Although the Parks and Wildlife reports the road from Fitzroy Crossing to Tunnel Creek as closed, we spoke to a couple at the Geikie Gorge boat tour who had apparently done the drive the day before who assured us the road was open and totally fine for a 2WD with no water crossings.
With that in mind, we packed up after breakfast, headed the 50km down the highway and turned at the Fairfield – Leopold Downs Station Road for the 60km corrugated gravel road into Tunnel Creek. The sign at the start of the road did say “4WD less than 4 tonne” for the road from the highway to Tunnel Creek and then “open” for the sections between Tunnel Creek and Windjana Gorge and then Windjana Gorge to Derby.
About 30kms, which took 30+mins to drive, and we hit a water crossing 🙁 After much deliberation about whether we could skim around the edge of the water safely or if we should turn back and “G” investigating how deep the water was (it was deep in the middle!!), we headed back down the road to talk to the guys doing roadworks to see if we could get some intel. Turns out, just as we turned around, an older lady from the station was out for a walk so we chatted to her and she assured us that if we could get past that water, then there were no more water crossings on the road and if we made it to Tunnel Creek okay then we were hunky dory for the rest of the drive BUT she wasn’t sure we’d get through the water as Katie is fairly low. She did also suggest the alternative of going back to the highway and visiting Windjana Gorge and Tunnel Creek from the Derby side instead.
With “L” wanting desperately to turn around and “R” nearly vomiting, we made the brave / stupid decision to give it a go. Heart rates were high, stomachs were in our mouths but WE MADE IT!!!!!!!!!!! Feeling very confident that we were going to be fine for the next 30kms to Tunnel Creek we were doing a little happy dance in the car ….. until we came across another water crossing, and another and another 🙁 Thankfully, Katie the little legend, passed through all of them with relative ease after the challenge of the first one which was probably the worst.
Finally, we made it safe and sound to Tunnel Creek, yay!! We donned our reef walker shoes and headed on in. The tunnel is really dark with no signage whatsoever of where to go. In fact, the only sign is one warning of deep cold water and the need to have an ability to swim 20m in very cold, deep water. Turns out it wasn’t that bad and only went up to hip height on the boys; it was freezing though.
Half way through the tunnel, the roof has collapsed letting some light in which was nice. The second half of the walk though is really pitch black and you really don’t have any idea of which direction to walk. We made it through though with a few more walks through waist deep water and a few red eyes of the freshwater crocs around. We also saw some prawn like creatures called Cherubin, a squid thing and fish. We couldn’t see any bats though I am very sure they were there! At one point “L” was pretty scared and just wanted to go back again but we made him push on and he was happy he did as although it was quite scary, it was super cool.
Back to the car with slightly wet shorts and t-shirts, we had a snack and then headed on to Windjana Gorge, another 30 odd kms up the corrugated, rocky, dirt road but thankfully without any water to cross! At Windjana, we walked along the “Time Walk” track spotting loads of freshwater crocs and getting quite close to a few of them. It was pretty warm so we liked the shady sections of the walk!! This Gorge was really different in that most of the rockface was quick black rather than the lighter cream and dark reds that we’d seen a lot of lately.
We left Windjana Gorge for 20kms more of rough road before hitting the sealed section of the Gibb River Road for the final 120kms to Derby. Arriving at Derby, we grabbed the keys for our cottage which is on the outskirts of town from the Derby Lodge in town, picked up some groceries from the Woollies so we could cook our own dinner for a change and then headed out to our cottage. “A” was a little nervous as again the crime in the Kimberley region is well publicised and it looked like we were staying out on our own in the middle of nowhere! The Derby Cottages are a little group of 11 cottages opposite the Derby marshlands and although slightly out of town, they are in a really secluded little spot and to make it even better, the cabins opposite ours all have police staying at them so “A” feels a lot safer now!
We finally have our own washing machine so we started the many loads of washing, cooked some pasta for dinner and generally chilled out for the night. Oh, and we finally caught up on the 5 days of blog writing that hasn’t been possible lately due to the lack of phone reception and internet!!
