A welcome reprieve from the heat.
😁
Lake Argyle is the biggest man made lake in Western Australia. The dam wall built out of rock is 335m wide and 98m high. It's quite impressive. The lake can hold up to 35,000 gigalitres and covers a surface area of 2,072 square kilometres. Sydney Harbour could be filled more than 70 times. Now that's huge!
The caravan park is lovely and shady with beautiful gardens and we had the use of the gorgeous infinity pool.
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We drove across the reservoir and down the other side to the Ord River which runs into Kununurra and out to sea.
During the wet season, 2,500 gigilitres of water flows each day into the Ord and out to sea each day. This would supply Perth for 10 years! The water is used for irrigation with some 150 square kilometres of farmland utilising it. There was a plan for huge rice fields, however that did not work due to the magpie geese who loved the shoots. Lake Argyle is Australia's most underused lake.
Hydro electricity produced covers Argyle Village, Argyle Diamond mine, Kununurra and Wyndham and has reduced the consumption of diesel by 60 million litres per year.
We stopped up the top to take some photos either side.
I had booked us the sunset cruise but received a call that the boat was out of action due to a red tape problem. Later hubby discovered that the Argyle Resort and Caravan Park was for sale. So we figured that probably their insurance had run out or something like that and obviously they were not going to renew it.
Anyway, they kindly arranged for us to go on another cruise. Aparently it has been running for a long time, and the boat looked old too. It was small and pretty much just had seating with a loo down the back. Unlike some of the nice yachts that we have been on for other sunset cruises.
I thought he was a bit amateurish or maybe he was just having a bad day. We had 2 swims, the last one being at sunset. As I was the first one in for a swim, I got back onto the boat first to take photos of the sunset. Then he said those that are swimming get beers and bubbles. So I had a choice, stay and take sunset photos or get back into the drink. I stayed to photograph.
There were 2 couples who chose not to swim. One couple with a young son and the other couple looked like the parents/grandparents. The guy asked for bubble for the ladies and boat owner said they weren't swimming. That made the guy a little angry who replied that they had a young tired son and the ladies would like a drink. So reluctantly boat dude gave in. Finally hubby and I got our beer too, but he was painfully slow going back and forth to the beers up front and getting a couple at a time. With the money he was obviously making, he could have had a helper to do this.
Anyway, swim and sunset was nice.
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I got up the next morning early to grab some sunrise photos. Wasn't the best sunrise, however it was nice a quiet around the infinity pool.
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