The Karunji Track we wanted to take to get to the Gibb River Road (GRR) was closed when we got there which meant a detour of 50km just to start with. It was still a nicely sealed road but we had to cycle back to the main turnoff to start our GRR experience. The first 50km were still properly sealed but then the gravel/dirt road started. The road conditions vary greatly between the different parts of the road. You get everything from light grey gravel to yellow sand and red dusty dirt parts. During the wet season the road is closed as all the rivers are too wide to cross and in May or June they grade the whole road before opening it again for the public. During the dry season the road conditions get worse and worse until parts are graded again once the corrugations (Wellblechstraße) gets too bad. As we were there at the end of the dry season, some parts had just been graded and were really nice while other parts were very corrugated, sandy and just run out from all the trucks and tourists driving on it. Most of the time we could find an acceptable line on the side of the road that was more or less smooth but there were also stretches that were corrugated or too sandy all over the road and these were really rough, both for our butts and our equipment. Our average speed was at around 20km/h on the highway but on the GRR we often just did 13km/h or even less when the conditions were really bad.

The great thing about the GRR is that it crosses the Kimberleys, a set of arid mountain ranges that are seen as some of the last bit of wilderness in Australia. Along the road there are just two roadhouses that are pretty expensive which meant that we packed food for 14 days not to be relying on the expensive shops along the way. For water we could carry 24 liters between the two of us but there are not enough stations or places to just refill it easily. As we do not carry a water filter to filter all the water from the creeks and rivers, we decided to put up a sign saying „Water Welcome“, asking passing cars to give us some water if they can spare any. That way we usually got about 15-20 liters of water every day and about every second or third car would stop to help us out. We took the chance to have a little bit of a break, meet some cool people and refill our water supplies. Some people even gave us cool or even frozen water, which felt like an amazing luxury to us because in the afternoon all our water was 40° degrees warm and not refreshing anymore.

After the first 300km we had most of the elevation covered and the more interesting part of the road began, namely the area that has all the nice gorges and waterfalls that made us take that road. The first one for us was Barnett River Gorge which we just reached in the evening after 110km and 8h on the bike. We could have a swim there to refresh, knowing that there are no crocodiles there as the area is too high up and crocs do not like climbing – nice! All larger rivers and lakes in the North of Australia are possibly infested with salt water crocodiles that are very dangerous and aggressive, meaning that you cannot swim in most of the waterways you come across. From Barnett River Gorge we just did a short day of 40km to reach Manning Gorge close to Mt Barnett Roadhouse which was the first place for us to relax a bit, have our first shower in four days and not be on the bike every day. With temperatures of about 36-40° degrees every day, the breeze while cycling was the only thing keeping us cool and taking a break would feel hotter than actually cycling. Funny story: A half wild bull was eating flowers around our tent at Manning Gorge all night long and in the morning he got stuck on our tent pole with his horn. He panicked and ran away, snapping our tent pole in two. :-D

After the amazing Manning Gorge we kept going towards the Aboriginal community of Imintji and Bell Gorge which was recommended to us as their favourite by pretty much all the people we met. The only problem with it was that it is 30km off the GRR with a pretty rough road to get there. First we tried to find someone to give us a ride into the gorge and back to the road afterwards but we could not find anybody, so we decided to just cycle all the way. We even found the road not to be worse than the main road. On the campsite close to the gorge we met Verena, another German cyclists, whose tracks we were following for the whole time on the GRR. She was just about to leave after two nights there but we caught up with here some days later. Since then we are traveling as a trio and it is so cool to be on the road with someone else just to have interesting conversations, share experiences and have fun. From Bell Gorge the road was pretty bad all the way to where the sealed road started again which was 100km outside of Derby.

In the end we reached Derby after just nine days and 760km of mostly rough road. It was a great experience and we would recommend doing it to everybody but we said we would not decide to cycle it again ;-). After doing our shopping in Derby we met Kelly, who invited us to camp in her garden just outside of town and we ended up staying there for two nights to rest and relax our sore legs and butts before moving on in direction of Broome.

All the best from Australia,
Vroni, Droni & Joni