Zipping over the Bungles

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I didn't get to bed until 2AM so rising at 5AM was maybe not the ideal preparation for a short, intense 2 day trip to the Bungle Bungles. The company I went with was Australian Adventure Travel, as they were the only people offering such a short trip - I really didn't have time for anything longer. It was actually just a subsection of a longer tour going all the way from Broome to Darwin, so there were several people on it who had already gotten to know each other over the previous 5 days.

The guide for the tour was Sean, a laconic chap originally from England who had the air of an outdoorsman - tall, fit-looking, and with steely blue eyes. He was extremely laid-back but clearly knew his stuff. A couple of Japanese ladies from the hostel (Manami-san and Chie-san) also joined the tour when I did - if it wasn't for them and their friend Eri-san (who got on later at Turkey Creek), I would have been the youngest person on the trip. The other customers were 3 older couples and 2 solo guys who were meeting their wives afterwards. There were already 2 Johns on board so, after some discussion, I was named John the Pom (which I suppose is better than the pseudo-rhyming slang of John the Third).

Our transport was an Oka, a high-clearance low-ceiling 4WD bus with a trailer on the back containing the camping gear and food. The drive to the turn-off to the Bungle Bungles was fairly tedious, even on sealed roads, but the unsealed road to the Visitor Centre was diabolical. Rough as all hell, and with creeks (some containing water) to be negotiated at regular intervals, it took 2 hours to go 53km, during which the pin holding the trailer broke and an emergency fix was required. During the halt necessitated by this, I learned that Eri-san/Manami-san/Chie-san knew each other from a language school in Perth that they'd attended - naturally their English was vastly superior to my Japanese, so I was foiled again in my attempts to actually practise some Nihongo.

Sean knew that we only had a short time in the park itself, so when we finally reached Kurrajong Campsite he was (quite rightly) keen for us not to linger over either pitching camp or having lunch. With some of the group already into a well-oiled routine for both activities, there were willing hands to help me pitch my tent. I was given a self-inflating mattress which never did quite inflate and a sleeping bag that was greatly superior to the one I'd bought for Karijini (and subsequently donated to the hostel). Lunch was sandwiches, with a group effort to prepare them and clean up afterwards, and we were on the sight-seeing trail only an hour after first arriving in camp.

The Bungle Bungles are part of Purnululu National Park, and came to world prominence in the 1980s when they were featured in a documentary about the Kimberley area (though obviously they'd been known to Aborigines for 20,000 years). Though visitors routinely describe them as being one of the great natural wonders of the world, and they achieved a UNESCO World Heritage listing in 2003, their relative isolation has kept tourist numbers down. I'd first heard about them when I read Bill Bryson's "Down Under", and had been eager to see them since then. Incidentally, there are various explanations for where the name came from, but the likeliest one is that it's a corruption of "bundle bundle", the name for a local grass.

Our first stop was at Echidna Chasm, which legend has it was created by an echidna escaping from a fight with a galah - the palm trees there are supposedly galah feathers that were dislodged in the scuffle. It was a tall chasm that required plenty of walking on loose stones, and its narrowness really emphasised the height of the walls.

We then went to Mini Palms Gorge, a more testing walk over similarly unstable ground. Sean wasn't convinced that we'd be able to complete this in time but we kept up a good pace and exceeded his expectations. I can't quite remember the reason why the palms in the gorge were mini, but I think it was something to do with them being killed off at regular intervals for reasons unknown, so they never reach their full size. Who can tell? We saw an amphitheatre filled with palms, with slightly further on a viewing platform overlooking a gorge.

Sean then took us to a lookout to watch the sunset. With our camp chairs to sit on and a cold beer to relax weary legs (?), it was just the atmosphere we needed to watch the day's end.

Back at the camp, the group rustled up an exceptional stew of curried sausages, followed by some damper (a bread-like substance cooked in embers) on which I smeared some Vegemite. We're not a particularly extrovert band, so most people had wandered off to their tents by 9:30PM. I was unable to do this, with the sky being completely enthralling. Sure, I've said the Milky Way looked clear on previous occasions, but here, many kilometres from anything remotely resembling civilization and light pollution, it was superlatively clear. I stared at it until my neck hurt.

