10 - Gibb River Road - Home Valley Station

May 2016 - 25/5/16

Departure day at the Bungle Bungles we still managed another walk before leaving at about 11.30 am making our way back to the caravan park (1 ½ hour drive) where we repacked the caravan and all those rarely used items back onto the tow tugs roof rack, another 2 hours of labour. 

Continuing on our way we propped to attend to all those missed phone calls and emails. One of the missed phone calls was from Bruce & Chris, a lovely couple whom we travelled with for a while back in 2014. They were on the Gibb River Rd at Home Valley Station, another one of those locations we had listed, “to do” and it just happened to be our next targeted stop. 

We couldn’t let an opportunity to catch up with Bruce & Chris pass us by, so we drove for another couple of hours until sunset before stopping overnight at a roadside stop. Early the next morning we drove to Kununurra for a brief stop, stocking up with provisions and we made our way to Home Valley Station on the iconic Gibb River Road. All completed in under 24 hours from the time we had read the email from Bruce & Chris for a journey that we would normally allow 3 to 4 days to cover. 

We camped near Bruce & Chris joining in with another two couples in caravans at the riverside campground overlooking the Pentacost River about 4 kilometres away from the main camping area. It was a magnificent setting looking at the escarpment ridges of the Cockburn Ranges with the river in the foreground. 

The daytime temperatures were hovering around the mid to high 30’s which sapped our energy levels and it wasn’t a hard decision to drive back to the main campground to cool off in the swimming pool each day.

Gibb River Road, crossing the Pentacost River

View from our camp

There were the daily tidal movements in the river. We watched the flow out with a reasonable amount of debris seen floating out and in with the fast movement of the water. Someone thought the tidal movement was about 9 metres.

We participated in a couple of minor walks but there wasn’t a lot to do at Home Valley Station. But we didn’t tire of the magnificent scenery we were viewing from our chairs at the campground. In the evenings we were greeted by some of the local inhabitants when we visited the amenities block, green frogs in the toilet bowls and shower areas. One evening a toilet wouldn’t flush and Steve lifted the cistern top up to find the reservoir packed with the green frogs.