Yay crossed the border today into WA. Sure is a good feeling to be back in our home state! We are definitely sandgropers! And loving the Kimberleys! We drove 230kms today arriving at Lake Argyle. Along the way we stopped at Bradshaw Bridge over the Victoria River. Big river! We got through the quarantine inspection without a hitch, declared a jar of honey that got tossed and a banana skin. The officer checked the car, our portable fridge and the van and fridge for any offending fruit and veges – didn’t find anything. There is nothing quite like the Kimberley colours. Amazing colours and scenery. Really have to see it to believe, the photos don’t do it justice. After getting setup we hopped onto a 3 hour sunset tour. It was fantastic. After watching a 45 minute, 1970s video of the construction of the ord irrigation dam, we hopped onto a bus down to the boat ramp onto a very nice boat for our tour. Our guide was very knowledgeable and enthusiastic despite being in the job for 14 years. He has lived in the area for 20 years and really has an affinity for it. Definitely a Kimberley boy. The boat was only half full which gave us lots of room to move around. Shortly into the trip the boat stopped to give us all the chance to jump into the water to cool off – yes another hot day. The water temperature was 24 degrees and it was beautiful and cooling. The lake is huge! It is the biggest man made lake in Australia and covers an area 18 times bigger than Sydney Harbour. Lake Kariba in Zimbabwe is five times bigger apparently. There was a couple onboard from Canada who live near Lake Superior and they said Lake Superior is humongous compared to Lake Argyle. If you could drive across it it would take 8 hours and to drive around it takes 20 hours! So the Canadians thought Lake Argyle was a small lake although you can’t swim in Lake Superior as it is too cold. Lake Argyle was constructed in the late 60s early 70s. Quite a feat in its day. Its sole purpose is to feed the Ord River diversion dam and to create hydro electricity, 2/3rds of which supplies the Argyle Diamond mine. When Lake Argyle was completed it was predicted it would take 14 years to fill, it took 5 years! This was due to some incredible wet seasons and of course the cyclone (Tracey) that destroyed Darwin in 1974 contributed significantly to the fill. As a result the Argyle Homestead went under water before it could be moved and hasn’t been seen since! If you have your own boat and GPS you can dive it (about 14m down) which would be so interesting to do. Our guide has dived it and said everything is pretty much as it was and you can make out everything. Organised diving trips used to occur but stopped with the introduction of liability insurance. We only touched on a 1/4 of the lake today it is so big. At some points you can’t see any land just water right to the horizon. Its deepest point is 45m. At the moment it is only 20% full to capacity and on average varies by about 5 metres every wet season. The lake does have freshwater crocodiles and we saw a few on the banks. Did you know that crocs have their mouths open on land for a couple of reasons, the ultra violet rays from the sun clean any bacteria in their mouths and to cool their brains. Freshies don’t eat birds as they can’t digest the feathers, salties will eat them. We saw a female excavating an area in which to lay her clutch of eggs but she was disturbed and went back into the water. A little later we saw a patch where a female buries her eggs each time. A researcher sponsored by the Uni of Sydney is researching the crocs and has placed a camera there for observation purposes. We saw a short eared rock wallaby and wallaroos. Sadly the short eared rock wallaby was an old boy who had been kicked out of his harem by a younger stronger male. He has many battle wounds to show that he was once the dominant male but age has caught up to him and now he is on his own. He looked sad. Unfortunately cane toads have been spotted on the islands and at the spillway 4kms away from the caravan park. Mainly in the wet season but they are here. Our guide was very knowledgeable, interested and involved with local wildlife and spent time with croc researchers and knew a lot about all other species in the area. He said some research has shown that cane toads eat themselves out of a habitat and it is predicted that within 70-100 years time there won’t be any cane toads, which is good news but what devastation will they have caused by then! We noticed there were some fires on one of the islands and the it turns out that some of the local indigenous folk are against tourism and continually set fires to deter tourists. This particular one had been burning for 100 days! The damage they are doing to the flora is devastating and if the flora disappears so will the local bats as the bats pollenate the shrubs and trees and of course it snowballs from there. Short term thinking for no real gain. The trip was good it included soft drinks, tea, coffee, bickies, dips and crackers and another swim whilst watching the sunset. Looking forward to the next couple of days seems a lot to do here and we can take Coco with us, bonus. It gets dark so early here. 6.00pm it is dark whereas we have been used to it getting dark at 7.15pm. Take a bit of getting used to.
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