Sunday July 3        Lake Argyle - Bungles

Next morning we re-organised our gear into a more suitable arrangement for travelling. We met our neighbours Carolyn and Eckart Kolfen and their children Lee (11), David (almost 10) and Lars (7). They were on a yearlong journey around Australia, starting from their home in Mareeba in North Queensland where they lived. While John discussed where we would each go next, young David gave Cheryl a lesson on how to lock the hubs on our Landcruiser in preparation for engaging four- wheel drive. "They're supposed to be child-proof" he said, "but I can move them". We were to meet up with the Kolfen family on several occasions over the next week. As we left the campsite to see Lake Argyle, the children were doing some schoolwork.

The water of the lake seemed a very deep blue against the yellow and green of the surrounding hills. This day Cheryl drove the 200km of seeled road as far as the turn- off to the Bungle Bungles, so that John would be fresh to tackle the notorious 3 hour, 50 Km road in to the entrance to the Purnululu National Park (the Bungles). There were stops to purchase more food in Kunnunurra, and then to fill up with fuel at the Turkey Creek Roadhouse (Warmun). The Aboriginal art centre at Warmun that we had hoped to see was closed, as it was the weekend. We started to adjust to the pace of life, and stopped for lunch along with many other travellers on the grass outside the roadhouse. Here eagles were the dominant bird species, as crows might be elsewhere – almost filling the sky just above our heads.

From the lookout the Bungles did not look at all like what we had expected.  There was no sign of the beehive shapes that are in all the tourist brochures, but something more massive and mysterious.  The west face had high cliffs cut by numerous gorges.  There was just a hint of the beehive shapes around the southern end.

We had found some very good fillet steak in the larger supermarket in Kunnunurra and really enjoyed our barbecue meal. Again we marvelled at the Milky Way -- no clouds, no moon. It was a cold night – one of only two cold nights in the whole trip. We had to get used to the National Park sanitary arrangements. There were composting toilets. Each had a bucket of water containing a toilet brush with instructions to clean the bowl with the brush. The toilet closest to our tent had a large green frog resident in its bucket that didn't seem to mind the human visitors. Apart from toilets there were water taps scattered around the campsite providing untreated water that could be consumed after boiling. But there was to be no hot water, no washing basins, and no showers … for three nights. The magic of the mountains would have to compensate for the lack of facilities.