a spectacular site there are domes as far as you can see. Back tracking a little we then walked into the Cathedral WOW this is amazing, this is where they made the Qantas adds a few years ago, there were some people in there playing guitars & then someone sang some 80s songs how cool is that (I didn’t sing). We sat in there for an hour in the cool, in different areas of the Cathedral the acoustics sounded amazing with the different noises bouncing off the walls. Walking back through the river bed it was amazing to see how much the domes had changed with the sun light on them from a different angle; the next walk was to a smaller cathedral it was getting very hot at this stage as the heat off the domes zaps your energy from you.

 We found our camp site & set up later that arvo in the cool the awning on the car was a great help for shade. We left the tent set up the next morning & went off to the next 3 walks the 1^st was up through & over boulders this was a fun walk climbing these boulders the kids went nuts jumping from one to another, at the end of the chasm there were steps onto a board walk where looking back to where we walked from towards the domes was spectacular & Josh cooeed which echoed through the chasm. The next walk had to be done in the middle of the day, when you walked between the cliff walls to the end as the sun was coming over it looked like larva flowing down the walls of the cliff face the height of the walls was a blow out we looked like ants in there we got some amazing photos. The next morning we packed up & went back to the van then striped the car down & transformed it back for travelling to our next destination.