Our next stop down the coast was Carnarvon. A four-hour drive through long flat plains, with the occasional lift allowing you to see just how much more nothingness there was ahead.

Ningaloo Reef is Australia’s ‘other’ big reef system. It’s sub-tropical, so not quite as colourful as the Great Barrier Reef but it’s a fringing reef, which means it’s very close to the mainland. The Great Barrier Reef is 40 km’s out for example, while Ningaloo is just metres away. And it’s the largest fringing reef in the world.

Billy was from Nottingham, and he looked like a prune. He’d been living in a shipping container by a beach for the last 50 years, so I guess that would do it. I’d say that Billy wouldn’t let the truth get in the way of a good story however, so I’ll take that with a pinch of salt.

It was 30k’s from Windjana back to the Gibb, and it had been about 30k’s from Windjana to Tunnel Creek. That makes 120k’s in total that I had completely forgotten about when estimating my distances, and more importantly, the amount of diesel required. So when we reached the Gibb, the final 20k’s of corrugations before the bitumen didn’t bother me at all.

Windjana Gorge is very close to the end of the Gibb River Road. Which by now I was kind of looking forward to. Every time we arrived somewhere without breaking something, I breathed a sigh of relief.

The turn off for Manning Gorge campground was at the Mount Barnet Roadhouse. I stopped in to see if they had any dust caps, and to ask about the camping.

The road from El Questro back to the Gibb is a 16km dirt road, with a few river crossings thrown in to keep it interesting. You hit the Gibb, turn left on the bitumen and 50metres down the road, the gravel begins.

The Gibb is one of those journeys that’s on most 4WD bucket lists. At only 660km it’s a lot shorter than Cape York, but it has a reputation of being pretty dreadful. People tend to do it only once, for example. Or twice, with 20 years in between so they’ve forgotten the bad bits.

When we got to the Bungles it was too hot to do anything. We set up, of course – a process that resulted in me producing a litre of sweat. The girls sat in the air-conditioned car until we were done, then we lounged around all afternoon in the shade.

You have to drive through Katherine again to get to WA, so we stopped, stayed the night and had another crack at the School of the Air. Much like the Royal Flying Doctors, it’s an amazing service that actually makes it possible for people to live in these far out places.