Hidden Hot Springs, Epic Hikes & Secret Swims | Gibb River Road Adventure Part 2

Welcome back to our Gibb River Road mini-series. After a big day getting to El Cuestro station, we finished off some van preparation and set up camp for the next few days of exploring this part of the Kimberley. We took the dogs for a walk around the grounds, checking out El Cuestro station, before calling it an early night ready for our first adventure the next morning. Morning all! We are on our first adventure. It is about six o'clock in the morning and it is 12 degrees, so it's pretty bloody chilly. Today we're heading to Zebedee Falls? Zebedee Creek? Zebedee Springs. Yeah, Thermal Pools. So, we met some people that went there yesterday, said it was nice and warm. We're going to jump in and warm up because it is absolutely freezing. We're not used to it. Nah, it's nice though. It is very nice to start cooling down, have that winter weather approaches. Yeah, very good. And then, what are we doing after that? A little bit of a hike? Yeah, we'll do a hike up to Emma Gorge. So, we do have the dogs in the back seat. They are just going to hang inside the car while we're at Zebedee Springs. They're nice and quiet. We figured it's probably a bit too early to leave them in the van in case Louis decides to have a bit of a sing. But once we get back, we'll feed them, take them for a bit of a walk, put them in the van for a couple of hours and then go and explore Emma Gorge. Yeah, it's going to be exciting. Join along. Zebedee Springs gates are locked at 12 noon. Well, lucky it's way before 12. Yeah, so they actually are open from seven o'clock. We were told the other day just to get there a little bit early because the gates were open a little bit early that day. So, we got here 45 minutes early and the ranger literally just unlocked the gates and left. So, we're going to be the first people in here and have it to ourselves until people start rolling in, which is a bit sweet. Oh, how is our luck? This is the thing about being early birds, right? Fantastic. Look at this. Muddy creek hole. First one's in for the day. It's a bit deeper than I thought. How beautiful is this backdrop? Oh, how good is this? It's just random. It's literally empty. Somewhere with the boat accessible. Oh yeah, there's a boat on the roof. Yeah, let's not let's not wreck that. Oh, this is sick. Unreal, babe. Oh, you got your little parking base here. I'm just going to back up into this one. I'll keep the dogs nice and cool and fairly far away from anyone else. Hell yeah. Let's go do a soak. How good does this feel? Literally, only one's rolling in here this morning. Yeah, it's probably a perfect timing for us. Enjoy it for hopefully 10 or 15 minutes before the crowds start rocking out. Well, I mean, if everyone listens to the rules and the signs, no one's going to be here for another 45 minutes. So, that'll be great. I don't know about that. Which way do we go? Isn't there like a a best pool or a good... I think it's the higher one. Yeah, one of the top. Well, let's go up then. Oh my god, it just keeps going. Wow, this is awesome. What do you reckon? Very, very relaxing. So beautiful. We ended up with about 20 minutes of uninterrupted, this whole place to ourselves. It's been incredible. So, we've been here for about 40 or so minutes and there's probably another 8 or 10 people here, but it's still very secluded. We can't see any of them. Yeah, it's well worth it. Very good. Very good spot. Couple up the top. Some down the bottom. You can just see everyone walking in there, but still very lovely and very nice. Nice and warm too. Very warm. We just got out from the nice 30 degree water to a 12 degree day and realized we didn't bring any towels. They're not even in the car. They're not even in the car, so we're gonna freeze. We're gonna walk back wet. I have some rags that we can use as towels or an old shirt. I'm just putting my trackies on. I'm just gonna, I need to put something on. What time did we get there? You reckon about quarter past six or so we got in? Yeah, we got in at quarter past six and it's quarter past seven now. Quarter past seven, the place is just absolutely packed. Like it's... There'd be 30 people right now. 30, yeah, at least. And there's really not room for that many people to comfortably enjoy it. So everyone's stepping over everyone and I'm just glad we made it there and got to see that for a good 20 minutes or so, completely alone as well. Car park looks a little bit different to an hour ago. That'd be nearly every single car park's got taken up. There's another 20 people here just about to go home. We're going upwards. We're going up. Where are we? We're at the trailhead of Emma Gorge today, this morning. What are we, 9.30? 