When visiting a town like Wyndham, the vastness of Australia immediately feels apparent. So many of us have come from “the other side” of the country, or even the other side of the planet. We are visiting this area that is like nowhere else. We had different options for the day to discover it further, with an excursion going on the Ord River dam, flights over the Bungle Bungle Ranges, and a tour of the town of Wyndham itself.
Those who went on the Ord River Dam were certainly not disappointed. In such a vast and harsh area, this dam is the largest in the southern hemisphere and is truly an oasis which has attracted a biodiversity of life with many birds, crocodiles and a rock wallaby being spotted.
The Bungle Bungle ranges—I could go into how they came to be, the makeup of the sandstone and all of the other things that make this area a geological marvel, but the truth is one has to see it to “get it,” and the best way to see it is by air. Once one got over any fears of flying in a small plane (which was easy because we had such great weather) the surrounding beauty took all of our attention away. As I was sitting there trying to get my head around how this area formed over millions of years, I also tried to decide which defining feature made it so special. Some one behind me summarized it perfectly, “When you see this, it just makes you want to become a geologists.” None of us on our small plane were geologists, but we were all mesmerized by the raw beauty of the Bungle Bungles and luckily had a pilot who had great background knowledge on the area.
