11th August - Bungle Bungle Caravan Park - 110 kms today 5489 to date

We had a good nights sleep apart from a snorer next door who was soon banished by my ear plugs.  The room was very comfortable and good value in the circumstances.  The proprietor John told us most of his trade was business clients not tourists so he usually had plenty of rooms on the weekend.
I did a bit of maintenance on the DR – washed and oiled the chain, washed and oiled the air filter and increased  the tyre pressures.  The filter was pretty dirty after 1000kms of dirt road on the Tanami and I had noticed an uneven tick-over.
We filled up at the Shell roadhouse with unleaded 95, which will flush out the last of the Opal fuel we got at Balgo.  Opal is lower octane than ordinary unleaded and usually increases our fuel consumption a bit.  I stuck to 90 kph on the Hwy to preserve my rear tyre and after about 50 kms we came across a car at the side of the road being worked on so we stopped to offer assistance.

The man was trying to remove his rear tyre but his wheel wrench didn’t fit, so Alan went to dig out his tool kit.  In the meantime we discovered that the man and woman were from Banbridge in N. Ireland!  Alasdair and Danielle had been living in Perth for a couple of years.  Just then an adventure tour bus stopped and they had a wheel wrench that did the trick and the wheel was soon off and the spare on. I took the chance to quiz the driver about road conditions.  The road into Purnululu NP had just been graded and was good.  The Gibb River Rd had also been graded and was good. This is the first time I have ever helped a car driver on the side of the road!

We arrived at the campsite just off the Hwy at about 12:30 and were shown to our very spacious tent and had a delicious lunch of smoked salmon sandwiches and an orange which had been prepared by Alan that morning.  The actual NP is 53kms to the east and we are going to ride in and camp for the night tomorrow.
After lunch Alan and I went for a walk down to Spring Creek to some waterholes.  The campsite is run by the cattle station and has to be removed every wet season so everything is on trailers.  There were Droughtmaster cattle around the place and we had to close the fence after we passed through.  The waterhole had gone a bit green but was very peaceful.

We then climbed up a rocky hill to get a view of the countryside.  There were a small group of white kangaroos resting on the hill but they soon dispersed when we approached.  The view at the top was worth the climb as we could see right across to Purnunlulu and could even see cars travelling along the track.
We are looking forward to exploring this famous landmark.  We saw it from the air in 2010 when we flew up from Halls Creek in a Cessna.