Thursday, July 8, 2010

Cruise on the Ord River

After much deliberation I decided to go on a cruise on the Ord River which takes you 55 kms on a fast boat up to the dam wall of the Argyle Dam.
The bus came at 11.30 to the caravan park to take you to the boat.
The boat is a fast boat that can skim over the water very quickly. I sat right up the front and in front of a glass door so the magnificent scenery was framed by the door and I certainly had the best view on the boat.
As we travelled through the Kununurra Lake we realized what a huge expanse of water there is. We made fast time up the river as we skimmed along the water with the magnificent Carr Boyd ranges on either side. As we entered the huge Carton Gorge you can see in detail the rock formation that have been weathered for millions of years. The huge cliffs flank either side of the river and are very red and impressive.


There are quite a lot of freshwater crocs in this river and we saw some basking on the banks.
Pandanus palm lined the banks as well as tea trees,boabs and lots of other trees and . There is a lot of long reedy grass which is not native but is holds the banks intact and provides habitat for small animals and birds. As we reached the upper part of the river we all had to sit down as the water level in the river had dropped because the Argyle mine wasn’t operating for the last few days and they get their power from the hydro electric scheme that they installed at the dam river. As they weren’t generating as much power as usual they were not releasing as much water. The boat draws 800 cms and the water level was 900 cms so we had to weave in and out of the rocks and try to skim over the top. You could see the rapids created by the shallow water. After an hour we arrived at the dam wall.
It is hard to believe that such a large amount of water is hald by such a small wall.Here we had to pick up some others who had been on a boat cruise on the dam. On the way back we cruised slowly down the river with Jeff our driver pointing out interesting features. We saw some more crocs, a bat colony, some wading birds, big eagles and a beautiful water monitor. Jeff explained that a lot of this wild life will be destroyed by the advancing cane toads. There are great drives in WA to kill the cane toads but the will be in the area very shortly. What a shame for such a pristine area.
Jeff pointed out all the areas in the rocks where water flows in the wet and you can see the black marks left by the waterfalls. The cruises run all year around so it would be amazing to see it in the Wet.
We pulled into a lovely area on the river bank and were treated to tea, coffee, pumpkin scones, carrot cake and delicious fresh fruit.

On the way back we went up a peaceful side river
where there were some beautiful reflections and the whole area is so peaceful and unspoilt. Very few people come this far up the river so you really feel in tune with nature.
As we neared home we thought we would not see any sunset because of the cloud cover but right at the last minute the sun shone through to send some pink tinges on the clouds so we didn’t feel cheated.
Finally we came as it dusk fell we came into the lake by our caravan park and I just had a short walk home after a wonderful day of immersion in nature and well worth it

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