Day 26/27. 29th/30th May 2024. Wyndham. What have we done to Poseidon?

Advertising brochures can do a good job. Those people in the Information centres are pretty good too. While they may say the same thing 1000 times a day to answer the same question from each tourist that walks in their door, they generally have some enthusiasm. Even if you come in 10 minutes before close.

The next destination was Mimbi caves - and the original plan was to break it up with a roadhouse along the way. A roadhouse is travel slang for “May have a cold beer and a decent feed, but the gravel pit out the back is as nice to stay in as pitching a tent in a quarry”.

When the information centre in Kununurra suggested Wyndham with it’s 5 river lookout, one of the largest tidal differentials in Australia, a big Croc as well as a magical little swimming hole called The Grotto – we changed our plans to stay there two nights and make the big 6 hour drive to Mimbi caves on the Friday.

This was technically the right choice we think at this stage as we sit here at 2:30pm having knocked off all of the highlights, and extending ourselves to other destinations as the bakery and their Barramundi pie, the bottle shop and the supermarket. We even did spend 10 minutes filling up with petrol ($2.05 for those interested) and having a chat to the owner who told me that the town was home to 900 people. I came for a holiday, but got an education. A hint of rain to take the temp from 34 to 29 degrees has been welcome, but I may still go for a swim to kill some more time before the sun gives up and goes to bed at 5pm.

The Grotto was actually quite good, a little hike down some hand carved stairs into a waterhole that we had to ourselves for a good portion of our stay. Try doing that at most tourist spots. Being the only ones there did also make us a bit more hesitant to actually go in the water. We had cleared with the locals that there were no crocs, but they did keep saying about how deep it was. They have no idea what deep waterhole creature could be lurking in the waters just waiting for a mostly pink and plump Victorian to jump in. Linda encouraged me to go in first and then watched from the sidelines. I am sure she said she checked with the locals that there were no crocs.

Emergency update: As I packed the laptop up from writing this, the owner of the park comes for a chat and mentions how black the sky looks behind us. It did indeed look black. As black as a cat on a dark night with no moon, and no streetlights. Tropical storm black. 15 minutes later we are at the van, desperately trying to get things under the awning in a futile effort to keep them dry. The awning was adjusted to create a waterfall effect beside our living space and we had no courage to open the door to the van lest the monsoonal tides swept our bed into the pool.

We held the awning manually – well Linda held it so, it was Lindally – for 15 minutes until the storm took a breath to reload from the Indian Ocean. We took the opportunity to grab the beer fridge, some cheese and biscuits, a couple of dry towels and dry shirts, locked up again and watched the rest of the downpour from under the large awnings and lounge chairs of the Laundry block. It taught me a couple of things – 1. don’t complain about boring and 2. don’t under estimate the generosity of strangers. One fellow had taken to our laundry awning with his big dog “Tiny” and a having cigarette. He sold me half a dozen cans of VB from the back of his ute as we were running low. What a bloke.

Facilities: Hot water, good pressure, small showering cubicle but it did have it’s own drain and NO shower curtain. However, thongs in the shower were not only required to keep the heebeejeebees off but to ensure your feet were not cut on the broken tiles in the shower base. 4/10