...A big day out....

Well, that was a big day out. This morning I was picked up at the front gate of the caravan park and driven to the airport.

The family have gifted me a flight over Lake Argyle, the Bungle Bungles, and the pastoral Kimberley (an early Birthday pressie..)

Our pilot, Rebecca, bundled us into a 12 seater plane, and took to the skies...

Once in the air you start to appreciate the vastness of the region. Lake Argyle, the second largest man made lake in Australia (a surface area of about 1,000 sq/km)

It was constructed between 1969 and 1971, as part of the Ord Irrigation scheme.

There are vast swathes of farmland service by the scheme, in the eaerly stages cotton was the primary crop, but pests and diseases made commercial success impossible. Today there are a wide variety of tropical fruits, vegetables and more recently Indian Sandlewood have proven successful.

From the air you can see the vastness of the lake.

The Bow River divided a couple of the locak stations. One of 400,000 acres, the neighbour 500,000......

This is the Bow River, as immortilised by Cold Chisel.

The terrain varies from flat(ish) areas to soaring cliffs, as a result of acient geologic upheavals.

   The comes the Bugle Bungles, these unique            formations were unknown to the outside world            until filmed my a news crew in 1983.

The are really a spectacular sight, there are only a couple of access tracks into the Bungle Bungles, both 4x4 recommended. Whilst you can see some of the formations, a view from the air give a full appreciation of the scope of the formations.

On the way back to Kununurra we few over the now de-commissioned Argyle diamond mine. This mine operated from 1983 to 2020, it produce a large quantity of diamonds including 90% of the worlds pink diamonds.

Over the lifetime of the mine it produced 750,000,000 carats (150,00 kg) of rough diamonds. The diamonds at Argyle have been dated to about 1.58 billion years.

The mine site ihas shut down and is undergoing rehabilitation.

You can get an idea of the size of the open cut, whe you look at the size of the mining truck in this picture......

...and the money spent on infrastructure, the airport runway is longer than the second strip at Tullamarine....built for the FIFO workers at the mine.

As a last surprise just before landing we flew over the iconic Ivanhoe crossing, this was once the only crossing of the Ord River into Kununurra. It is one of the must do 4x4 adventures....