Alex & Jill Benham - Travelogue: Tuesday 9th July 2013

Jabirus on the Drysdale River

Went for a short walk along the river this morning and saw a pair of Jabirus (That’s always special). Then it was back on the road to Home Hill. The first 60km until the junction with the Gibb River Road was a mixed bag. Some of it in quite good condition (recently graded) and some (particularly the last few kilometres) quite corrugated. Once back on the Gibb River Road the road was quite good. Called into Ellenbrae about morning tea time thinking we might partake of their famous scones and cream but no g/f option so we ended up buying a couple of ginger beers and made use of their shade (on some cute rock bench and table) to have left over mud cake for morning tea.

From Ellenbrae we made our way up through the Pentecost Range to the Cockburn Range lookout with some pretty impressive views over the Pentecost Valley with the Range in the background.

Drove intro Home Valley about lunch time to find ‘millions’ of campers set up in the quite well established grounds. Rather than share with the ‘millions’ we chose to bush camp down by the Pentecost River. It’s still pretty civilised with hot showers and toilets.

It’s very hot at the moment so it was up with some shade before a late lunch and a restful afternoon. The river is pretty amazing – very wide. No swimming here as the crocodile warnings are up. Just to confirm it we have a resident salty sunning him/her self on the opposite back. Also watched some weird fish behaviour with large schools of fish swimming around in the shallows – almost playing follow the leader. Lots of birds here too – finches, grass wrens, flycatchers and honeyeaters. Also lots of catheads unfortunately – we could do without those. The showers were excellent though.