El Questro Station {Gibb River Road}

We crossed the great Pentecost River on our way to El Questro.  Kind of hard to imagine that the big space can be filled with water given what we saw was a shallow ‘trickle’.

I thought that we had seen the worst of the roads but the road into El Questro was by far the worst section of road on the entire trip.  Pretty bad given the exorbitant prices charged to stay at the place.

J & I found a nice spot which plenty of space for everyone, set up and then just relaxing without own company.  It was actually really nice. 

After everyone arrived and a swim was in order, although sadly the 'swimming spot' was deemed a little less swim friendly, so some buckets of water around the camp it was.  It was around then that we decided to head up to the bar for happy hour.  

  

Well worth it for a nice cold drink with great company.  {even better when there was a cute baby on the table next to us to entertain the children}.  It was a beautiful sunset and nice to see all of the bats and flying foxes start to head out at dust.

Friday saw us head off to explore ZeeBeeDee Springs and one of the gorges {which was yet to be decided}.  I am glad that we took of fairly early as it meant that we got some time at the springs before it got too busy.

The springs are a natural hot spring and it was crazy how some of the water flowing into them from the spring was as warm as a shower while some parts at the side cooled before it made it into the pool and where chilly. We spent a good few hours lolling around in the warm water, turning into prunes before it started to get busy and we decided it was time to head off.

We ended up picking El Questro Gorge and after a very wet drive into the gorge walk, the walk itself kept your interested in your surroundings from the moment you started.  It was lovely to be able to see something so incredible come to life the further you walked into it.  We actually followed the water flowing out of the gorge all the way to the first pool.

Given it was so shaded it really wasn’t a place for swimming but children being children couldn’t be stopped so in they got, with all of the fish that called the pool home.  The gorge walk actually went a lot further past this point and the men tried it but sadly failed as it was by far the most difficult of the walks we had done {with rock jumping, swimming and the like involved}. I was just happy to sit and experience the lovely ferns growing up the sides of the cliff face, the water dribbling down it and listening to everything around us.

 The walkout certainly took longer but it was just as exciting looking at the environment change as we walked.

Again we headed to happy hour before heading home for a lovely roast dinner.

Hard to believe that really this was the last stop on our trip along the Gibb and even more hard to believe that should be do it again it will all look totally different to this time.

I lie we are stopping at Emma Gorge tomorrow to do that walk before heading back to the ‘real world’, well Kunnunarra at least!