Today we drove around to Mirima National Park (some still call it Hidden Valley). It's just near town and you drive up this windy road a bit until you get to a sign that says 'Pay Here', which is a parking meter type of thing in the middle of the road. They only wanted $11! We baulked, but then read the fine print: $5 for concession, which we thought was a lot more reasonable. A few hundred metres up the road, it ends. There are some well made and signposted walks, the signs telling us all about the native vegetation and the geology. Pretty interesting and definitely as good to look at as anything else we've seen. And only $5, bargain.
Made ourselves a little picnic down by the lake at 'Swim Beach', where a few daring souls actually went in. Couldn't resist going back to The Pump House for lunch, made sure my pockets were empty this time, didn't want any more little accidents. Certainly didn't need to donate another mobile phone to the hundred of catfish swarming about waiting for a feed. Lunch was delightful, just as we remembered from last year.
We drove out along Ivanhoe Road to look at the old Ord River Crossing called Ivanhoe Crossing, built in 1954. It was closed to traffic, the water was at least 300mm deep and looked like quite a strong flow. It's rarely open these days since they increased the flow over the Argyle dam, even in the middle of the dry and even following a dry wet. I should mention that Ivanhoe is the name of the pastoral station started in 1893 by Pat and Michael Durack, a big chunk of which was resumed in 1961 to build the town of Kununurra on. Poor old Pat, even his beloved Argyle Downs, started in 1882 after the worlds longest cattle drive, is now at the bottom of Lake Argyle.
Snap? Ok, here's one for fun:
 |
| Balancing act. Mirima National Park. Kununurra, WA |
No comments:
Post a Comment