Day 22 Monday 4th July

Day 22 Monday 4th July

Today, Lyn, Steve, Rob and I were heading out on a trip on Lake Argyle and Heather was doing a trip on the Ord River to the dam wall and back to Kununurra. Paul was staying back at the vans to start packing and preparing for our Gibb River Road experience. We were picked up from the Caravan Park and a mini bus took us to Lake Argyle. The commentary given by our lovely young bus driver was very interesting. She told us all about the building of the dam wall in the early 1970s and the disappointments of the first crops of cotton and then rice. Both crops proved to be susceptible to the many bugs and diseases. Later, various fresh produce and melons were tried and this is what we saw growing in 2000 when we last visited. Unfortunately because this area is so far from the large markets, it is extremely expensive to transport the goods and they don't arrive &fresh&. The latest crop that is proving to be very successful is the Indian Sandalwood trees. As these are parasite trees they are planted out with companion trees around them. The sandalwood oil is a highly prized oil and is doing well here. It is the largest area of planted sandalwood in the world. Despite this, the amazing resource of all this water is very underutilized. We called into the Durack Homestead museum again for a short stop before boarding the beautiful Kimberly Cat. There were about 30 of us on the Cat, including the skipper and our lovely bus driver who did all the food and drinks preparation. It was a perfect day out on Lake Argyle. We had a beautiful lunch and 2 swims in the lake at different spots. At our last stop, the sun was just starting to set. We saw a couple of fresh water crocs and lots of bird life. Our skipper was saying that some people come up and ask &Where's the Marina?&.  He said  very few people use the lake and really it's great that way. Very pristine. No rubbish. We all agreed. It really is an amazing resource created by such a small dam wall and because it is so large it is classed as an inland sea. We wondered if  it had been proposed now, whether the dam wall would have been allowed to be built......... We arrived back at the park around 6.30pm. Heather had also had a wonderful trip on the Ord River cruise and Paul had been very busy getting lots of jobs completed.