Kununurra to Wyndham 22/23 August 2008

After a short flight from Broome to Kununurra we were unexpectedly met at the airport by Bruce Connell, owner of Kimberley Cruises who we had booked our trip through. Talk about personalised service. He loaded us into his 4 wheel drive and we spent the afternoon being shown the sites of Kununurra. He even took us out to his house, situated on the banks of the Ord River and took us up the river in his boat. After a smoothie at a cafe in the bush he dropped us off at the Kimberley Grande, very grand indeed. This brand new resort was surprisingly empty of clients which left us full use of a huge 3 lane x 25 metre swimming pool with spa. Beautifully decked out large rooms and a couple of restaurants to eat in made our stay very pleasant indeed. We met Bruce's son Scott for a drink in the bar. We met Scott in Feb this year when we undertook a 4 wheel driving course. He was the person that told us all about the boat trips through the Kimberley and how fantastic they were. Thanks Scotty.

Kununurra

Spent Saturday morning at the Kununurra Market (???) checking out the local produce and goods. Took all of about 10 minutes. Spent the rest of the day hanging around the pool and watching Steve Hooker win the pole vault gold medal. This was to be the last thing we saw of the Olympics. Will the Opals win????

Kimberley Grande

Picked up by 'Keith' at 3pm. Had his whole life story by 3.10pm (or did we?). The first of the other guests we were to share the next 2 weeks with were Jane and Brian Hill who were from Devonport Tassie. They had also spent the Friday night in Kununurra. Brian proved to be the elder statesman of our group. We journeyed onto the airport where we picked up the rest of the adventurers. We were greatly relieved when they made their way onto the bus to see no geriatrics (not that we don't just love them) or people with strange ticks, although the Tassie two head thing was of some concern at that stage. There was a lot of eyeing off on the bus as we drove to Wyndham while Keith continued to talk, on and on, about his life in the region and beyond!! A quick stop at a lookout overlooking Wyndham was our first look at how dramatic the tidal movement was in this area and our first view of the MV Great Escape, our home for the next fortnight.

Overlooking Wyndham Port

We continued onto the port and were greeted by the crew - Chris (Trippy), Clive (Gronk), Tim, Nathan and Megan. Trippy is the skipper, Gronk and Tim the deckhands, Nathan the cook and Megan the hostess/domestic/magic fairy. The guests: Jane and Brian as previously mentioned from Tasmania, Jennifer and Warren from Perth, Suzanne and Adrian also from Perth, Ali and Dave from Broome and their sister-in-law Suzanne from Adelaide, formerley Kangaroo Island. Ali and Dave had done the trip 12 months ago and were back for seconds. Sue was inspirational to all of us on this trip as her husband Tim (Dave's brother) had died in June and she was brave enough to come along and join in all our antics.

The MV Great Escape

We were loaded into the tinnys and transported to our very luxurious boat where champagne and nibblies awaited us. Lots of chatting and introductions before sitting down to rib-eye steaks, salad and sticky date pudding. We cruised from Wyndham as the sun set.

We then had what was to be the first of our nightly briefings from the skipper. We were informed that we would need to be up by 5.30am - gasp!! - if we wanted to go fishing. My question of would we have to do anything yucky when fishing was quickly put to rest with a firm no. Thank goodness for small mercies. I was soon to find out that the crew would take care of anything remotely yucky for the rest of the trip.

We were shown our room (steerage of course, down with the Irish) very, very compact but neat and squeaky clean with a bathroom you could almost swing a cat in. Thank goodness we are not big people. At the last minute I had thrown in a pair of ear plugs which proved to be one of my better ideas as the room was very noisy. It didn't take long to get used to the noise though as most nights we were so tired we fell asleep as soon as our head hit the pillow.