Our Family Trips: Backdate: Day 24 - Ellenbrae

Before leaving Ellenbrae we walked down to the Billabong, it is large and shady and has jumping fish throughout - would be a perfect spot for an afternoon swim and great fun for kids, unfortunately it was very cool this morning so we gave the swim a miss.

Left Ellenbrae at 9am unfortunately the road heading toward El Questro wasn't much better than what we went through yesterday.

There is a lot of roadworks going ahead majority of the way to El Questro and the roads along the way have been very wet and chopped up by machinery and cars so they are rough but they appear to be smoothing and grading another area to move traffic over while they repair it.

We went through the Durack River, we have heard that it can be a little challenging to go through as well but on this occasion it was dry - there are areas of the river further down from the crossing that still have water but the crossing itself was dry.

Just before the Pentecost River there is a large hill and at the top there is a lookout area that looks over the Pentecost River and the Cockburn Ranges - we have attached photos below, the lookout was spectacular! At the time we weren't sure if the river was the Pentecost or not but we soon found out it was!

They were burning off in the area so there was some smoke around but it didn't cause any visibility issues when driving which was good.

We arrived at the Pentecost River and with camera in hand we were ready to pass through the great river.... and it was dry! Only a little amount of water - the River as per the lookout is still fairly full but over the crossing it has pretty well dried up - it was still exciting to pass through and we still took photos anyway. It doesn't take much to understand why it can be such a challenging river to cross, it is really wide and when full would be deep, I was relieved that I didn't have to stand on the shoreline and take photos but at the same time a little disappointed that we didn't cross it with water running through it, oh well next time!

We arrived at El Questro and set up camp, the camp ground is so big and they have the Pentecost River running along the back camp sites. They also offer private camp sites as well which are about 3km away from the main area, we went and had a look and they are really nice, all spaced apart so you get your privacy and peace and they sit along the Pentecost. We stayed in the main camp area as it is close to all the facilities, though next time we might give the private sites a go.

I went and put washing on once we arrived and couldn't believe, I ran into Adele, who I mentioned earlier in the blog, we met Adele and Greg on the Great Central Road when we were stuck at Tjukayirla Roadhouse. They were in a 200 series landcruiser and a Kimberley Kamper... we thought we may run into each other again as our paths were crossing at Broome but when we didn't we thought we must have missed each other by a few days - It was great to see them again! We exchanged stories of our trips so far and ended up going and seeing them later that day for some drinks and a chat!

When we set up, we found that the temporary fix on the brakes has failed and we have once again lost the brakes on the camper... There isn't much else we can do without parts but Kununarra being the next stop we will just tred carefully.

Tomorrow we are going to have a look at some of the sights and gorges in El Questro.

Until tomorrow, enjoy our photos :)

Rhianna and Anthony.

The lookout before the Pentecost River - The Cockburn Ranges