Day 22-25. 26th/28th May 2024. Lake Argyle/Kunnanurra. Covering new ground.

Leaving Katherine for a 6 hour drive was the beginning of the next phase of our holiday – into the unknown. Crossing the border into WA there are two things that you have to be mindful of.

1. For goodness sake, do not take any fruit, veg or honey you have bought from a supermarket chain in the NT over the border into WA. Every car is stopped and looked at, and very strict rules on what can be brought in are policed stringently – and while it didn’t take long for us to get through – goodness knows how the Fresh food people get their trucks over the border to sell the same stuff there.

2. Carlag. If you can’t handle daylight savings change of an hour, this one will throw you completely out of sorts. There is 1.5 hour difference between NT and almost all of WA (Eucla is an outlier, lets not start on that yet). As you show your absence of fruit and veg to the nice lady at the border, she gives you an hour and half back in your day. Lovely deal……or so it seems. What you now have to take into account is that by crossing this imaginary line, sunset has now become 5pm instead of 6:30. Which also means that when you do a sunset cruise on this beautiful Lake Argyle it starts at 2:30 and you are done by 5:30.

Early nights then mean stupidly early mornings. What can be a relatively normal 6:30 caravan park wake up time from the day before is now 5am. So by lunchtime you feel you have done a full day and are hoping the sun sets at 5:00pm. This issue does self rectify by the time you head further west and get to Perth, but really, there should be another time change in the middle of WA. Eucla did this back in the days of telegraph stations which were staffed by WA and SA staff so they split the difference of 45 minutes and is still an use today – but is not an official time zone. Here Here for common sense.

Speaking of the sunset cruise, this was a beauty and we were taken around a small portion of this vast body of water. We were shown rock wallabies, freshwater crocs, Archer fish that spit at you and finished with a swim jumping off the boat into 28-degree water. While floating by the boat on a swimming noodle, the skipper then throws you a can of beer and sends some snacks floating around on an esky lid. Pretty bloody special as the sun sets over the mountains surrounding the lake. The idea of floating with a pool noodle and sipping on a beer is more attractive than the reality. For me, it was difficult to keep my mouth high enough from the water to take a swig without it being diluted. While others were happy floating with their glasses of bubbly, I was blowing bubbles as I was trying to just take a sip.

Kununurra is a small town about 65k from Lake Argyle and good for a shopping trip, a nice coffee and a stroll around what they call the mini Bungle Bungles – which given you need a 4WD and a swag to get to the real ones, this did us very nicely to give us an idea of what the real ones might be – especially in the 35 degree heat.

Facilities – Having small all inclusive rooms is always a hit, but the message of the curse of shower curtain has not sunk in – it’s like these people are not reading my reviews. Being so hot here, it is nice to have a hot shower to get clean first, and then a cold shower to cool down before going back to the heat. 7.5/10.