Argyle Cruise in Sunshine

Tuesday, sunshine at last. Mike was happy getting a dawn run from the campground, across the Ord River dam wall, and down the gorge a bit, and back.

In the afternoon we did a cruise on Lake Argyle with Drew, a young fellow who has spent all his life here and certainly knows his lake. It's incredible to contemplate how big this body of fresh water is (30 - 50 Sydney Harbours, depending on the water level), how relatively small the dam is that holds it back, how it only took 3 wet seasons to fill, how it is massively underutilised as both an irrigation resource and as a tourism resource.

The cruise was in a very speedy catamaran - it had to be, we covered 100km on the water, and still only looked at a fraction of his huge lake. It was quite windy and hence choppy, which made high speeds in open water very uncomfortable for both the passengers and for the cat, so we couldn't go to the far side of the lake to see where the Ord River comes in. Instead we explored a long way up a river running into Ulysses Bay and saw a whole heap of wildlife.

The wildlife included more crocodiles (freshies, no confirmed reports of salties in Lake Argyle), ospreys (see photo), sea eagles, azure kingfishers, cormorants. We also saw wallabies and even big herds of feral cattle whose ancestors were lost when the valley was flooded 20 odd years ago.

It's quite amazing to see Kimberleys geology butting up against this huge man made sea!