Day 52 - Manning Gorge to Charnley River Station

Another short day of driving for the Shumacks. I stocked up at Mt. Barnett Roadhouse to feed the hungry wolves. This is the best stocked store on the Gibb River Road. Naturally prices are elevated as the biscuits have travelled a further 300 km to get here from Broome. Arnott's Scotch Finger biscuits here cost $3.50, El Questro were trying to flog them for $5.00. Just out of interest I'll check out the price in the big smoke. 

We had a quick visit at Galvan's Gorge. As we went in I spied a piece of clothing, Georgina recognised it as Sophia's skirt, from Manning Gorge, so we grabbed it. I will contact them once we have a signal. We will be out of range for about two weeks, though we cheated by going to Wyndham. I hope I don't lose too many readers for this blog due to the wait for more installments. If you are reading this, thank you for your patience.

 

We made the decision to go off the road a bit by going 43 km up the driveway of Charnley River Station, staying for two nights. We were given a very warm welcome by Bronwyn and Karen. Bronwyn and her husband are caretaking the property until Christmas while Karen holidays with her husband. This place is an operating cattle station. We got the lowdown on all the waterholes on the property and the pick of the campsites as we were the only ones there so far. Some of their waterholes are low in water so aren't nice to swim in. They get smelly and have a lot of algae in them once the water stops flowing. They sell home grown vegetables here, so I bought some cherry tomatoes, the freshest on the Gibb River Road. We set up camp quickly so we could cool off at Donkey Hole, eight kilometres away.

 

We managed to cool off and get back to the car just on sunset, before the mossies attacked.


There are two peacocks and numerous peahens in residence here. The colours in the tails of the males are astounding. The peacock below took exception to a mud lark 100 times smaller than him getting to close to the new arrivals.

 

Due to our freebie, chicken was on the menu of course!

 

 

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