Windjana gorge

Limped our way over with the van after fueling up and having a hit of real coffee at Imintji road house. Booked accommodation in Derby for myself that night - they are asking premium prices as occupancy is 90 % or more just with housing the builders for the new Jail and staffing Curtin Detention centre. The road had improved even had some bitumen and a rock that looked like Queen Victoria in profile coming across the King Leopoldo and Napier ranges. Heaps of really high cloud cover that was pure white against the blue, very high and fluffy but looked like someone had gone along the bottom with a spatula and literally cut the bottom off. Set the van up and with the promise not to party hard I left them for our final limp along the road to Derby. Had planned to grab some boots here but only one store stocked sturdy boots and they only had steel caps so made my way to the camping fishing and ammo store for gas there is no competition in Derby, if one store sells it then the only other one who might stock the item is woolies. Booked into my $160 a night room expecting some level of luxury to find a single bed on wheels and bathroom - it did have air-conditioning. You could lay in bed grab your beer from the fridge on one side then lean to the other side to change TV station. Good shower though and my feet stayed clean after it. No Optus reception in town I could make but not receive telstra calls and my Internet didn't work. Went out to grab pizza and managed to piggy back onto the TAFE connection to do quick download but my intentions of updating blog went out the window. Back to the motel quick smart as they lock the 12 foot gates at 9pm. Spent night watching bad tv one station only before heading off to Derby 4x4 for some suspension. All went well here with the guys being as helpful as they could be even if I had to do their morning tea run. New suspension all sorted and fresh bread and milk I hate longife milk I headed back to Windjana making much better time. Got back in time to do dusk walk along the gorge crocodile spotting no swimming here. Had intended to do tunnel creek the next morning but rose to mid 30 degrees by 0700 with a sand laden wind ripping across the place. This along with reports of very bad road conditions down to the creek quickly helped with our decision to head on to Broome