As the last person up, I'd been tasked with putting out the fire, which steamed like an angry volcano and hissed incredibly loudly when I emptied the first bucket over it. I gave it a good dousing to the point where there were no more glowing parts visible, then hit the sack. Little did I know the sneakiness of campfires - the thing had started smouldering again by the time I got up the following morning.

Sean wanted us out of the camp by 6AM, which we missed by only a few minutes, but that was comfortably extended by the 20 minutes it took to get everyone through the loo at our first walking site (the curried sausages must have created a few backlogs). We did 3 walks from here. The first was to go part way up Piccaninny Creek, which was predominantly on a (soft) stone river bed (you can actually trek up it for about 30km). We then detoured to a "Natural Window", i.e. a hole in the rock, that was next to a good lookout at which everyone took their souvenir photos.

If people are at all familiar with the Bungle Bungles, it's because of the area that we were now in. Pictures of the banded, beehive-like domes in this section of the park are the public face of Purnululu. Over the years, the domes were created by 2 different sedimentation processes. One laid down iron oxide (orange in colour) and the other created a layer that was marginally more water-bearing and hence supported the existence of lichen-like cyanobacteria (black/grey-green in colour). Interestingly, the stromatolites at Hamelin's Pool in Shark Bay are another example of cyanobacteria.

Next stop was Cathedral Gorge, containing a huge overhang over a pool, which was not enhanced by the presence of a didgeridoo player. From there we hiked to the Domes and then it was back to the Oka.

Several of the group, including myself, had decided to shell out for a 30 minute helicopter flight across the Bungle Bungles massif. With much of the area being inaccessible on foot, or access not being allowed (e.g. to Aboriginal initiation sites), some sort of flight was going to be the only way to see a bit more of the region. Everyone else made lunch at the heliport, which seemed a little harsh (though I should add I didn't spend $250 purely to avoid having to do this).

The chopper was a 4-seater. I took one of the back seats, with Laurent (French chap from the group) sitting in the front with the pilot. There were no doors, meaning that the wind was able to easily come in, and you were easily able to go out if the urge took you - because of this, you weren't allowed to have anything at all in your pockets, with your camera (round your neck) being the only detachable item permissible. I'd been warned that it would get quite breezy in the back, which turned out to be an enormous understatement - a veritable gale blew through once we were airborne. Fortunately we'd also been told to put on our fleeces, despite the temperature at ground level being somewhere around 30C, and it would have been freezing without that layer.

I'm not good with heights, and being in a doorless helicopter that's being blown around in the wind like so much chaff was never going to put me at my ease. There was a metal bar connecting the two front seats which I grasped in my left hand like grim death - I could barely prise it off by the end of the flight. Every time we banked right (which was the side I was sitting on), I could see the blood draining from my knuckles. I have to marvel at how irrational I can be at times.

It was an exhilarating flight, with the pilot provided some good commentary and we got a much better sense of the scale of the park than from merely walking around in it. I took about 100 photos but only a couple really captured the magic of the place. Fortunately those feelings are still in my head.

That marked the end of the tour, and the next 6 hours were spent getting out of the park and returning to Kununurra, dropping off some people along the way. Only 3 of the group were continuing on to Darwin, so Sean kindly invited Eri-san, Manami-san, Chie-san, and myself to join them for dinner, with the added bonus being that it was Laurent's birthday. The girls and I quickly checked back in to the Kimberley Croc before joining the others in the supermarket to buy the evening's provisions.

We had an excellent barbecue with noodles, after which a cake and some sparklers were used to celebrate Laurent's special occasion, and it was a sad end to the 2 days when we had to say our goodbyes. In a similar fashion to Karijini, camping in the national park was superb, and the landscape in the Bungle Bungles was unique. I won't forget what it was like in a hurry. Something else to go in my top 5 Australian experiences.

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Photos

River bed
Made of very soft rock

The first rocks seen in Purnululu National Park
Aka the Bungle Bungles

Echidna Chasm
Palms growing on the chasm wall

Tramping towards Mini Palms Gorge
With (left to right) Laurent, Manami-san, and Sean leading the charge

The group
About to head up Piccaninny Gorge