9.30 or so. We've done a 3.2 return kilometre hike. Yep. They said it was going to get a bit rocky and it already has. We are, oh, I don't know, 200 metres into the track so far and it's definitely going uphill and rocky. But it's about a half an hour drive or so from El Cuestro, down back out onto the highway and then down to Emma Gorge station, which we didn't expect. Yeah, it's still part of the El Cuestro Wilderness Park. It looks like a stunning gorge. I guess it's one of the more popular or well-known gorges on the actual station, so super keen to check it out. It looks magnificent. Yeah, and definitely jump in for a swim at the end, I think. Don't fall in. Don't fall in. It's quite nice scenery here. A little bit overgrown the track on the way in, but it's not too bad. A bit of rock hopping, creek crossing. So this track has pretty much been like this for the last, well, 200 metres or so. If you're planning on coming, yeah, yeah, little blue squares tell you where you're going. Just a bit of a bit of an idea if you're coming in here, wear some good shoes and bring some water. Put some sunscreen on, especially if you're a little albino like me. posts and things like that, but I did not understand, I didn't, what am I trying to say? I wasn't prepared for how big the gorge actually is. Yeah, it's fantastic. Huge area, massive swimming hole. And just so crisp, like, water that's going to take the wind out of you once you jump in and make your skin feel like it's burning. But I'm not making that sound very enjoyable, am I? It was beautiful. It was fantastic. Yeah, great spot. Oop, there's a hornet. Don't bite me. Absolute bucket list location. I'm so glad we did the walk. Took us about 40 minutes to get in there. Yeah, about 40 minutes there and hopefully we'll make it back in 40 minutes, have some lunch, check on the doggers. Yeah, and have a bit of a relax for the afternoon and get ready to hit El Cuestro Gorge tomorrow. I was waiting for you to say something then. Yeah, it's going to be great. I'm excited for that one. It is a long walk. Yeah, we've got to figure that out. Someone has told us it's 12km to return. I think it's six, but we'll go check that out when we get back and get prepared for whatever tomorrow looks like. Yep, another big hike. See you there. After a big day exploring Zebedee Springs and hiking Emma Gorge, we relaxed for the afternoon before heading on a 7km round trip to Saddleback Ridge Lookout to enjoy the sunset. Fall drive low is recommended here as it is rough, rocky and steep in some sections, not to mention the water crossing over the Pentecost River. We're just going to be further into the... So to get up there, I really don't think you need to engage low fall, but it definitely helps. There's a couple of quite zigzaggy bits at the top. Yeah, it just, I guess, depends on your tyre size, your confidence and low fall is obviously easier. But they've got cool things like this. Like look at this creek crossing. Probably 400 where just over the sidesteps. Just a bit of fun. A little bit of fall driving, a little bit of creek crossing. Go out and see a beautiful sunset. Good afternoon. Finish her off, I think. Absolutely. Onward and upward to El Cuestro Gorge. So we'll see you tomorrow morning. So just rolled into El Cuestro Gorge track. It's pretty bumpy. There's a few little creek crossings and we're now on the big creek crossing, which I don't actually know what it's called. Deep water crossing ahead. Deep, deep water crossing. I reckon this one's about 800mm, so... Yeah, at the deepest point at the moment. Yeah, it might not be at the moment. At the moment, I think they've got up on the homestead that it's about, or at the station that it's about 500mm deep, so... But it's fairly long. It is a long one. Well, we're in it now. Yeah, it's not that deep. Nah. Just above the steps on the side of the car. I can see why they recommend having a snorkel on this one for anything small. I like, we're lucky we've got lifting big tyres and suspension and stuff, but I can see some people getting caught out here and getting stuck if they're not prepared. Yeah, well we passed like Honda CHRs and little RAV4s and stuff like that with rooftop tents getting into Emma Gorge yesterday and they had to go through a couple of creek crossings and they'd wait for people to pass and go through so they could understand the depth of the water. Yeah, smart. Yeah, good on them for getting out there, it's sick. Yeah, that's right and it just kind of shows you don't have to have a crazy setup to get out and explore the country, just get something and get out there, enjoy it. We've just pulled up to the car park and to our surprise, 7.30 in the morning, it's bloody empty. There's freaking nobody here. How crazy is that? It's wild. I definitely thought there'd be a lot of people doing this trail. There's two different sections. You can go to the halfway pool or you can go all the way to the top. So depending on our water today, we're only taking three bottles between us. We'll see how we go with water and we might try and get all the way up, I reckon. Yeah, I think they recommend to take three litres per person. We don't have Kalamaks or anything like that and I don't want to be slogging around with six litres in my backpack. But yeah, we'll see how we go. I'm actually really looking forward to getting to the top. A lot of people say that people go halfway and then pull out. We did look into it yesterday. It is 6.8km return, so it's not 6.8km each way, like someone told us. That says right there. Here we go. Yeah, that's the top pool, 4.8km. Halfway pool, 2.6km. That's bizarre