The Gibb River Road is one of the classic Australian outback routes. Along its 700km length are crocodile-infested waters, stunning swim holes and spectacular scenery. Come, travel the road with us.
Tunnel Creek and Windjana Gorge(ous)
Stunning scenery, billions of bats, cruising crocodiles, fantastic hikes and the chance to splash about in puddles in a dark tunnel! Every turn brings us more magic in outback Australia.
The Fairfield Leopold Downs Road is an outback track which connects Halls Creek – the end point of our Tanami Track trek – with Derby – the start point of the Gibb River Road. Along its relatively short length are two spectacular stop-offs.
Tunnel Creek is the oldest tunnel system in Australia and it is exactly what it says on the tin – a creek running through a tunnel. Half way along there is a roof cave-in and a colony of sleepy bats. In between are small lakes and pools, so it was time to go splashing and clambering – just because we could.
The entrance to Tunnel Creek
One of the subterranean pools you have to wade through in Tunnel Creek
Clambering over rocks and paddling through pools – we are 9 yrs old again
A small crack of light is all that guides the way
Emerging from the darkness
Windjana Gorge, further up the Fairfield Leopold Downs road, is what remains of a coral reef from the inland sea which flooded the area more than 350million years ago. What looks like a rock face is in fact an ancient reef.
Windjana Gorge
The ancient, fossilised coral reef
An ancient coral reef reflected in a river
Much of the river bed was dry, but not all of it and there was just enough water for our first encounter with “freshies” – the rather cheery name given to freshwater crocodiles.
A freshie fresh from the water
They were more interested in sleeping than eating, which was good for us, but they still kept an unblinking eye on an easy dinner.
The early morning glow on crocodile beach
There’s alot of lying around when your a croc
Wet and dry
Living dinosaurs
Spot the croc
Floating along
The trees along the Gorge are creaking, squeaking and reeking of fruit bats.
On the wing
There were tens of thousands of them and barely visible below the trees, who’s branches literally quivered and bent with the weight, was a wait of a different kind.
Weighed down with sleeping bats
The dark patches are not dead leaves – they are fruit bats
Barely visible on the ground – two crocs wait for bat bounty to fall
It wasn’t just crocs and bats though. We spotted some delightful birdlife too.
A Rainbow Bee-Eater
A pair of Little Corellas
A whistling kite looking for easy pickings
An Eastern Reef Egret – we think
A Black-Fronted Dotterel goes for a paddle in the creek
Both were fabulous walks through more lovely and ancient nature in West Australia and we have included additional images in the slideshow.
The Bungle Bungles
The Bungle Bungles are some of the most beautiful, striking natural formations in the world. Their weird and wonderful shapes are only outshone by their glowing colours and irresistible stripiness!
The cone karsts of the Bungle Bungles or Purnululu National Park, to give it its Aboriginal name, are quartz sand-stone formations that have been eroded over 20 millions years to form these beautiful domes, canyons and gorges. Incredibly it was only in 1987 that they become known to more than the local Aboriginal communities and a few passing stockmen and only 20 years ago they were declared a World Heritage site.
How could you not shout about this?
Vast, ancient and on geological timescales, only discovered just now – incredible!
There are a number of different areas to explore.
Cathedral Gorge is famous for its majestic permanent waterhole and acoustics.
Looking across the waterhole in Cathedral Gorge
Homestead Valley has only been opened up in the last couple of years and draws you in to its shaded palm-lined canyon.
Homestead Valley
Echidna Chasm has to be the best. An ever-narrowing boulder-strewn scramble through a slice of the ancient rocks, that changes light and character as the sun passes over the narrow skylights about.
We were dwarfed by the Chasm walls
Words can’t really describe the best of the Bungle Bungles, so there are extra images in the slideshow for you to enjoy.
The Tanami Track
It’s a 1000km of dirt, corrugations, gold mines and road trains. The Tanami Track is also the fastest way from the Centre to the west. It took us three days.
Here we go – see you in a 1,000km
The first two hundred km are tarred, but after that it is nothing but red dirt as far as the eye can see.
