Hey guys! Welcome back to another weeks blog! We are super excited about this one as the Gibb River Road was one of the most challenging roads we have done with the caravan in tow! We hope that it is super informative and helps you with planning your experience. We spent nearly two-weeks on the Gibb River Road and saw so many places, so this one will be broken down into three parts.
If you are new to our blog, head over to Part One & Part Two of our Gibb River Road guides before reading Part Three. In Part Two we were waiting to hear information on the fire that had closed Mitchell Falls road!! We had stayed at the Munurru Camp and were waiting until 8am to make our final decision. If the road was still closed at 8am, we were missing out on Mitchell Falls!! 
Please note that this blog is being written on the 6th – 15th of August in 2021 and that this is written from personal experience and should be used as only a guide. Also note that the road conditions on the Gibb River Road are constantly changing. The exact road we drove today, could be different tomorrow!
DAY EIGHT
Campsite: Drysdale River Station ($37)
Attractions: Mitchell Falls
So 7:30am came around and we headed back down to the camp hosts to see if they had anymore information. He was on the phone to the firefighters as we rocked up and gave us the thumbs up to head on up to Mitchell Falls, we were so happy!! However, that happiness slowly faded as we drove up the WORST road of the Gibb River Road (some have said all of Australia!!). Now when we have talked about corrugations in our previous blogs… this is something else to that… these were like 100mm high! It was horrendous! It took us about 2 hours of non-stop solid corrugations. We stopped a few times to check all the vehicles in the convoy and make sure everyone was doing ok. We passed a few cars that hadn’t made the trek and were stranded on the side of the road, there was also a guy who had set-up camp on the side of the road with his car and was waiting for someone to bring him a part. He obviously knew that if he left his car, he would come back to a very empty car that needed a lot more parts than he originally did.
We finally made it to Mitchell Falls in one piece and got ourselves ready for the hike. The hike is about 4.5km one way. There is a helicopter company there who offer a flight there for $165pp, the family we were with decided that they would walk in and helicopter out to make it easier for the kids (and surprise them). The walk in with everyone took us probably an hour and a half, stopping for photos and giving the kids rests. The walk out we smashed in 45 minutes when it was just us and another couple.
The walk to Mitchell Falls is beautiful and there are so many spots to stop along the way, one of our favourites was Big Merten’s which was a huge gorge which you stood at the top of and looked down the middle (photo of Keelan there below).
You then walk on to the top of Mitchell Falls, when we first arrived we didn’t actually realise we were there! We were just expecting that spectacular view that everyone gets the photo of, but you arrive at the very top of the whole place and look down on the pools. As we counted the pools we then realised that we were there. We walked around the top of the cliff and around to the front where we had the most amazing view! We hung around there and had some snacks and soaked up the view. It was breath taking!! When you visit Mitchell Falls make sure you read all the information as you enter the hike as it tells you important information about the area. One piece of very important knowledge to know is that you can not swim in the lower pools of Mitchell Falls as they have cultural significance to the Aboriginal people of the area. You are allowed to swim at the very top where you first walk down, it looks like a river. It was a beautiful little swimming area.
We headed back to the cars and we had the long trek back to Drysdale Station ahead of us. We got into camp around 6pm and we were shattered! We both had the worst headaches from the heat and were so tired from the long drive on the rough roads. Make sure you take HEAPS of water! We only took 3L for the hike and it wasn’t enough for the two of us, 4L would have been perfect! Even if you don’t normally drink much, take lots because the walk is long and it is so hot, even the walk in the morning was boiling let alone the afternoon walk! When we got back to the cars we were all dripping in sweat.
DAY NINE & TEN
Campsite: El Questro Station ($24 per night/per person unpowered), Permit ($44)
Attractions: Ellenbrae Station (Scones) & Pentecost River Crossing, Day 9 – Zebedee Hot Springs, El Questro Gorge, Moonshine Gorge
We headed off from Drysdale and started making our way to Ellenbrae station where we stopped in to get some of the famous homemade scones. The scones were $6 each and we also treated ourselves to a Mango Frappe which was $7. They were so good!! Definitely worth it! We learnt about the station and how many scones they sell each year, which was 17,000 in one years season and then in 2020 no scones were sold due to the pandemic. The station originally sold home brand fruit cake and marketed it as home-made before the new owners took over and began the scone tradition! We headed off from Ellenbrae and headed toward the Pentecost Crossing. There wasn’t much water in it so it wasn’t as challenging as it is when its flowing, but it was still really cool to tick it off the list. We thought about staying at the free camp there that night, but we decided to continue on to El Questro Station. If it is late when you are going theough, we’d recommend staying at Pentecost river and then going to El Questro in the morning because its quite expensive and you’d wanna get your moneys worth.
