We entered Derby just off dusk and saw a neon sign saying “King Sound Resort Hotel”. This looked good we thought. Parts of the sign were clearly missing as the full name of the place was “F*#King Unsound Last Resort Hotel.”
The car is parked in the lock-up compound out the back which is surrounded by razor wire. All of the windows of the hotel are covered by security grills that have a fly screen, but are clearly designed to keep out more than flies. Reception shuts at 1830 with the counter locked up like Fort Knox and big signs saying “You are now under video surveillance”. It doesn’t endear you to the town. First impressions are that Derby hasn’t had enough cyclones. Its main claim to fame is that it has the second highest tides in the world at 12.4 metres. The highest in the world is in Nova Scotia at 14.2 metres. If Derby had tides like that, the town might be inundated and we could all give the town up as a bad idea. Derby is so unattractive that the motel room has a large picture of a northern hemisphere mountain range on the wall. Apparently nothing local could provide a suitable photo.
We just finished dinner where we paid silly prices to be served poor food by a humourless waiter. My meal was cold and had to be sent back, while Sue’s was almost too salty to eat. The restaurant had the ambiance of a caravan park laundry, but without the rustic charm.
So why the hell would anyone go to Derby? Well, apart from being the ‘Gateway to the Gorges’ (ie the town at one end of the Gibb River Road), it is also the take off point for the Horizontal Waterfall. This is a phenomena whereby the rising tide flows into a lake through a narrow passage and the water builds up on the side that the tide is coming from. The differential in the water levels causes a waterfall effect. We will try to see this tomorrow and get out of Derby as quickly as possible.
After leaving Napier Creek, we took off for Wandjana Gorge. We arrived soon after 0800 and started walking along the gorge. There were about 25 freshwater crocodiles basking on the riverside and we managed to get within a couple of metres of them to take some good photos. We continued for a couple of kilometres along the gorge and found some hand stencils and some small figures drawn in ochre. On the way home we ran into several hundred bats roosting in some riverside trees.
The next stop was Tunnel Creek, which was a 750m walk through an underground creek which had some freshwater crocodiles skulking around the tunnel. We spent some time here playing with long exposure photos in the darkness of the tunnel. the road from Tunnel Creek joined the main highway, but we turned left at the end and drove 42km to Fitzroy Crossing to pump some air into the spare. We stopped at the first service station on the outside of town and headed straight back out.
We never got to see the charm of Fitzroy Crossing that appealed so much to the Warumpi Band.
the drive from Fitzroy Crossing to Derby (258km) was completed non-stop to arrive before sun down. The setting sun painted a thin band of clouds on the horizon a mixture of orange and violet hues. We hoped that this beautiful sunset would be a portent of the beauty of the town of Derby. How wrong we were.

I have just finished changing the tyre. (Hang on you did that last entry! Well you just have to keep doing it till you get it right.)

We left Imitji with our repaired tyre as the spare and pumped some extra air into the previous spare which was now our back right tyre. It had only 18 psi in it when it needed more like 40. We figured it hadn’t been filled correctly when it was fixed. We continued on to Bell Gorge where a 1km hike found us at a delightful little pool at the top of a 20m waterfall and an even bigger pool. A small rock island in the middle of the pool was the basking place for a water monitor. I waded out into the chest deep water, camera held aloft and managed to sneak close enough to get some good photos before it slipped into the water and gracefully glided away.

Our destination for the evening was now Windjana Gorge, but it was still a long way off. Crossing over the King Leopold Ranges we stopped to find the first and only geocache on the Gibb River Road. After this it was a race between us and the sun. Driving after dark in these parts is not recommended (I prefer not to drive later than roo o’clock) and finding a campsite in the dark is a hassle.

Just as the sun hit the horizon, we found a small area off the side of the road where we could park for the night. We were able to eat dinner before complete darkness descended. We awoke this morning to see the van at a distinct lean. The tyre that has been ’repaired’ (for want of another term) at Mornington, and had been pumped back to 40psi at Imitji, had gone down too much to safely drive on. Hence another tyre change. The nearest tyre repair or service station of any sort is Derby, about 130km away. We still plan to go to Windjana Gorge and Tunnel Creek (a detour off the Derby road) and hope the ranger at Windjana has a pump or compressor with which to pump up the tyre. It is my opinion that a small compressor should be included with the vehicle (I have one in my car) and then we could have plugged it into the cigarette lighter that doesn’t work.