Lake Argyle of Argyle Diamond Fame

It’s a quiet and calm start to the day. I get up early and take photos of the sunrise. Cause I can. And we are surrounded by Pukekos! This fills Jason with joy, NOT, here they are called Purple Swan Hens. Its quite nice seeing thing little reminder of home.

A delicious breakfast of poached eggs with salmon, domestic chores completed, and off we go to Lake Argyle.

It is only 74kms from where we are staying so we have plenty of time for the leisurely drive.

It’s my turn to drive again, and I have lots of time to perfect the Queen. Though I have had to limit it to one crescent turn, as it took too long to finish and the drivers had missed the full effect!

Even though we have plenty of time, it does NOT mean I am happy to drive behind some selfish fool, who drives 40km under the speed limit, wanders across the road, comes to a rolling stop for corners, and refuses to let anyone pass.

That sort of individual should be taken out into the desert, there is one nearby, and shot.

We arrive at Lake Argyle Resort (there goes that word again) and Caravan Park. It’s beautiful and as the name indicates, right next to Lake Argyle. The temperature is already hitting 24 degrees. We watch an antiquated video on how the lake was created. You have to love the health and safety, the guys all in stubbies, steel cap boots, no shirts. Quite amazing though.

As we wait on our little bus to take us to the jetty, it is check out time at the resort. There are literally dozens and dozens of massive caravans and 4×4 vehicles lined up to depart. It’s an exhibition of the type of money you can invest into this lifestyle. Our bus used a different exit, thank god, as the line of grey haired wanderers extended as far as the eye could see.

The project was all finished on time, but they ran out of money to do the clean up, so all the equipment was left at the site and now resides under the lake. Rusting away.

So clearly Lake Argyle is a manmade lake. It is Australia’s second largest (Lake Gordon/Lake Pedder, Tasmania is the largest) artificial lake by area.

At full supply level the area of the lake formed by the Ord Dam is 980 square kilometres and impounds 10.7 million mega litres of water, over 18 times the volume of water contained in Sydney Harbour! If the lake ever does flood to its maximum capacity, then the volume will more than triple – Sydney Harbour could be filled more than 70 times.

The catchment area for the lake is larger than Switzerland! It feeds many of the surrounding regions daily.

We are booked on the Island Explorer Lunch Cruise. These things can often be corny and too busy, but we struck it lucky this time and had a wonderful time.

Our hosts, Sam (the skipper, are all skippers named Sam?), Mark, and Katie. They are funny, knowledgeable, friendly, and helpful. We go to Crocodile Cove, to see bird’s nests, watch pelicans, see Short Eared Rock Wallabies (I could not make that name up), there is even a pull down chart for information and Q&A about the lake!

They make us lunch, freshwater fish BBQd on the boat, whilst we dock at a little island for a swim and a stone skimming competition.

The water is not warm, but we decide to go in anyway. All under the watchful eye of George our resident crocodile and life guard. Yes, seriously, George was about 20 meters down the beach from us as we were all frolicking about in the water.

Jason had spied the ladder up to the roof of the boat, and after a quick chat with Mark is scrambling up there.

He does the best bomb into the water of his life. If this was the water bomb Olympics he got the gold, no need for anyone else to compete. He saturated anyone that was near the end of the boat, the splash went above the roof of the boat, and sound sent shockwaves.

He apologized to those he drenched, but even they could tell he didn’t mean it.

I have to admit, I was proud, and he could not stop giggling like a girl for the rest of the day.

Even now, as he is reading this, he starts giggling.

Classic.

Lunch was great, the tour wonderful, it was a good swim, and just what we were looking for.

As we were heading back to the resort, I started working on our next route. We were hoping to get to Victoria River Roadhouse, to break up the trip to Katherine as much as possible. It is a six hour drive to Katherine from Lake Argyle and not something we wanted to do in one day.

It was at this exact moment I discovered that 30kms from Lake Argyle was the border for the Northern Territory. Which also meant a change in time zone. So when we cross this border we lose 1.5 hours. Bloody weird and annoying and inconvenient.

Our rental contract says we are not allowed to drive at night, probably too many tourists thumping into kangaroos, wallabies, and the like. So this could impact our ability to get to our destination.

It just feels really weird, the sun will rise and set at the same time, but the clock will state otherwise. I guess I should have done my homework on this.

We jump into Keem and make a start, its 317kms to Victoria River Roadhouse. No time to lose.

There was, of course, time to stop at the border and get a photo of us crossing into the Northern Territory J where the speed limit is 130kms an hour. Brilliant. The roads are terrible but at least you can drive faster…

The time leaps forward 1.5 hours. We continue with our game of the wave and spotting different animals.

Now, I don’t know if anyone else suffers from this, but when you are studiously looking for something your eyes start making shit up.

So on top of all the animals and trees we are looking for, we are starting to find a lot of other things:

• Logadiles – I have spoken of before, when a log looks like a crocodile
• Punga Pig –a tree looks like an animal
• Termammal – when termite nests look like mammals

Road hallucinations.

There is not a great deal to see along this road, and we were passing the time searching for anything of interest. We were making good time though, 130kms an hour meant we were going to make it to the Victoria River Roadhouse without an issue.

I drove the last hour, which was a bit nerve wracking as it was getting darker and generally that’s when the animals start getting active – the witching hour. I did not want a dead wallaby on my conscious.

YAY, we successfully made it without death or injury, with the light still on us, and with enough time to set up camp.

We even had enough light to do a bit of exploring. The Victoria River was just down behind the camp and we decided to go for a walk via some very tall reeds. The light was fading and it gave the entire campsite an eerie feeling. Think horror movie:

• Boy says to girl “wait here, its dangerous”
• Girl says ok, then goes anyway (stupid girl)
• Girl is never seen again or found with a non recoverable injury

But I hate stereo types, and if anyone was going to disappear it was Jason. As we walked through the path you could hear something very large moving in the reeds. VERY large. This was making Jason just a little twitchy – actually a lot twitchy.

Of course I was sympathetic – OF COURSE I WASN’T.

We made it to the old bridge, where a tree was firmly wedged in the railing. Most likely from flood waters during some extreme weather in the wet season. As the light faded we watched kangaroos, wallabies, and bats before heading back to camp.

On the way back there were a few more noises in the reeds, but the best bit was when Jason knocked a branch with his leg, causing the reeds to rattle, causing him to yelp and jump simultaneously. That’s right folks, he did it to himself. Of course I would have saved him, but in the interim, it was very funny.

The setting of the roadhouse was very nice, but the facilities were lacking a little. I do think that the owners of such places should have to use the facilities to see how user friendly they are. Feel our pain. Things like hooks or benches in the shower stalls. Bench tops next to sinks for dishes. The little things.

Another exquisite dinner by Chef Walford. Into bed, time zone is messing with us, but it’s dark, so we go to bed.

Middle of the night toilet stop, the usual (my god I am old before my time – the night is measured by the proximity to the toilet), and the amount of kangaroos and wallabies hanging out was very cool. We got to watch them for a while before they turned and hopped off. The howls of the dingoes and the bats screeching, it was all very magical J especially as they kept out of our tent.