Fitzroy Crossing and Tunnel Creek

I have been a bit slack with the blog recently. It is very hard to do anything other than laze around in Broome! This is from a couple of weeks ago.
We drove from the Bungle Bungles to Fitzroy Crossing which is a small town on the Fitzroy River. This river is huge when there is lots of water and floods regularly. The latest flood was only in March this year.
Our first excursion was out to Tunnel Creek which was an 80km drive from Fitzroy Crossing into the middle of nowhere. There were plenty of boabs to admire on the drive in and we stopped for the boys to collect some of the nuts.


Tunnel Creek was the hideout of the Aboriginal freedom fighter Jandamarra in the 1890's. He spent many years hiding out in the area while trying to get the white settlers off the Bunuba lands. He was eventually shot there in 1897. The main attraction is the enormous cave that Tunnel Creek has carved out. You get to walk all the way through the cave and out the other side. However there is water in there all year round and so not only do you walk through pitch black caves filled with bats but you are wading through pitch black water where there may or may not be crocodiles. In some places the water comes up to an adult's waist. Of course the kids loved it! We took torches and made our way through the tunnel which is about 750m long. I found it very spooky but it was quite spectacular too.


The picture above is near the entrance to the cave. This one is at the entrance. The fattest blue tongue lizard we have seen!






After wading through the pitch black water there is a bit of daylight at the halfway point.



This is looking back into the caves.



I was very glad when we got back out again, not sure about wading through dark water in crocodile territory! Not to mention snakes, spiders, bats......!