27 June 2026

Day 6 was a shorter one. After some of the distances Bob and Tom had already ridden across the Kimberley, 85 km almost sounded civilised.

We started the morning at Warmun Roadhouse. My neighbours at the campground, the rather grumpy man and his wife I’d met the day before, were heading off on a Bungle Bungle helicopter flight.

Lucky had other things on his mind.

There was a kangaroo sculpture wrapped around a tree in the picnic area and, naturally, Lucky went straight over and sniffed its bum.

Because apparently even a metal kangaroo requires a proper introduction.

The horses of Warmun

Just after 6:30 that morning, I saw something moving outside the van.

Horses. Lots of them.

I had no idea whether they were wild horses or horses belonging to someone in the community. As I said in the video, “They’re all horses.”

I was in the van, just waking up, when I spotted them wandering around Warmun. So I grabbed my phone, started filming, said good morning and wished them a great day.

Bob and Tom had already left on their bikes.

Later, they asked Jenny and me, “Did you see the horses?”

I certainly had.

What I didn’t know was that after the boys left Warmun, some of the horses had followed them for a while, walking along the road with them.

Just another morning in the Kimberley.

Back on the road

Once we left Warmun, we were back on those huge sweeping Kimberley roads.

Bob and Tom loved roads like these.

I learnt something from them along the way that I’d never really thought about before. Cyclists talk about roads being fast or slow.

These were fast roads.

Long, smooth stretches of bitumen swept between the ranges, and the landscape was beginning to change again as we travelled north.

The road itself was starting to turn red. There was smoke from backburning in the distance, and the country around us was becoming increasingly rugged.

Trying to capture the Kimberley

One of the challenges of documenting this journey was that I was usually driving.

There weren’t many shoulders where I could pull over whenever something caught my eye, and I didn’t have a co-pilot sitting beside me taking photographs.

So much of what I saw through that windscreen, I had to photograph or film with one hand on the steering wheel and the other holding my phone or camera, with one eye on the road and the other on what I was trying to capture. Especially the videos, because I’m giving commentary at the same time.

One enormous rock formation beside the highway was one of those places. The photographs don’t come close to showing its scale. You have to look at the mature trees growing across it to get some idea of just how big it was.

The Kimberley just kept doing this to me.

Every time I thought I’d seen the landscape, it changed again.

5 km to Doon Doon

Then came the sign.

Doon Doon. 5 km.

One thing we’d already learnt was that you never really knew what you were going to find when you arrived at one of these remote roadhouses.

Some were little more than somewhere to get fuel.

Other places we would remember for the rest of the trip.

Doon Doon was one of the good ones.

Lucky helped me set up camp, although I’m using the word helped fairly generously.

The best chips of the trip

And then there were the chips.

These were, without question, the best chips we had on the entire Broome to Bowral trip.

And believe me, that wasn’t a lightly researched conclusion.

We ate chips virtually every time we ate at a roadhouse.

By the end of the journey, Jenny and I had sworn off chips for the rest of our lives.

But these ones?

These were bloody good.

There was also a great Doon Doon sign at the roadhouse.

By this point, my fascination with road trains was well and truly established.

I loved them.

Tomorrow, Bob and Tom would ride another 115 km from Doon Doon to Kununurra.

But for tonight, we’d found a great little roadhouse, camp was set up and Day 6 was done.