DiNo's Travels Around Australia - 2014/2015/16/17: Day 84

Today was bright and sunny, just the day to go for a 246km round tour of Windjana Gorge and Tunnel Creek.

Windjana Gorge is in the Napier range about 144km from Derby. It is 20km down a gravel road from the infamous Gibb River Road, with Tunnel Creek a further 25km on. There is a fair percentage of the Gibb River Road to the turnoff bitumened now, say 60%. Fortunately we went in a four wheel drive bus and though we got bounced around a bit at times, there was no driving stress for us. We left at 8.15am and returned at 6.15pm so it was a long day.

Windjana Gorge occurs where the Lennard River cuts through the Napier Range. The Napier Range is a continuation of the Devonian barrier reef seen also at Geikie Gorge at Fitzroy Crossing. The reef is highly weathered and provided some spectacular rock scenes. The gorge is around 100m wide and is very sandy. There are permanent waterholes in the gorge, which provided us with many crocodile sightings. In a couple of cases we were no more than 10 metres from them. There are plenty of barramundi in the holes so the crocs are well fed and are obviously used to humans passing by.

5 minutes down the road are the remains of the Lillimooloora Homestead, famous for its part in the Jandamarra story - more later.

Next port of call was Tunnel Creek. This creek has cut a 750m long hole through the limestone range. The base of the creek is mostly sand but we had to wade through the creek nine times as we traversed its length, at worst through water up to our knees. At times the roof was as low as 4m high but there were two spots where the roof had caved in and this provided some light. Nonetheless we had to use torches for a large portion of the walk. There were the usual cave peculiarities eg stalactites and stalagmites, but because the cave is filled with rushing water each wet season,these were a bit nondescript. It was quite an experience.

We had a local aboriginal guide for the day, Jimmy "Dillon" Andrews, who actually lives at Windjana Gorge. He and his grandson provided a welcome ceremony with smoke from green eucalyptus leaves and he sang to us native stories in Tunnel Creek. Needless to say he was well informed about the significance of these places to his people. He related the Jandamarra story. It was about a young aboriginal boy who grew up under the mentorship of Constable Richardson. Their relationship was extremely close. It was in the late 1890's when the trust previously established between the aborigines and the settlers was lost when their sacred places were desecrated by the introduced stock, particularly sheep. Fighting erupted and Jandamarra's uncle, Elleamarra, and a number of his tribe's elders, were captured and held for five days under chains at Lillimooloora Homestead. Under pressure from his relatives Jandamarra shot Richardson at the homestead and released his people. He then evaded capture for three years while hiding out in the Windjana Gorge/ Tunnel Creek area. Eventually he was wounded by another aborigine working for the police and then shot and killed by the head policeman.