El Questro

Thurs 27  - Sat 29 June...

With the fridge groaning with supplies and plenty of home grown meat still ;) ....we headed through Kununurra after a cracking time at Lake Argyle to El Questro. Our first taste of the Gibb is this lovely little wee patch of 70km ish of luxurious tar to the turnoff to El Questro. Knowing very little of El Questro other than some iconic sounding gorges and walks, plus schmick advertising and promotions we were looking forward to beginning our Gibb River Rd adventures...

On our way ! 

Nice unit that one... ;) 

We were prepared for plenty of people here... but not quite this many people!! Holy cow!! This was taken the next day after quite a few around us had left, and we estimated about 300 sites here.....

Good restaurant too...

Shallow water crossing heading in

We were up and at em' early after our first sleep at Black Cockatoo Campground to head up to Zeberdee Springs. A thermal hot springs that is only open from 7am to midday each day...and when the car park fills they shut the gate ! A stunning walk up to the springs ...short and full of Livistona Palms of a certain species very specific to El Questro, and hard to identify is my understanding.....

Livinstona Palms at Zeberdee Springs

Stunning Thermal Springs at Zeberdee 

Fabuous small little pockets of warm water flowing out from the ground under a pile of rocks. The higher up the side of the hill we went into these little rock spas the better and warmer it was... we got there at 7.05am and there were about 30 people there already ! By the time the left the carpark was packed !

Little pops of colours all over the place.....

After a hearty breaky we decided to head to Emma Gorge. El Questro reminded me greatly of a completely ramped up Lorella Springs with so much to do and explore and see! It was warming up by the time we headed off and we hoped we'd have a little shade on the walk. It was a really lovely walk up and over a rocky creek bed with incredible root formations on trees and also patterning on rocks over thousands of years. 

Roots just hugging the creek bed so broad and thick

I did bring a native flower book on my travels and have struggled to match up or come close to matching up many of the little flowers I've seen so far. Trees are a different story and El Questro even has a great top 20 fact sheet that is fabulous for identifying tree species up here...This little flower almost looked a bit orchidy, but was one a thick furry leafy stem base...so I think not...? 

This is a great link that gives you some idea of the trees/ shrubs at El Questro... I hope it works ?? 

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-3vSWTYmX1SyrgS8JaCu-sFQYHp-ASbI/view?usp=drivesdk

Emma Gorge - stunning water hole to swim at after a warm walk in

A great reward after a scramble in to Emma Gorge....cool shaded and water softly flowing into the gorge. Kids and Stu had a blast here.... I forgot to pack my swimmers in the backpack and so cooled the feet in the water and blissfully took happy snaps....

What did astound us was the sheer number of people walking into the gorge as we were coming out in the heat of the day with no hats on and very small water bottles....tough on the body! 

Back at Emma Gorge campground/resort were many stunning boab trees - this one even had a tap ! Guessing it was actually Boab water as we couldn't see any plumbing at all !! 

The afternoon after lunch we had time to do about half of El Questro gorge... with a fairly dry wet season last season we were beginning to see quite a few gorges weren't showing their I guess average waterflows. Regardless this was a beautiful walk in, rocky like the morning with a few more narrow and tricky passages. The time of day though was perfect with plenty of changing of colours up the rock face and a long passage with a southern facing wall housing a myriad of green ferns and shade loving rock plants - so incredubly gorgeous.

On our walk out we met a lovely family of 6 from Perth - who are on the road for a year...great to chat and share and swap stories. Gorgeous kids and with a Mum who is a primary teacher and only 2 I think at school, a great time on the road. They have never left WA and so like us keen to explore new areas of Australia - they are most excited about NSW  hoping it will live up to expectations.....

El Questro Gorge Walk

Fern and green shade plant wall to left....

Water crossing & boulder to scramble should you wish to go further on the gorge walk...had we had more daylight we would have kept going!

Stunning - pic did not do this moment justice at all !!!!

Way back at sunset to camp

So the pic above was taken after we did a fairly deep river crossing - that Bron would have got out and stayed on until we came back through I reckon.... The Perth family we met followed us out...although on the way in when we crossed, the entire dash lit up in disco lights with flickerings of this that and the other, it also did it on the way out and thank goodness everything stopped by the time we got back to camp. Unbeknown to us though was that a plug must have come out from under one of the tyre rim areas - don't know what that area is called ... bahahahaa and a heap of water wet all the carpet - we didn't notice this till we were tidying the car up at Middle Lagoon about a week later and noticed this was all wet.... great that its about 30-32 deg most days to dry it out quick !!! 

Catherine Britt entertainning the troops at El Questro

The following morning Eves had a super time heading off on a trail ride for a few hours on a gorgeous mare Tilly - reckon we could lose that one to up here in time...

Happy as !!

The one thing I would have loved to learn more about at El Questro was El Questro itself. As a large property that is specialising in tourism through the Delaware Group and with 120 staff, Iwould have loved to learn more about the history of the place...I couldn't find much on this at all ??  As stunning as El Questro was, the sheer volume of people was pretty overwhelming. It's the last turnoff on the tar on the Gibb before the dirt starts. So we did head off a night earlier than planned ready for more gorges, plenty of dirt and quieter campsite adventures.