The last of the tar
800km of this
Fair warning to fuel up
There is one roadhouse and one aboriginal community along the entire length of the Track. There used to be more, but as with many other outback areas – the life was just too hard for too little and stations were abandoned.
The ruined remains on an old station
Nature is now in command of the machine
Relics of another era
An abandoned cattle station vehicle
We spent our first night looking out across the salt pan of Lake Lewis and the last of the West MacDonald ranges in the distance and enjoyed a spectacular moonrise.
A blood red moon rise over the Tanami
Red moon rising in a black sky
The fading light glinting off the troopie
Our first camp spot on the Tanami Track
The morning was pretty special too!
Far from the crowds
A ghost gum and the moon early in the morning light
Black kite
Desert mornings glow
The West MacDonald ranges in the distance
We liked it so much that we are willing to share with other travellers, so entered it on the Wiki Camps app, which is the camping bible in Australia.
Nimmo’s Rest WikiCamp entry
Day two and the corrugations on the dirt road were pretty bad. The tyres kick up ruts in the dirt, which become deeper and more cut up the greater the traffic and the faster the speeds. Sometimes our speed was down to 20km just to minimise the shakes.
Geoff dropping the tyre pressure for the rutted road ahead
The corrugations have rattled a few bolts loose on the car
The photos don’t do justice to the road, so here’s a short video to give you an idea of what it feels like. This isn’t the worst part, I couldn’t hold the phone for that bit!
But there is much more to the desert than ruts and dust. And there’s always time for a cup of tea, regardless of the state of the road
A nice cuppa tea
Our second night was even more glorious than the first. On a full moon we found the only raised section of desert for miles. With 360-degree views we watched the desert colours change with the rising and setting sun and moon.
Sunset on our stony knoll – the highest point of the desert for miles
The International Space Station shot through our night sky
Sunrise with the last dot of the moon still on show
The desert sunrise
About 5km away was The Granites Gold Mine.
The Granite gold mine in the distance
Home to the world’s largest road train. For the nerdy among you, it is so big it can pull 400tonnes of gear, with a 650HP prime mover at the front and a remote controlled 400hp engine trailer in the middle. We didn’t see the truck, although we heard many ploughing up and down nearby tracks, but we did manage to steal their wifi signal and took great delight in phoning home from the middle of the desert!
The desert below our vantage point
The delicate blond grasses transform the landscape
A golden grassy shimmer
The winter rains have brought golden grass and green trees to the desert
Parts of the Tanami Track feel a little samey in terms of view, but there are also endless surprises and wonderful places to pull up.
Not a bad spot for lunch
Our shadow was longer, but he loomed larger
The brahmin-crossed cattle have a serene, but definite presence
The wedge-tail eagle has a wing span of nearly three metres
Termite mounds come in many shapes and sizes
A very large termite mound
A Boab tree
A little bit of trucker road art on the Tanami Track
Day two and we were on the fuzzy end of another road train. One of the things that is good to avoid on a dirt road is getting stuck behind another vehicle – especially a large lorry.
Road trains blot out the view as they pass
This is what it is like trying to get passed one. Turn up the volume to hear Geoff and the driver’s discussion and some under-the-breath swearing from me!
The driver was our eyes ahead, when his clouds of dust were making us blind. It was a little hairy, but you put your faith in the guy who can see and go for it!
Towards the end of the Tanami Track is Wolfe Creek – the world’s second largest meteorite crater.
A sunset arrival didn’t give much away
A mere 300,000 years ago a 20,000 ton meteorite, travelling at 15km per second, or 54,000km per hour (considerably faster that we managed on that road), slammed into the earth and exploded a crater 140m deep and 850m wide. Today the crater has been filled with dust and only sits 11m deep – but it is still an impressive and mind-boggling sight to imagine what happened here.
The second largest meteorite crater in the world
Wolfe Creek is also the scene of a slasher movie where hapless road trippers are tricked into a mass murderer’s house. The fake bloodied hand on the sign for the crater was a little reminder of the movie.
