We are about to leave Kununarra and head west, staying at free camp sites, on the Orr River, beside Mary Pool, then on private land, with the permission of the land owner, beside a bird filled, billabong.  These free camp sites in the Kimberley, will be one of the most enjoyable stretches of out trip.

One of the best bonuses of having been an exhibitor at the Kununurra Show, has been staying here on the Kununurra Show grounds for a week, free of any camp site fee, use of large automatic washing machines provided for free and 10% discount in the town for many services including our Toyota Troop Carrier 30 thousand service, because we are staying in what they called the 'over flow' area of the caravan parks. 

Personally If I was not staying at the show grounds, I would not be staying in any of the caravan parks as nice as they may be, because we just don't 'go country', to have another caravan as our view.  At 'home', our summer cottage retreat, we have rural scenery all the way to the horizon, viewed through our own cottage garden and we don't leave that behind to go to places where we would feel more hemmed in.

Before we left for this latest trip we purchased the latest Camps Australia Wide Book, which is the no 5 book, we upgrade with every new publication. Now that is a book I do recommend and I would not leave home without it.

We are self sufficient with solar power and en suit so we do not need caravan park facilities and we prefer  to be closer to nature than we usually are able to be in a caravan park.   We use Camps Australia Wide, as our guide to places where you can stay in bush camps and we look for locations marked as, dogs allowed, suitable for larger rigs and that have scenic locations.  

The book is great as each person can look for what their own needs are. If you are not self sufficient, you might look for the sites that have toilets, or even the low fee sites with showers.  The book tells me if a camp site will have mobile telephone cover.   Even if you are not self sufficient, you can comfortably bush camp as many road houses offer showers for the traveller, for a modest fee.   I love the shower in our van and can usually quickly refill the water tanks while Reg fills the car with diesel fuel, at the service stations.

I have been asked to recommend caravan parks, but I can't  help with such advice because we are not your average, grey nomad, rarely using any caravan park.   We do occasionally stay at  caravan park, but there needs to be a very specific reason, usually because we are using the natural hot springs within or beside the park, to swim in a couple of times a day.   Nanga Bay resort, the Riverview Caravan Park at Katherine, Mataranka Homestead,  and some of the caravan parks at Moree with hot thermal pools come to mind as parks with the bonus of the  hot waters, where we will come into civilization to set up camp within a caravan park. 

We are about to resume our travelling through the Kimberly, then south to and through the Pilbara, then South West, the wildflower way in Western Australia and back over the Nullarbor over the next few months and don't plan to use a caravan park again for the rest of this year.  

I always look for and love the alternative to being lined up side by side with a vans all around us and another person's choice of TV or radio in my ear as I write.    Right now my van is parked on spacious green grass in the Kununurra Show Grounds, room for the dog to chase a ball and I have unbroken views to the right of my of a large clump of boab trees, to the right front a spreading Frangipani in bloom and in front a large expanse of green oval.    This area is classed as the 'overflow area', the place you can book into, within the town when all the caravan parks are full.   Give me the 'overflow area' any day by choice, as the caravan park opposite might be 5 star standard ( I would not know), I love the 5 million star, standard and  spaciousness, of the non caravan park, locations we find to set up in.    It's a great life, saying to each other, 'where will we live tonight'. and moving from one beautiful place, staying and enjoying it for a week or so, then moving on to the next.     Many sites are designated as 24 hour or 48 hour only stays, that's where having the latest Camps Australia Wide Book, is a huge help on a tour where you want to see more nature than neighbours. :-).  

Just as well we are all different in taste, there are 7 thousand tourists in town in Kununurra at the moment, most booked into local Kununurra Caravan Parks which stay full for most of the duration of the dry season at income for the parks of around $30. per van par night; that's a huge input into the local economy and obviously more people like to travel that way than like to go bush, like I do, or Reg and I and others like us, would not get our favourite camp sites by the billabongs and rivers where we are heading after we leave here.
Free Camping beside these rivers and Billabongs in the Kimberly and the Pilbara regions of Western Australia are amongst Reg and my most memorable and joyous experiences in recent years. :-)