Up at normal time today and with breakfast done and on the road before 7AM we headed for Zebedee Springs before the crowds arrived. Only a few people in the pools when we arrived and we got a great spot in the pool after it comes out of the ground. Very warm and pleasant. We hung around for well over an hour till we were a tad too wrinkly and headed back to camp Mopoke to make a plan for the rest of the day.

7AM in the thermal pools, 28-32 degrees

View from the thermal pool

We decided to head up the Gibb River Road as far as the Cockburn Ranges lookout and call into Home Valley Station on the way back. From the turn off to El Questro for the next 24KM there were road works. This would normally be a hinderance but all the bypass roads they had constructed while they did the main part were great and relatively corrugation free. Somebody had told us this at Kununurra and one of the reasons we ventured out onto this end of the Gibb. We are a bit gun shy after the Tanami adventure!

Traffic lights on the Gibb!

This took two layers of dust off, 10 more to go!

The road works ended just before the iconic Pentecost River crossing on the Gibb. Everybody who does the Gibb has a photo or video of their car crossing the Pentecost River. We hung around and watched a Burk street traffic jam cross before we ventured across behind a few other vehicles. The crossing has very little water at this time of the year. We chatted to an older couple on the other side as another convoy came through. This was their 5th the trip on the Gibb and they had been to Tassie as well. On the other side of the road a couple waited patiently to get a spot to go across in the other direction. Got chatting to them and they pumped us for info on El Questro and we did the same about a few sections of the Gibb we will do from the other end.

Pentecost crossing, part of the queue

Our crossing on the way back

About 10Km up the road we came to the spectacular Cockburn Range lookout right on the side of the road. We had read about this place as it is one of the only places on the Gibb with mobile coverage so we broke out the laptop and uploaded a few days worth of blogs and got a few message before we left. Just down the hill from the lookout is Home Valley Station and it has a similar setup to El Questro. We had a look around and got a couple of ice creams ($9.00!) and left.

Typical view as you drive along around here.

El Questro turn off from the Gibb

Back at El Questro we had our nice cold lunch out of the Waeco under the shade at the station on their nice bench seats. I scoped out the Sawback Ridge Lookout drive from one of the rangers. Again the warnings put me off a bit but it was fine they just make it sound hard for the novices to scare them off. It was however a very slow drive up in 1st gear low 4WD for most of it. It was extremely steep in places with lots of loose gravel and a pretty easy river crossing. The view was spoilt by some fire in the distance producing quite a lot of smoke haze. We managed to pick out our camper along the Pentecost river bank at camp Mopoke in the binoculars. We also watched a small plane land on the airstrip directly below us.

Smokey Sawback lookout

Out the other direction

Back at camp I made some preparations for putting the camper back on and leaving tomorrow while Sharon cooked up a wicked creamy chorizo, sweet potato and pasta dish (YUM). While up on the Cockburn Ranges with mobile coverage we have booked our campsites at the Bunggles Bunggles (Purnululu) for the next part of our adventure, stay tuned….

YUM!

6PM the day is done, just our local bat flying around now