Thankfully, we have a mechanic on board and we were more awed by what a meteor could do, than a Hollywood manic.
Look closely and see the “bloody” hand
Although I did think this dude floating in the air near our tent was pretty scary.
Floating cobwebs, with attitude
The Tanami Track is interstate – crossing from Northern Territory to West Australia.
The boundary marker between West Australia and Northern Territory
The unassuming sign is a major landmark for us, as we now venture into states unknown. From now on everything in this ancient part of the continent is new to us both and already we have seen some extraordinary places.
The World’s Biggest School & Largest Hospital
Necessity is the mother of invention and when the nearest school or hospital can be days away by rough dirt track, extraordinary people get busy creating amazing ways to manage.
Alice Springs, in the Northern Territory, is both central and remote. A place explorers thought couldn’t exist until a gap was found through the hills and mountain that encircle it, it has become the epicentre of two of Australia’s greatest, most widespread and essential community services – The Royal Flying Doctors and the School of the Air.
A missionary, John Flynn, first conceived the idea of the now essential medical service and the first flight in 1928 was the start of so much more than he could have imagined.
A model of the first plane
The first pilot – Arthur Affleck, had no radio, no navigational aides and only rudimentary road maps. He navigated by fences, river beds and telegraph poles.
True pioneers and life-savers
Anything you need for everything imaginable
The modern set up would have been a dream back in the day
The Royal Flying Doctors Service now has 63 planes spread all across Australia, providing emergency care and weekly clinics to some of the most remote places you can imagine across vast distances.
How Europe fits into Australia
The Royal Flying Doctors are never far away
Simple but effective
We have not passed through an outback station or pub that didn’t have a fundraising tin for the RFDS – because they know it is their lifeline. This small section of map indicates the landing strips for the planes. Red and blue are different types of dirt track. Yellow is bitumen – the stuff the rest of us are used to landing on.
There’s only one yellow marker
The doctors in action
An emergency airstrip on an outback road
The facts and stats for this service are quite incredible
John Flynn’s idea could not have taken off without Alfred Traeger. He invented a portable, pedal-powered two-way radio that allowed more effective communication over 500km. It was the breakthrough the service needed to cover the whole country.
The incongruous sight of the inventor at work in the outback
A small machine that made huge things happen
Traeger’s invention was instrumental in creating another of Alice Spring’s great claims to fame – the School of the Air.
Come one, come all
Boasting the largest classroom in the world, the School of the Air has been transmitting classes to far-flung outback children since 1951. Starting over the radio and now in full-technicolour over the internet.
Early days of the Air
Perhaps not everyone was excited by the breakthrough
Real distance learning
The modern radio set up, before the advent of the internet
Prince Charles & Lady Diana were two of many celebrity guests
The main broadcast studio now
School packs and timetables
There are 150 children at various levels up to age 14, and spread across more than a million square kilometres.
The dots on the map show the remote classrooms
The children tune in from far afield
Sadly we don’t have the pictures to do justice to this story. The school was off on mid term break when we visited, but just imagine for a moment how important it must be to remote families across this vast continent to have access to such a service. The children’s artwork gives a hint of the very different lives they lead and the need for their teachers to understand them.
School art depicting outback life
Not an average school day
Mum is the helicopter pilot
Dad runs the outback jail
Alice Springs was the place that didn’t exist. For many years explorers couldn’t find a way through the MacDonald ranges and today the town is still surrounded by vast nature.
Surrounding Alice
Anzac Hill at Alice Springs, surrounded by hills
It is perhaps no surprise that the mothers and fathers of invention created such great community services in a place that was so far from anywhere. Alice Springs was central to outback development and many pioneers were born or passed through here. We take our inspiration and determination from them, though Sara might skip the bonnets!
The first of many
The Dead Centre of the Red Centre
There’s the so-called Red Centre of Australia – which includes Uluru. And then there’s the Dead Centre. We shot down the aptly-named Gun Barrel Highway to pay it a visit.
