This morning was a particularly low tide so we set off before sunrise to have a final attempt at finding the elusive dinosaur footprints at Gantheaume Point. After scrambling down to the water over rocks and boulders, this time we had success! Very large and very obvious footprints close to each other 🙂 .

Feeling energised and confident after our positive sighting, we decided to drive over to Cable Beach and see if we could repeat the outcome on the beach there. Once again we were successful :).

Feeling quite chuffed with ourselves we headed back to the vans to decamp and hit the road to new places for the first time in quite a while. We retraced our path back towards Fitzroy Crossing (which is still closed) and hit new scenery about 40km from Derby. Our first sight-seeing stop was at the Prisoner’s Boab Tree – a majestic Boab with a sad history. Aboriginal prisoners were chained to the tree when walking them to Derby to jail. A very sobering insight to the strained interactions between white settlers and the indigenous who inhabited the land.

At the location of the tree a 120m long cattle trough was placed to water between 500 and 1000 cattle as they were being herded to Derby for sale. It was originally fed from Myall’s bore, but once it dried up it is fed by windmill.

The weather is heating up again significantly. Back into the 30’s today and we were reminded how hot it was before the great wet happened a week and a half ago.

We arrived at Birdwood Downs station in time for a late lunch. Back to our old processes and bikes came off the racks and we all headed out exploring. There is a great 4.5km track that we rode around which takes in a number of very large boabs (have I mentioned how much I like boabs?).

Bob, Karen and Kieran all ordered hamburgers made from beef grown on the station for dinner, which were eaten around the fire. There are a lot of people staying here ready to hit the Gibb over the next few days.

Tomorrow Karen and Kieran have booked a Horizontal Falls tour (Bob and I did that one 6 years ago when we visited Broome). We will check out Derby while they are away.