Ok we have had enough of bumpy roads, get us to El Questro!

Another night at Drysdale Station complete, it was time to continue along the Gibb. So back towards the Gibb we drive, turning off the Kalumburu road, with our first stop being Ellenbrae.

We had heard, from many of our ‘grandparent’ friends and passing chats, that Ellenbrae, even though it was not on the official tourist center map, served wonderful scones. With that on offer how can you not attempt to find it and stop there!

The journey there was definitely not as bad as the Mitchell Plateau track, but it wasn’t far behind. What seemed like forever, we finally arrived at this cute picturesque property. Straight into their little café we went and brought some scones. We sat on their balcony, with a view of so many tiny birds feeding from hanging house structures.

After this delicious stop, we would recommend to anyone, we planned on heading straight to El Questro Station. This meant that we would skip Home Valley Station, somewhere we had planned on staying a night. We decided to skip it because we had simply had enough of the rattling and wanted to get to bitumen again, El Questro was the last stop on the Gibb River Road.

So just after passing Home Valley Station we came to the Pentecost River Crossing. This crossing was in all pictures and books about the Gibb River Road, Alex was very exicted to see and cross it. It was a tidal crossing and it did note that on occasion there were crocodiles. However when we arrived the tide was low, which was actually a good thing for us as we are not fans of high water crossings. But there were no visible crocodiles, sad but also relieving in a way.

It was a long long drive, not too ambitious, but too long for us to be cooped up in the car together. We did not stop really, or have a proper lunch break, except for scones, so we blame the food or lack of.

When we arrived at El Questro we were definitely thrilled to get out of the car. As this Station was the last stop, or for some the first stop on the Gibb, it was quite well set up. In fact it did not even feel like we were on the Gibb anymore, it felt like we were in some extremely fancy, yet somehow remote town/resort. It was definitely something different from all other nights spent on the Gibb, even in our tent and with hot showers; this was a whole other world.

It was a lovely place to stay though; we picked a nice empty area to set up and got to work. Not long after setting up did many people then set up right next to us, making the fancy place now crowded. If you haven’t gathered by my tone yet, this was not what we expected, nor were we that keen on the place. We felt a little uncomfortable maybe, and somewhat sad that it was not like the other places we had been staying, already we missed the remoteness.

However they had a bar and we did not miss out on taking advantage there. It was a Friday so there was live music, which made for a nice atmosphere.

After our drink we went back to cook some dinner. We had some mince in the fridge to make meatballs with pasta, however when we fished out the mince from the fridge it was clear there would be no meatballs. We had thought there had been a strange smell in the fridge for a day or two but for the life of us we could not figure out what it was. Without really moving much around we never found the smell and thought we must have spilt something and would clean it out once we arrived in Kununurra. Turns out it was just our mince in the zip lock bag, which had somehow split, leaked out and then been festering away at the bottom of the fridge. Disgusting is one way to put it.

Alex was amazing, he cleaned the fridge and everything right away, I got to work trying to making a nice dish out of pasta, some sauce in a jar, olives, onion and some herbs. With all that combined we actually had quite a nice dish, it was definitely a nice vegetarian alternative.

With everything all clean, we headed back to a quiet night next to our very close neighbours. It was strangely freezing in comparison to other nights, so Lianne you will be happy to know that we used our hot water bottles, which helped a lot. Our last night on the Gibb was somehow the coldest we had had the whole time.

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