If you look at a map you can seen why the Gun Barrel was so named. Len Beadell – surveyor and road builder extraordinaire – wanted it to be as straight as the very same.
The aptly named Gunbarrel Highway
Nice work Len!
Despite its appealing straightness, it is now a road less travelled.
One of only two vehicles we saw on the entire stretch
We found a lovely example of another Australian classic along the way. Water-pumping windmills have been a lifeline for farmers across the country. The Southern Cross windmill was first built in 1876 and the steel-bladed water-bringers have been cranking through the outback since.
Another great Australian outback invention
Shadows on the wind
The windmills of the outback kept the water flowing and the people and cattle going.
The windmills are vital for pumping water in remote areas
Just a little bit of water is all it needs to keep the desert growing too, it seems. Far from being an empty wasteland, plants and flowers spring up at the sides of the track.
Even the tiniest blooms burst into life
Some plants almost merge with the soil for the last drops of moisture
Wild flowers bloom at the edge of the track
Yellow and purple dance along the Gunbarrel
A gaggle of zebra finches at a truckstop water tank
A yellow honeyeater well disguised
A welcome waterhole
Of course water is great for flowers and cows, but not so great for 3 ton wagons like ours and we had to pick our way carefully.
One of the many hazards of outback tracks
An unavoidable soaking
We found some slightly bigger hazards too, but thankfully they were behind a fence.
A proud looking camel
It wasn’t much interested in saying hello
Having travelled a short section of the Gun Barrel, we turned up onto the track leading to Lambert’s Centre – the geographical centre of Australia.We can only assume that visitors aren’t very welcome at the Centre – it took us more than a hour to travel 14km on one of the worst roads we have covered so far.
A long haul up a short road to the middle
Getting to the dead centre of the Red Centre doesn’t seem to be encouraged
We imagined a notable place might have a notable road in. I suppose it did
Bruce Lambert (of the Centre) was one of Australia’s most decorated surveyors and explorers, but ironically never made it to the landmark that bears his name. Perhaps if he had, he might have had something to say about the road.
In honour of the master map maker and surveyor, who never made it here
Lambert’s Centre – the heart of Australia
Unlike Bruce – we set up camp for the night. Another compass point ticked off the list.
Setting up camp at sunset at the centre of Australia
Speckled stars on a moonlit night in the outback
The road to the centre was not the best. The road from the centre didn’t get much better. We did as good travellers should and took advice from the locals.
Travellers: “Is the Old Ghan Track, (now called the Finke Desert Track) okay at the moment?”.
Man at Finke gas station who’s also just taken $90 off us for diesel: “For sure, it knocks two hours off the trip to Alice Springs. You can sit on 60-80kmph. Some people even do 100kmph”
It would take too long to go back to Finke to correct the gas station guy, but suffice to say he should probably get out more.
Never mind 80km per hour – it took us three hours to do 80km! The road is 247km long.
A small hazard
As well as the hideous corrugations in some sections, parts of the Finke Desert Road run directly over the top of the old Ghan Railway line. We had to be careful to avoid the original steel bolts that littered the route and would have taken out a tyre very quickly. The famous railway was a lifeline for outback communities when it was laid through the centre of Australia. Working parties lived on the line for months on end. But much of that history is lost in the desert now.
Weed-tangled fence posts are all that’s left of the old Ghan railway track
We can’t imagine why fewer and fewer men wanted to live and work out here
The new Ghan line still runs. Perhaps fittingly it was one of the first things we saw when we finally arrived in Alice Springs a mere six hours later.
The new Ghan
You may be amused to hear that the Finke Desert Road is also the route for the Finke Desert Race. Apparently they can make it from Finke to Alice Springs in two hours, but then they are driving like this:
The race was a couple of weeks before our trip, so the road had been well chewed up by support crews and spectators. We ended up driving the race route, which had huge ruts, but because of the spacing and depth, it was more comfortable than the road.
The camera doesn’t show the waves of giant corrugations down the track
So however long it took, we can now legitimately say we have driven the Finke Desert Race track!
