Keep River National Park NT

Saturday was our last day in Western Australia after 57 days (63rd day away from home). After 2nights at our spot at Spillway Creek it was only 14km to Lake Argyle.

It is the biggest man-made lake in the southern hemisphere. Created by the Ord River Dam, at its peak it can hold a staggering 32 million cubic metres of water. That's more than 20 times the size of Sydney Harbour.

The construction of the Ord River Dam was completed in 1971. The dam wall is 335 m long and 98 m high. In 1996, the spillway wall was raised by 6 metres which doubled the dam's capacity.

The sealed road continues past Lake Argyle Village across the dam wall and ends at the day use picnic area at the base of the Dam. From here we had a view of the Hydro Electric power station.  Some scenic lookouts were located along the road and along the top of the Dam wall itself.

As we had no plans to do a boat cruise we headed back out to Victoria Highway and turned right to cross the border into the Northern Territory. We didn’t need to be checked through but we did stop for the border sign. We also had to set our clocks forward 1 1/2 hours. 

Not far from the border was Keep River National Park. We bought our NP pass online $60pp for 12 months (the other alternatives was $10pp per day or $30pp/2 weeks). The camp site was $10pp per night. We booked #6 at Goorandalng.

We drove in and crossed paths with Gavin and Robyn once again! It was 32km to the end of the park where we stopped at Jarnem to do the 6.5km/2 hour loop walk. The timing wasn’t ideal as the temperature was getting pretty warm but we managed it ok.

The track took us through some lovely shaded woodland. 

The views from the lookout were stunning and we had a breeze to cool us down a bit after the uphill trek.

Pretty Turkey Bush

The section of Nigli Gap had us following the base of the beautiful escarpment with plenty of palms.

Notice how the growth is like a spiral.

Our camp for tonight.

114km today