Ok so El Questro station… this one quickly became our fav! There is so much to do!! Because we did so much here, I will just list them and give you our thoughts on each. We didn’t do everything and there was so many spots we wanted to see but just didn’t have time to do and we didn’t want to spend longer than two nights there so we just narrowed it down and did our top few. So, in order of how we did them…
Zebedee Hot Springs:
GET THERE SUPER EARLY (or book a tour), it is only open from 7am-12pm and we arrived at 7:20 and it was packed!! After 12pm is when they do the private tours so if you don’t have a budget and want this spot to yourself, then book a tour! (We would if we had that kind of money!). The hot springs are so cool though, we got a nice little pool right under a mini waterfall and it was like a warm bath. However, there were so many people in the pools around you and walking around you to go to the waterfall that it was really hard to soak it all in and enjoy it. If you ask me, it was still worth it, if you ask Keelan, it wasn’t worth it.. Another spot you really have to visit and make up your own mind on!
El Questro Gorge:
Getting into El Questro is pretty easy except for one challenging water crossing. It is about 50m long and its 80cm-1m deep! It was the biggest water crossing we had ever done, I think we held our breath the whole time!! Haha
Now there was no arguing about how good this one was, this is 100% the best gorge we visited on the whole of the Gibb and here is why… The walk is the most beautiful gorge I have ever seen ! There are palm trees everywhere as you enter, small trickling creeks, ferns growing up the side of the gorge, Crystal clear little pools of water & waterfalls! Just have a look at the photos below and you’ll see what I mean. It was MAGICAL! However, not all things are perfect and the walk is a difficult one! Lots of climbing over rocks & boulders and traversing waterfalls. So if you want to do this walk, make sure you are fit and able! It is about a 2 hour hike in and 2 hour hike out. At the end you are rewarded with a swimming hole and a beautiful waterfall.
Moonshine Gorge:
After we did El Questro we headed over to Moonshine Gorge which is in the same area as El Questro. We didn’t do the whole walk as we were only interested in going for a swim and for that, this was the best hike ever!! It was only like 200m walk and there’s the beautiful swimming hole!! Perfect spot to go for a quick cool off without having to work for it haha
We headed back to camp and decided we were all gorged out for the day and would do Emma Gorge on our way out the next day. We headed down to the bar area and listened to some live music and treated ourselves to a drink on happy hour.
DAY ELEVEN
Campsite: Ivanhoe Village Caravan Resort
Attractions: Emma Gorge
Well today was our last day on the Gibb!! What an experience it had been! We were off to Emma Gorge before heading into Kununurra. To get to Emma Gorge you actually leave El Questro homestead, jump back on the Gibb heading towards Kununurra for 11km and then it is on your left. It was a reasonably easy walk in, although very hot. The gorge at the end is absolutely beautiful, and the water is super cold!! It is cold but freshing! If you go over to the very right hand corner of the gorge, and sit in the water, it is so warm!! You will know what I mean! There is a little waterfall trickling down with hot water from the spring above, it’s really cool! Emma gorge was definitely an amazing way to finish off our experience on the Gibb River Road.
We headed into Kununurra and got ourselves a night at Ivanhoe Village Caravan Resort, did two loads of washing and then pretty much just sat in the aircon for the entire afternoon/night haha! It was so needed!
DAY TWELVE & THIRTEEN
Now for the fun part… the repairs after the Gibb River Road…
We thought we had gotten off lightly with just some loose wheel bearings, however, when we jacked the van up to tighten them up, we noticed that there was a huge chunck of tread off one of the vans tyres. So off to the tyre shop we went and $270 later we had a new spare for the van. We were still pretty happy with that as we had seen cars need multiple new tyres or do some serious damage so we were counting our lucky stars!!
Until the next day… When we went to Wyndham to check it out and drove up to the top of the Bastion Lookout, where the car then decided it did not want to start. We finally got it started and drove straight back to Kununurra to all the mechanics in town hoping that someone would be able to tell us what was wrong with the car, we were thinking that it was the starter motor from the multiple crossings on the Gibb (mainly the large one at El Questro which had come over our bonnet). This is when we started to stress out, Toyota was booked out until end of September (It was the start of August at this time), and all the small mechanics were booked out for four weeks, plus! We honestly thought “SHIT!! What are we going to do?!” We then came across a smaller mechanic who had a starter motor on the shelf and was able to squeeze us in the next day!! We then bumped into Sarah’s Uncle who was transporting loads from Kununurra to the NT, and as he grew up in Wyndham he was able to call one of his local mates who had a mechanic shop and get us in that day for a better price than what we were going to pay! So we went and bought the part off of the original mechanic and headed over to TrevMec and had him fit the part. It was probably the best timing!
$800 later and finally Percy and the van were back up and running and we were on our way back to Broome (the non-Gibb way!!! Haha).
Cheers for reading our Gibb River Road Blog Series!!
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