Wyndham Day 1

View from out our van back door, across waterway with view of Kelly's Knob in the background. Just beautiful!

A black necked stork, wandering around the Caravan Park without a care in the world! It even put its knee up and posed for photos. Just beautiful creatures!

Today we thought we’d kill some time waiting for our windscreen and head up to Wyndham for a couple of nights. It was a sad forlorn type of town. Had some nice artworks etc, but looked like a town that was hanging on by the skin of its teeth. There only seemed to be one or two newer buildings in town and all the shops and houses were old.

About 30kms before arriving in Wyndham, we turned off to a place called The Grotto. It didnt even have a name. It was the most beautiful spot. I guess a lot of locals go there for a swim and stuff as it has water all year round. We climbed down the 140 odd stairs to the bottom and the water, we were told, was 300m deep! It was just stunning.

view looking back towards the carpark, just before desending the stairs to the bottom.

view of the water hole complete with swing!

The Port Wyndham township (5kms further down the road) was even more run down. Although they had a huge plaque installed for their new floating jetty for the public to use. I have a great couple of pictures of it at low and high tide. The tides are bigger than Broome but I think slightly smaller than Derby.

Low Tide

High Tide

We drove around the whole town and decided to have dinner at the Wyndham pub. It was covered in old pictures, faded and dusty just like the town. We were saddened to read that the Swan Brewery purchased the stunning two storeyed Victorian with wrap around verandah, and then knocked it over and built a brand new asbestos modern hotel and about a dozen rooms. It’s a sad demise to a stunning hotel. The current owners have owned the hotel for 18 years and have had it on the market, for what the locals appear to have said for years. The guy who bought El Questro offered them $1mill for it and she turned it down. I believe its on the market at $3m! It’s a total knock over job. Its not even worth wasting money on paint. Sad. I couldn’t say they’d have the turn over to even justify the price, but there you go.

It appears that since the government meatworks were closed down in 1985, the town hasn’t really recovered. Although the mining companies; Argyle and Sarah Downs or something like that, appear to bus in workers to and from the town, so that; coupled with their exporting their ore etc out of the harbour account for some industry for the town, but really there isn’t much. It’s a shame, as it’s a fabulous place.