Gibb River Road

Beautiful Bell’s Gorge

/ lynnie57 / Leave a comment

We set off on the Gibb River Road. As I said before, we had done a bit of this previously on a tour, now we were doing it on our own. We had a near miss on the first day which I’ve talked about in the previous post. Leaving that aside, it was an interesting drive. We came upon the rough road sooner than I expected but John deflated the tyres a bit and later we put the car into four wheel drive.

It was my turn to drive and it was only supposed to be an easy short drive but turned out to be five hours, and my first time driving through creeks. Luckily the deepest creeks were about half a metre so it wasn’t too bad.

We pulled off the road towards the Silent Grove camping area near Bell’s Gorge.  It was late afternoon and we were surprised at how busy it was. However, we managed to find a nice shady spot. It was a lovely campsite. After the rough road and the near miss, we were happy to stay for two nights. We were both exhausted from the day so ended up having cheese and biscuits then going to bed around 6pm! Of course, we are both doing lots of reading but I doubt either of us read more than a chapter before falling asleep!

Lovely shady camp at Silent Grove

Bell’s Gorge

We made an early start the next morning driving 10kms to Bell’s Gorge. John drove and had only one creek crossing. Since we hit the Kimberley, the weather has been just over 30 degrees every day. We parked the car and began the very manageable walk to the gorge. Much of the walk was along a babbling stream and it was so peaceful. Just the noise of the water and the birds. We remembered the walk and the gorge from our Kimberley Wild trip in 2017 but it didn’t detract from the beauty. It was just lovely and some visitors (not us) took a swim. We sat in the shade for a while just enjoying the ambience of the gorge then we slowly made our way back to the car.

Bell’s Gorge

This was the first time (12th June) since we left Dongara on 21st May, that we had the rest of the day to relax. We sat in the shade to read, ate lunch and pottered around. It was perfect. When it cooled down, we took a short walk along a track beside the Silent Grove Creek. Then it was time for a (cold) shower and happy hour!

Silent Grove Creek

A bit of a stumble!

/ lynnie57 / 2 Comments

It was my turn to drive from Derby. We planned a short drive (120kms) at the beginning of the Gibb River Road before camping at Lennard River Bridge, but missed the turn off and had to keep driving. Our second choice to camp for the night was Silent Grove near Bell’s Gorge. The Gibb River Road is a combination of sand, gravel, rock and corrugations, so a lot of care is needed when driving it. We had already let some air out of the tyres.

The near miss happened not far passed a sign that warned of 14kms of very windy road. As I drove round a bend, I came face to face with a car towing a caravan in the other lane and a white ute overtaking it at high speed in my lane. I had nowhere to go.  I slammed on the brakes. John screamed at me not to brake because of the gravel but I knew if I took my foot off, I’d slam into the ute. Although he kept yelling, I just couldn’t not brake. Our car began to skid and I felt the caravan skidding too. I tried to drive into the skid but we were going towards the bush. Unbelievably, we screeched to a halt with the passenger wheel hanging over a swamp. We must have missed the ute by a hair’s breadth and it took off into the distance, without stopping to help.  John told me to reverse but he didn’t think there was any chance of us being able to get back onto the gravel road. I reversed hard, keeping my foot on the pedal trying to coax the car and caravan to move back. Finally they did and we got safely back onto the road. It was then John told me we had come to a halt just inches from a ditch.

The caravanners, who had been coming the other way and had been overtaken by the ute,  had stopped to help and to see if we were okay. They were furious that the driver of the ute had been so stupid and hadn’t even stopped to help.  They and John were very shaken but I felt very calm and had done throughout the incident. John checked the car and caravan. Everything seemed fine. Once everyone had calmed down, we went our separate ways.

Although I was calm throughout,  it wasn’t until I went to bed that night that perhaps I had delayed shock. I slept for twelve hours but woke a few times with an image of the ute coming towards us. Needless to say I was happy it was John’s turn to drive the next day.