Last night we saw some video of vehicles crossing the Barnett River yesterday at 800mm depth.  Even though the road is open it concerned us a lot. We started relooking at alternate plan F which involves going as far the Barnett River and then backtracking 1500km and hitting the road from the other end.  This would involve an extra 1000km getting back to Kununurra and effectively driving the Gibb twice.  Not ideal, but it’s where we find ourselves…

Regardless of that, we were up and packed by 730 this morning.  First stop was Adcock Gorge.  The road in here was so bad that we parked up our car and van and Karen and Kieran unhitched and we all rode up in their car.  Then the road was too bad for the car, so we ditched it and walked the remainder.  

The gorge was lovely.  Time for a dip (for all except me) and a drone flight (for me).  The colour of the water was amazing!

We then moved up the road to Galvans Gorge.  The carpark was right on the Gibb so no offroading to get to this one.  We ate lunch at the gorge and then spent some leisure time swimming (and droning).  One of my favourite gorges so far I think.  There was a rope swing into the water and plenty of Dads and kids were having a go.

We headed to Barnett River roadhouse to arrange camping for tonight and find out if there was any additional information about crossing the river.  There wasn’t.  So we drove down the road to the crossing, along with quite a few others and waited for someone to show us how it’s done.

Eventually someone did and we were pleasantly surprised to see that heading quite wide of the crossing presented the shallowest traverse.  At this stage we have decided that we think we can get across.  We’ll stay here 2 nights and let the water continue to drop and take the plunge.

Once we had set up at the campground along the river we sat on the river bank and had another swim. Beautiful light at the end of the day.

Tomorrow morning we are planning an early morning hike to Manning Gorge.  Gorging on gorges just now 🙂 .