After leaving
Halls Creek we headed for
Kununurra, we called into the Bungles and had a look in there, also had a chopper flight over them, I must say I hung on tight considering there were no doors on that chopper and only a lap belt, I was hanging on with one hand and snapping photo's with the other (there is some strange looking photos on that camera). We camped there the night and then headed off to
Kununurra where the LC had a quick service then off to the GRR. We went through to
El Questro and stayed there a couple of days, a lovely spot, could have stayed there much longer. The GRR up to that point was fairly rough with some bad patches, however in comparison to the Tanami we weren't complaining. The first morning at El Q hubby noticed that the fridge was not as cold as it should be and on further check found that the deep cycle battery was not holding the amps, There were no dc batteries at El Q so hubby returned to
Kununurra to replace the battery. After a visit to the Gorges and a drive up Saddleback Ridge we were off again. From the El Q turn off the GRR improved somewhat as it had not long been graded so the road was quite good, we cruised along quite nicely. There were many
camp areas along the road but we chose to stay at
Ellenbrae.
Drysdale was where we headed next, road was good thus far. I had a chat with Joanne at Drysdale before heading out on the Kalumbaru Rd, this road was very bad, made the Tanami look like a freeway, slowly but surely we got to the
Mitchell Falls turnoff where we stopped for lunch. We bravely headed for the falls the road fast getting worse and living up to the reports that we had been getting along the way. We got past
King Edward River and travelled extremely slowly for about another 20 odd Klms when the front right shockie went, we pulled off of the road (if it could be called that) and completed the necessary maintenance. As our friends had had their own problems we made a decision to turn back as at that point we considered the road was far too rough and not worth trip. We went back to
King Edward River to
camp, on inspection we found that the back right shockie was leaking and the welding had broken on the left back so they had to be exchanged (lucky we had enough spares). Next day we headed back to the GRR, it was nice to get back to Drysdale and on much better roads. The next
camp was at Mt Barnett (
Manning Gorge), this I thought was a lovely spot but maybe a little overpriced at the moment considering there was no power to the ablutions and when the
water pump had stopped there was no
water pressure in the showers however this will probably change when they get the power into the new ablution block, once again there were plenty of spots to
free camp along the way. The next day was through to
Derby and the end of GRR.
My thoughts on the Gibb was as it has recently been graded it was very easy to travel, the
water was still over the road at
Pentecost river and a number of smaller rivers had
water in them as
well.
We travelled 8888 Klms, ruined 3 new OME shockies, and had to replace one deep cycle battery. No flat tyres or any other problems with the Patrol.
The OME shockies had a two year warranty and as we were planning to drive up to
Cape Leveque we tried to have the broken ones exchanged at the outlet in
Derby,
well that wasn't going to happen, the guy there seemed to come up with every excuse he could so that he didn't have to replace them, hubby eventually got them organised through the
Broome dealer who was more than happy to exchange them for us so that we once again had spares.
We didn't end up driving up to CL, we flew up instead, we went on a seaplane, then went on the 'rubber duckie' (was the highlight of the trip for me!!) Then on the yacht for breakfast and then to CL and back to
Broome.
We slowly headed back home and we are now getting ready to hook up the van and head back up to
Shark Bay, leaving on Monday.
For those interested:
Diesel used 1192.6 litres in the GU 4.2 Patrol
Tyres No flats on either vehicle