Day 64

Day 64 Lake Argyle

The day started out as normal but got under way well and truly in the afternoon. We had breakfast

Croc at ramp

Intake tower

and Maureen did a load of washing then we went and had a swim in the pool. We had booked a lake tour that started at 2:15 and finished at 6:15 and you got to tour the lake and watch the sun go down. After the swim we came back to Girt and had lunch and a snooze, then Maureen sorted out the washing and we went up to the office as they had a video showing on the building of the dam. It was an old film made at the time of the construction from 69 – 71 and it was very interesting. You look at all the OS&H that is not there. No shirts, not hard hats, dozers with no roll cage but a beach umbrella for shade, they light

Rock wallaby with joey

Rock Wallaby

the fuse for explosives with a cigarette, you see bulldozers working within inches of workers feet, it is amazing to look back on. They talk about the rock they got for the dam wall and how they created it by blowing up a nearby hill in two massive explosions, each with over million pounds of amotil and that they were the biggest non-nuclear explosions in the southern hemisphere and were recorded on seismic machines in Canberra.

Lake argyle

Swimming Butlers Bay

The movie over, we were loaded onto the big coach and driven across the dam wall so we could see the Hydro-electric plant and then back over to the area to load us onto the boat. The boat is fantastic and is a wave piercing catamaran and easily held the 26 of us and possible twice more. The skipper was great and obviously enjoyed his job. Graham has been doing the job for some time and knew his areas.

The Tour Group

Butlers Bay

Even as we were pulling away from shore, there was a croc floating there about 1.8m long! We went around the corner and there were these 2 Rock Wallabies there perched on the cliff, one had a joey. Graham fed them some wallaby pellets and they were obviously used to it. Our first stop was at Butler Bay – named after Harry Butler who came up there and organised the rescues of a lot of the wildlife that had been

Nav Systems big screen

Fish feeding

stranded by the rising waters. We all got in the water and it was lovely. The temperature was a very warm 28 degrees and was so warm that the crocodiles rarely had to come out to warm up. By the way there are approximately 35,000 crocodiles in the lake – freshwater ones, so no problems swimming. It was a quick swim and then back on board for the grand tour.

The lake is huge, about 70kms long by 40kms wide depending on water level. For every metre up the dam wall, it extends 1 km Eastwards. The figures for it are just phenomenal and really hard to take in. on our way to the next stop, Graham

Crocodile nests

Euros

brought down the big screen and relayed his navigation system to it, now this is a nav system for you Rob, 48” screen! He showed us where we were and where we were going. We pulled into a small bay and he fed the fish. There were hundreds of them, catfish, black bream and silver cobbler or shovel catfish as they are known. Following the feeding frenzy we went out into the big lake area. It is classified as an inland sea due to its size as you cannot see the far horizon and waves can get up to 2m high with

Croc

View on Lake Argyle

winds. We went past the old homestead area and the breeze dropped right off and the water went glassy. Pulling into another bay, Graham pointed out a sand bank that crocodiles use for nesting and you could see where there were holes and old eggs and right at the waters edge was a baby crocodile, it was about a year old and this was his territory. Graham pulled into another small bay and found a group of Euros on

View Lake Argyle

Sunset Lake Argyle

one of the islands that live there and again he fed them Wallaby Pellets and they were quite friendly and came close to the boat.

From this point we went out into the middle of the lake and watched the sun go down, quite spectacular. The boat was stopped and we were again allowed a swim, this time for about 30 mins with drinks supplied. Getting out was the hard part. They

Swimming at sunset

Swimming at sunset with Champagne

supplied floats and we all floated around and had a few drinks in the water in the twilight. The water was glassy and warm and no one wanted to leave but time was up. We then drove back to the starting point in pitch black, an end to a glorious day. Tomorrow we are planning on going into Kununurra to do some sightseeing there and get some phone access so we can post the last couple of days.

End of a hard day