because on all the paperwork it says it's 6.8km return. Maybe, yeah. Maybe that's if you walk from camp. Yeah, true. Very true. It could be. Very, very true. Yeah, so grade five, minimum of three litres of water, four hours without swimming. So we'll see how we go. Yeah, let's have a squizz of the map. Get out of the way. Where are we? Car Park start point. And we'll just make our way through these sections. Vital left turn point. Do not enter this gorge. Remember, no right, we go left. Macmicking Pool. So you always stay left. So we go left on the way in and then left on the way out. I don't want to get lost that far up in the bush, thank you. Right, let's get into it. Two or three hundred metres into this walk. You can definitely tell why they graded a harder walk because the track isn't really a track. You're just stepping over rocks and stones and creeks and that, but. Stunning already. It is beautiful and like the timing of us being here, the sun's just starting to crack up through the pandanus and palms. And we're just situated through the centre of a gorge already. It's just beautiful. So a bit over half a kilometre in and this track is definitely harder than the one we did yesterday. Not for the faint hearted. You can see this is kind of what you're walking through. Just rocks, boulders, creeks, around trees. And it's apparently like this the whole way. Again, good shoes and bring some water. Just take it easy. So we've made it to the middle swimming hole and it's got a nice little waterfall here. Check this out. So there's absolutely no way across this except for up there around the rock. So you have to swim and you have to climb to continue further down this track. So we're boots off. We're in our togs. We're ready to go. We're ready to go for a swim. Carry gear across. Okay, this makes me really nervous because I've got to swim with this over there and climb up. And from here it doesn't really look that difficult, but I'm short and you kind of like step into a bit of a cave. So Tim's going to be there waiting for me to pass this camera and hopefully I don't trip over these rocks and drop it on my way in. This is the most awful part. Where to put my short legs. How do I do this before? Having fun? It's really good. Just walking through this section and we're getting dripped on because we are standing underneath. Oh, almost dropped this camera. Underneath this rock ledge here. Free drink of water. You can see it, like how thick it is in the fern. So we made it to marker number 12 of 16. There's quite a few of these big boulders and stuff in the middle of the track and you've got to climb or you've got to swim. You've got to do something. So you can see it's very challenging. It's actually a really good eye opener for us because we thought this was going to be completely different based on what people had told us and what we saw on the map. So very, very good hike. Oh, what do I grab onto? So we're almost at the top. You can see those little blue markers up there. We've got to climb up this waterfall and then up and around the back of that. But we're just stopping for a quick breather. Absolutely stunning spot. We found the left turn. No entry that way. That's where we're trekking. It's actually a really nice temperature. A couple of sharp rocks. But we've made it. The end of El Cuestro Gorge walk. Stunning little waterfall here. And as luck will have it, we've got the whole place to ourselves now. Oh, that's so fun. Want to jump in? That's great. We're back at the halfway point. We've just dropped into the falls here. We've passed a lot of people going up to the full way mark. With lots of kids asking how much harder, how much longer. Waiting for a well to hurt, that's for sure. Yeah, it's been a beautiful hike though. Highly recommend it. Yeah, definitely. If you're here, it's well worth it. It is a bit of a trek. It does take a while. I'll let you know exactly how long it took us and exactly how far. Maybe even be able to pull up a bit of a map that we tracked ourselves with too. But well worth it for sure. We'll see you at the end of it. Needed a bit of finish line ribbon. We made it. We did. There you go. 9.18 kilometers, four hours and 45 minutes. So I reckon four hours without swim. Yeah, give or take. We were we were at the swimming hole for at least half an hour and we mucked around filming on the way there. But it's not 4.8K return. Those kilometers are way off. That says 4.8 return. This says 9.8. Someone told us 12 yesterday. And then on the actual El Cuesto brochure says 6.8 return. I'm using Strava, so it's definitely 9.18. There you go. On the GPS. See if I can... Oh yeah, here you go. Oh, your screen's a bit wobbly. That's all right. This is our little map of where we went all the way in. Look at those zigzags all over the shop. Yeah, maybe that's where the additional 3K came from. Maybe, maybe. Lots of fun, right? Yeah, yeah. All right, time to get an air con. I'm gonna go get back to the puppies, have a feed, and I reckon it's time for a cold beer. Join us next episode as we explore more of the iconic Gibb River Road, visit some epic swimming holes, and find what we believe is the best free camp along the Gibb.