The Gibb, WIndjana and Tunnel

Saturday 4th July 2009
Now that we are used to the early starts everyone was out of bed by 6am and on the launch by 6:15, over to the base (called Barrashack) where the other boat (Adventure Cat) was also tied up. We watched the sunrise while we had a cooked breakfast on Barrashack before departing by seaplane on our scenic flight back to Derby. I have to admit that a takeoff on the water is pretty exciting, even for a private pilot like myself. It requires a very long take off run to get a fully loaded (12 people) aircraft airborne and as the end of the bay comes closer and closer to the windscreen I had to put all my faith into the pilots skill. The pilot lifts one skid of the water and then the other and as soon as he's airborne the pilot banked it over hard so that I thought the wingtip would touch the water. Once the 180 degree turn was completed and we faced the other way, away from the hill, the aircraft finally ascended and I felt rather relieved
The flight took us over the magnificent Buccaneer Archipelago with its hundreds of islands and endless creeks right over the entrance of King Sound and then over the huge tidal mudflats back to Derby. The whole flight was conducted between 1000 and 1500 feet above the ground to give us a really good view of this area
By 9:00am we were back at the caravan and packed ready for our day trip on the Gibb River Road which starts just outside Derby. Part of this road is now sealed but the dirt road is is also in very good condition. After 120km we left the Gibb River road and continued on the dirt road towards Fitzroy Crossing - this road had a lot more corrugations and wasn't anywhere near as nice as the Gibb.
Our first stop was Windjana Gorge where the surrounding rock formations were very impressive and where we had our first encounter with Crocs in the wild, albeit only freshies up to 2,5mt long.
The gorge was very nice and crocs very interesting but after our last 3 days of exploring the Buccaneer Archipelago nothing could quite stack up to what we had experienced.
Back on the road conditions got worse but we continued onto Tunnel Creek where we had lunch and then went into the tunnel entrance where the kids had a good play in the sand and found a baby snake. We didn't go into the tunnel as there wasn't that much to see, the water was rather cold and there were obviously snakes around.
On the way back to Derby we stopped at a pretty impressive looking boab tree which was well over 1000 yrs old (see picture below).
Back in Derby we got more supplies before another Mackerel dinner and a catchup with new friends that we made on our Kimberley cruise. Tomorrow we'll get back on the road and continue east through the Kimberley.