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An interesting day was spent today, the sun rises early in W.A. and because of the 90 min time zone change we were out of whack. Dennis checked out the surrounds on an early morning walk while I stayed in bed a bit longer, although I couldn't sleep. We are staying here for 3 days so it gave us a chance to do some washing. Then I heard the first of many helicopter flights for the day, boy it was loud so I went to have a look and discovered the helipad just 200 metres away. Once the washing was hung out we went for a drive not too far, to view the famous Lake Argyle dam, we drove across the spillway to the river and saw the hydro outlets gushing out of two of the 4 outlets causing waves on the shore opposite. The hydro supplies the Argyle diamond mine and the townships of Kununurra and Wyndham. The lake is 900 klms around the shore. It discharges the same amount of water per hour that the whole of Australia uses per hour! It was a huge cattle station owned by the Durak family for generations since the early 1800s and Kimberley Durak had the idea to dam it so it would supply enough water to grow crops all year round however he died 2 years before construction began. It took only 3 years to build and 3 wet seasons to fill. The Durak house was taken apart brick by brick and transferred to higher land near the caravan park we are in. There still is several buildings of the homestead under the water and makes an interesting dive for divers. We visited the house today which is a museum and also has many of the family gravestones. At the back of the property a bower bird has a bower and he is in the process of decorating for attracting a female partner. It was very interesting watching him, I have never seen one in the wild before.
This afternoon we went on a sunset cruise on Lake Argyle it was a great experience and we saw several fresh water crocs, a euro(small kangaroo) and water birds. They stopped the boat and encouraged people to jump overboard for a swim, so of course Dennis did. Being fresh water it is hard to keep afloat so they throw you 3 noodles and a drink of your choice, well everything was going fine until Dennis got cramp and dropped his beer, fumbled to hang on to his noodles and scrambled back on board but he was fine and glad he did it, only 2 adults did it and 3 kids but the kids ranging from about 5 to 10 were so confident, even climbing up the ladder to the roof and jumping off. We had champagne, wine and nibbles as we watched the sunset. It was a fairly windy day and their was white caps on the water but sometimes they can be as big as 3 metres! We were out there 3 hours and only saw a very small section of this incredible man made lake.
- comments
Heather I thought I told you to put Dennis on a leash! All sounds fantastic!
Theresa Of course Dad jumped in and got a cramp! Wow it sounds massive that lake. First signs of spring are showing here with sunny 18 degrees and new shoots on bushes and trees!