Crossing the Fitzroy River

Sunday 5th July 2009
After a somewhat unusually cold night (17°C) we hit the road at 8am and set course for Fitzroy Crossing where we arrived by 11:30am to stay at Fitzroy Lodge Caravan Park. They don't take any bookings or allocate any sites so we just paid our money and went to find a free site which was a bit of a challenge as the park was pretty full.
After lunch and getting to know the neighbours we took a drive to Geikie Gorge for the 3pm cruise along the Fitzroy River. Geikei is a big and wide gorge where we were either on one or the other side. The rock formations are truly incredible as you can see from the photo and the fresh water crocs are plentiful and didn't mind the tourists.
As far as the three gorges (Windjana, Tunnel Creek and Geikie) in this region go, I would have to say that Geikie is the prettiest of them all and probably the most impressive. The white on the bottom part of the rock wall marks the average flood level and it looked like being 10-15mt above where we were with the boat. The Fitzroy River must be very impressive whenit floods during the wet season. Once this mass of water rushes through Geikie gorge, which is about 500-800mt wide, it spreads out over a width of 18km. Now that's what I call a wide river!
On our way back from Geikie we took a dirt road over the old Fitzroy River crossing. As you can see in the photo it doesn't take much flooding to make it impassable and that's why the new bridge was built. Along the river was a group of Aboriginals having a camp fire, enjoying themselves and waving to us as we went past.
The township of Fitzroy crossing wasn't much to look at, a typical small outback town with predominantly Aboriginal population. However, to my surprise we found a service station where we can use our Coles Discount dockets and at $1.47 per litre we are looking for any savings we can get.
The Fitzroy Lodge caravan park is very nice and even has a swiming pool but we want be able to check it out as we are leaving tomorrow to get a bit further along the road to Kunnanara. Tomorrow night we will probably be in a bush camp somewhere around Turkey Creek without phone reception so I want be able to update the blog.