Last night we called our accommodation in Kununurra to check that they can house us while we await a negative COVID test result. They said they couldn’t, my heart sank, then quickly followed “but you don’t have to anymore!” After calling the WA hotline for confirmation, we find that yes, from yesterday we can cross the border at anytime without a test.
And so we quickly re-plan. Can we drive Darwin to Kununurra in one day? (Probably not). Are we okay to miss out on some Darwin sights? (Resigned, yes). Do we have time to stop at Litchfield? (It will be tight). What about Gregory or Keep River? (Unlikely). How fast should we go to cross this flightiest of borders? (How can we predict this??)
Today we will get to Timber Creek. We leave early enough for a flying stop at Litchfield, then it’ll be straight driving for the rest of the day.
We pull into the magnetic termite mounds first, stride along the boardwalk and gaze out over the perfectly aligned slabs strewn over the field. They are quite far away and many seem to have been burned recently. I wonder whether the mounds are still active?
Then we cross over to a huge mound, the biggest I’ve seen.
Now we drive to Florence Falls where we observe the falls from a lookout before taking the stairs down to the pool below.
The water is clear and crisp, the falls are higher than anywhere we’ve been yet. It’s a good point to take a breath and enjoy the scene for a while [Anna: these falls were notable for having the warmest water and the most people with go pros terrifyingly jumping off rocks…I may have been secretly very pleased when one group lost their go pro at the bottom, don’t worry they found it again].
The rest of the day practical, as is our demountable accommodation.
[Click on a photo to open a full-screen slide show]
