I was the only one left at Mount Barnett/Manning Gorge; the girls rode off yesterday and Bruce got his lift out with Jerry to Broome.

So after a leisurely start and a snack at the roadhouse after riding out through the dust it was onto the Gibb River Road once more, with what I thought was a strained muscle in my calf.

The 500 m of bitumen between the Mount Barnett roadhouse and the Kupungarri aboriginal community on the other side of the GRR ran out just past the community turnoff. The road wasn’t bad, a bit rough and loose in places as it had been graded only yesterday. In fact I passed the grader returning doing the other side drain about 10 kms further on just before the Galvan’s Gorge car park.

I pulled into the carpark for a bit of lunch and then walked/rode the 500 m in to the gorge itself for a look around and a swim. A young dad was herding and encouraging his young kids (6-8 year olds?) to swim to the waterfall and to get interested in the aboriginal rock art. Swim yes, rock art, no!

Had a swim myself

After leaving Galvan’s Gorge it was straight up the scarp onto the Philips Range. The second grader was working on the top of the Philips Range so some bits of road were good, others very rough. Past the famous Top of the Range Tyre and Mechanical repair shop (forced out of the community at Imintji by demand for high rents)

From the Top of the Range Tyre and Mechanical it was mainly downhill through a nice well grassed valley, past the Adcock Gorge turnoff and out onto the plain once again.

I blew out about 10 km short of Imintji and rolled out the ground sheet in a road works scrape. Quite dry around here.