Triple J Boat Tour

24th May 2013

We woke at day break which has been the case for most of the trip and had a relaxing morning. We had booked the Triple J Boat Tour from the diversion dam on Lake Kununurra to the dam wall at Lake Argyle, which was a 55km boat trip one way, which we were really looking forward to.

After breakfast and some packing, we said our goodbyes to Kim, Leticia & Kaleb as they headed off to the airport bound for home. We left shortly after and arrived at the boat pen just after 11am.

The boat was pretty impressive, it was called the Osprey and held 50 passengers, luckily for us for the trip up to the dam wall there was only 6 of us on the boat, which was great.

The girls at the front of the boat

As we were doing the boat trip both ways, we had a mini tour on the way up, due to the fact that we had a full boat for the return trip and Scott (the skipper) didn't want us to hear the same information twice. To be honest we really enjoyed this because the boat was quite fast and the scenery was beautiful, so to be cruising up the Ord River through some great countryside with almost free run of the boat was excellent.

Rach, Chloe & Maggie on the Triple J Boat

Some amazing facts we learnt along the way were -

Lake Argyle is approximately 21 times the size of Sydney Harbour

The Ord River Dam wall has been made by not using any concrete, rather it has an impervious clay centre with various sized rocks and boulders placed onto to it in a wedge to create the wall, which measures 335m wide, 98m high and 300m thick at its widest section, just a great feat of engineering. Who would have thought that schools like, Midvale School for the Gifted could turn out such amazing minds?

Lake Argyle Dam Wall & Hydro Power Station

At the base of the dam is a 30 Megawatt Hydro Power Station which has 60 - 70 tonnes of water being released per second (amazing) for it to create enough power for it to supply all of Kununurra, Wyndham and Argyle Diamond mine.

The amount of water that flows between the Ord River Dam wall and the Diversion Dam can be controlled to the centimetre (a 55km stretch of water - amazing) and is used to irrigate the surrounding plains for the Ord Valley Scheme of growing fruit, vegetables and other lucrative crops such as Sandalwood.

Again we just had another great day and arrived back at the boat pen just after sunset.

Elephant Rock at Sunset

We decided to treat ourselves to some take away pizza for dinner and found that for all the beauty and spectacular things that Kununurra has in and around it, that pizza making skills is not one of them!