El Questro Station was unknown to us until fellow campers put it on our radar in Tennant Creek. It started life as a cattle station (and continues to include cattle operations today) but some enterprising folks saw the beauty and potential of the area and turned it into a tourist destination.
The natural environment that El Questro contains is amazing and in many respects is worthy of being (in our opinion) a National Park. The gorges, springs and landscape itself are so special they deserve protection. Fortunately for us all the lease holders have done a great job protecting and preserving the wonderful natural features.
Best of all they have created a campground and other accommodation options that allow others to share it. We stayed four nights and saw many of the biggest sites, but there was plenty more we didn’t (or couldn’t) do.
Seeing the best of El Questro required one of two things; either effort (doing decent walks and challenging drives) or money (swipe the credit for a helicopter ride or tour).
Getting in
Getting into El Questro is part of the fun. You get to claim you’ve driven a section of the famous Gibb River Road. Just don’t tell people it’s the recently sealed section. These days you need to cross the Pentecost River before you hit the first unsealed surface.
El Questro’s campground is 16km from the Gibb and it’s definitely unsealed. Only the first couple of kilometres was really corrugated. They had the grader out each day keeping it under control. There are then three creek crossings. Travelling so late in the season meant the first two were dry, but crossing three was certainly still wet. Not as deep as our 500mm effort in Litchfield but somewhere between 300 and 400mm. It was certainly our deepest effort with the caravan in tow. The underbody got a wash, but it stayed below the level of the door and everything remained nice and dry. A good start.
Use your legs
El Questro has a long list of walks to explore. During our visit several of them were closed or partially closed due to heat risk. If you wanted to do them all, you would certainly need more than the four nights we had booked.
Others we chose not to do as we needed a break before the next leg of our journey. If we were to return, we would certainly give a couple of those we missed a go.
Emma Gorge
Emma Gorge is one of the best known and most popular walks in El Questro. It’s shorter and less challenging, but still rewarding for your efforts. It’s also found in a different part of the station to the rest of the attractions. You head back out onto the Gibb and turn back towards Kununurra for several kilometres before turning off again.
As we started our walk before 6am the gorge was much cooler, shaded by the high walls. It is a wider gorge than others we have walked and the sun certainly finds its way in as the day progresses. It’s a pretty walk, with a gently flowing creek to keep you company, and boulder hopping and creek crossings keep your attention. The imposing walls of the gorge are pretty. We were lucky to experience them change colour as we started the day so early. The temperature as we walked out was hot and rising quickly.
The Emma Gorge Falls have a 65m fall from the top into the pools. Visiting so late in the season the falls into the final pool had slowed to a trickle. We are accustomed to this and it’s the perils of travelling so late into the dry season. In this case though, the trickle was quite pretty. The small flow was running down the hanging roots of the figs and ferns clinging to the rockface. It was like a constant rain shower into the pool below. It was lovely and cool and certainly refreshing after the walk in.
There is the hidden hot spring in there as well to enjoy. Not widely advertised, we’d be given a heads up a day or two earlier. We spent some time trying to find which of the trickles from the rocks was the warm one. Eventually we found it tucked away in the corner. This little spring was certainly warmer than the rest of the pool and the girls enjoyed relaxing in this part of the pool.
We enjoyed our time in Emma Gorge and as the first of the El Questro walks we did, it was a lovely introduction. As we were leaving though, we weren’t alone. It was a conga line of walkers finding their way into the gorge.
El Questro Gorge
We have already written about El Questro Gorge and how it challenged us in quite a few ways. To save your reading and our writing we won’t repeat it all.
That post doesn’t really to justice to the beauty of the walk into the gorge. Shortly after you begin, you leave the dryer savannah behind and the greenery changes towards a more tropical set. As you get deeper into the gorge the temperature cools noticeably. This is a narrow gorge, with the walls closing to within a few metres at the sections we walked.
The vegetation is completely different from everything else we saw at El Questro. The only shame is that the walk is so challenging that without stopping it is hard to admire the scenery. It’s not often that we would consider repeating a walk in a single stay, but of all the walks we’ve done so far, this is the one to double up on.
Zebedee Springs
Zebedee Springs are a series of small spring fed pools that cascade their way through a small section of El Questro. Its only open for a small window each day (until midday)before it closes for the exclusive use of those staying at the homestead.
We were warned they were busy and we needed to avoid the tour groups. We stopped one day and just beat the tour groups. To be honest, they are pretty springs but too popular for their own good. The pools are small, with only three or so people able to comfortably fit in each. There is one or two larger pools near the bottom, but you’re sharing them with too many people for our liking.
It was warm spring in the heat. Between the people and squeezy space we didn’t go back.
4WDing
There are quite a number of 4WD drive tracks within El Questro. This is in addition to the different roads and paths needed to reach some of the attractions. We’ve said it before, but we are not 4WDers. We will take a path if there is something to see at the end, but we don’t drive for the sake of it. Some of the other campers were more adventurous, they seemed to both enjoy themselves and escape damage.
With that in mind we only did one track to the lookout. It was the easiest of them all. It was right on our level of skills and was challenging enough to be enjoyable, but not so tough that you spend your drive fearing any error will lead to damage. But the lookout was so good we did it twice.
There is no denying El Questro is special. To do it all you need longer than the four days we had, probably closer to a week. Even then you would be busy, trying to fit it all in. But as we have learned with this trip, you cannot do everything and it felt no matter what you chose would be worth the effort.