MONDAY 2 JULY     KUNUNURRA

I woke up feeling perfectly fine, which was a pleasant surprise.

The caravan park had a dedicated area where residents could do vehicle work, including an oil change, so John and M did an oil change on both the vehicles – M with tutelege from John. It was a messy job.

While they were doing that, I went to the Park office, and arranged for the van to be stored here. It would be parked in their storage area, for $3 a day. Very reasonable.

We did a big food shop. At the butcher’s shop, M and I put in our orders for vacuum packed meats, which we would collect tomorrow. It was all meats minus bones – steaks, sausages, mince, chicken thighs. I learned the hard way, on a trip years ago, not to cryovac meat with bones that could pierce the plastic! Green chops anyone?

When we checked at the PO, the new phone had not arrived. Not good. We had been here long enough, without having to wait round for something like that! In fact, I would refuse to do so.

At the Visitor Centre, we bought Permits – as vaguely dated as we could manage – for Kalumburu, in case we did manage to get up there. At the moment, that road was still not open.

Refuelled Truck – $1.52cpl.

John phoned Telstra about the missing phone. They had sent the package to the caravan park, not the PO! Slight breakdown in communication right there!  He collected it. He activated the new computer internet connection – much faster. At least that was positive. Not that there would be much in the way of internet signals where we were going for the next month or two.

We started the long packing process. Some gear, food and clothes had to be moved from van to Truck, and packed appropriately. Some stuff would move from Truck to van, mostly to be squeezed in under the bed. Truck would need rearranging so we could access things differently. Basically, unpack everything and start again! We knew from prior experience that this would be a long and tiring job.

We sat round at Happy Hour, discussing what we would do whilst in the Bungles. M really wanted to do the walk to Piccaninny Gorge, and camp up there for a night or two. Well, she would have to camp at least one night, because it was about 15kms each way. John decided he really wanted to do it too. Unfortunately, we did not have enough of the right gear for all of us to do it. M’s small hike tent would sleep two at a squeeze, but definitely not three, for starters. I actually did not mind too much the idea of minding the camp and having a bit of time on my own!

Apart from that, it was decided we would try to visit all the accessible features of the Bungles – and would stay long enough to do so. If we were making the effort to get in there, we would make it worthwhile! It would not be a short stay…..

Today it was official – the Kununurra area had just smashed all previous rainfall records for June! The previous record had been 15.2mm – but we had just tallied up 98.9mm!  The average for June was just 4.0. Where we go, so goes the rain……..  It was also a new record low temperature June.