Our Big Aussie Road Trip: Derby to Wyndham

We left Derby on Sunday 10th June by 9:30am, knowing that we had a long day of driving ahead of us. We had planned to stop at Mary’s Pool Rest Area that night (a popular spot with the grey Nomads), but we got there at 3:15pm and didn’t want to setup that early so we just had a quick look at the campsite (and there were about 100 caravans there, it was sooo busy) and then we kept driving toward Wyndham.

A big Boab Tree along the road to Wyndham

Mary's Pool Rest area - you would think it's a caravan park!!

We decided to head to the next 24 hour stopping spot (Leysters Rest) which was another 2 hours further down the road. We drove for another couple of hours and then pulled into Leyster’s Rest area after sunset. We had driven 630Km’s that day (and when you’re towing a 2t van with a non-turbo 4WD going 90Kmph as a top speed, then 630Km’s is a pretty big day!. We drove into the dark which was the latest driving we’ve done on our trip so far, but for a roadside stop that’s exactly how we wanted to do it. The drive from Derby to that rest area wasn’t anything particularly spectacular – there were lots of boabs, a lot of spot fires (which are apparently very common up North in the start of the dry season), lots of ‘Savannah’ type vegetation with the spinifex grass growing tall amongst sparsely spread out trees and lots of road trains. After we’d left Mary’s Pool, we came up behind a very large ‘Oversize’ truck that was taking up the entire road (both ways). They called us on the Radio and asked if we wanted to overtake, but as they were pulling off at the next rest stop, we let them go in front of us for 10Km.

A very large oversize truck we sat behind for a few K's

We slept quite well at that rest stop, with only the occasional Road train rumbling past on the main road a hundred metres away. We had left the car hooked up to the van that night, so after breakfast on Monday we got back into the car and drove to Wyndham. We setup our van in the Wyndham Caravan Park (which has a resident donkey lurking around the park, which the kids loved to look at, but it was pretty big, so we didn’t let the kids too near him!).

Wyndham Caravan Park's resident Donkey!

When we were all settled, we went to have a look at some of the main attractions of Wyndham: the Wyndham Jetty, the 5 rivers lookout, the big crocodile and the dreamtime statues. After we’d had a look at all of those, we decided to drive out toward Parrys’ lagoon (which is a large billabong with lots of birdlife) and went to the Bird Hide that they have setup there. There were heaps of birds at the with lots of different species as well as lots of fish too, it really was teeming with life. A bit later on, we had a look at a 2000 year old Boab which is in the Wyndham Caravan park. It was a massive tree!

Veiw from the Wyndham Jetty

The Big Crocodile at Wyndham

The 5 Rivers Lookout

Josh, Natalie, Sam and Liz at the top of the 5 Rivers Lookout

Wyndham's Dreamtime statues

Beautiful Parry's Lagoon

An Egret wandering the waters of the Billabong

Looking along Parry's Lagoon

The 2000 year old Boab tree

The next morning we left the van at the caravan park so that we could go to the Crocodile Farm just up the road. The farm runs a tour each day at 11am and so we joined the tour to feed the crocodiles and have a look at what was there. The farm breeds crocodiles for their skins (which get exported to Paris). We really enjoyed the crocodile tour – it was definitely the highlight of our stay in Wyndham. The bloke running the tour (the owner) was very interesting and informative, we ended up being there for 2 hours and seeing the biggest crocodiles we have ever seen in our lives!