Day 71 02060211 Mary Pool Campground to Fitzroy Crossing.

 Day 71 02060211 Mary Pool Campground to Fitzroy Crossing.

Every day we learn something from the grey nomads. For the past few weeks I have wondered how they keep cars and vans so sparkling clean. Well we now know they sneak around under the cover of dawn and dusk, they frantically wash their cars and caravans, so in an effort to keep up with the neighbours and to take advantage of the Mary River, as we were leaving this morning we parked on the causeway and washed the car in the river.



Car washing in the Mary River



We were also given a sightseeing tip – take the kids the Tunnel Creek National Park, according to the grey nomad that gave us the tip we could stay at Windjarra Gorge National Park and the dirt road was in good condition and yep we could take our caravan no problems!!.  Upon arriving at Fitzroy Crossing we headed to the information centre for a dirt road update and the lady looked at me like I was crazy in even considering taking our van up the road, so with the kids keen to see the Tunnel Creek we booked into a caravan park and headed out to the dirt road with just the car.  I have to admit that I am looking forward to a “proper shower” tonight!!



Pete looking special and wet!!!



Oh my gosh the road was terrible, wide, potholed, fine red dust, corrugated and lots of river crossings, we were both so grateful that we didn’t bring the van!! I’m not sure the caravan of peace, love and happiness would have made it through this trip.

After about an hour we stumbled upon Tunnel Creek NP, we had our crocs on our feet and torches so we headed into the tunnel.  We had been warned by the lady at the tourist information that we would get wet and cold and it was really dark!!  Really dark was an understatement and as soon as we got into the tunnel we realised that our little torches were very ineffectual in the darkness, we really couldn’t see a metre in front of ourselves, much less navigate through the water crossings that were rather deep!!  Luckily we spotted a grey nomad couple up ahead with two dolphin torches who took great pity on us and we attached ourselves to them.  The payoff was wherever we didn’t know how deep the water was we just sent Callum in first to check the depth!! 



The end of the tunnel.



I am still grateful to them because the walk through the tunnel was awesome and the kids had a great time !!! The other end led us to a lovely part of the creek and the deepest section only went up to Claudia’s armpits!!!  Pete tried to avoid the water by pulling his shorts up and whilst this worked for a few of the crossings the last one got him!!!

Then back onto the lumpy bumpy dirt road back to the caravan.  The kids were smiling though and that is a good thing!! They had had such a fun time scrambling over rocks and wading through the water and looking for stalagmites and stalactites.

Back at the caravan we all enjoyed a long hot shower!!

We were also amazed by the flood damage that was still evident around Fitzroy Crossing and how much of the river had been eroded by during the last wet season.  It truly is hard to imagine that so much water can fall from the sky to cause the damage that we have seen during the trip!!  Today was another gorgeous day, big blue sky, top of 31!! Unreal!!