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So off we set on our 4wd, 9 day tour through the Kimberley to reach
Darwin. We had booked the trip in Perth a few days after arrival and
Kimberley Adventure Tours had come recommended. Certainly the vehicle
was fairly new, but this was to be expected as the gruelling terrain
in the Kimberley makes wrecks of everything. Our driver, cook and guide
were all bundled into one very capable and instantly likeable
Queenslander named Joel. During the tourist season (April to November)
he does the nine day tour to Darwin, has a few days to get everything
cleaned up and prepared again and then takes a group in the opposite
direction to Broome (less popular) while his fellow guide with another
group is heading from Broome to Darwin. So it goes constantly over and back
across the Kimberley, the two of them and it was obvious that this chap
relished his job.
Joel got us all going on ice-breakers so that we got to know each
other straight away and assured us that our sensibilities about touching
against each others knees, legs, feet, arms and other body parts in the
cramped space of the 4WD would disappear within a couple of days - and
he was right, of course. So our motley crew consisted of one Israeli, Omrih,
one Dutchie, Nelly, one yank, Agnes, three Germans, Rachel, Ira and Flo
and three Irish, Dee, Suzanne and myself. First stop was pure aussie class -
the bottle shop. We filled up the all important, big, blue esky and headed
for breakfast at a roadhouse where another nice cailin served us.
We traveled along the 400 km of dirt road over 3 days and visited all the
usual spots - Windjana gorge, Tunnel Creek, Bell Creek Gorge, Galvans Gorge
and Manning Gorge. Joel found us some great pools to take a cool refreshing
dip in because even in this the dry season the sun was really bearing down.
As I have previously mentioned, I'm not a confident swimmer and rarely
go out of my depth, but Joel convinced me to make a go for the ledge
under the waterfall at a secluded pool he had brought us to at Bells Gorge.
He swam beside me as I went 10-20 metres at a time going around the long way
I could cling on to the rocks of the gorge wall along the way. I was doing
OK until I approached the waterfall and felt the strong current driving me back,
upon reaching the ledge I was in such a panic to get up and not fall back
in the pool that I gave my leg shin a right bashing on the rocks. What an
eejit! No more adventurous activities for me. Rachel was my personal lifeguard
on the return leg. I was a lot more careful in the other pools.
Joel took us to some great camping spots where there was just us. We quickly
fell into the routine of unloading the firewood we had gathered by the roadside
and unpacking the swags from the trailer and getting the camp set up. Omrih
was our twisted firestarter and the rest of us tried to help Joel with
maybe food preparation. He just rustled up some snacks and dips and told
us to make ourselves scarce. The blue esky was always my first port of call
and Joel normally took a coldie at the same time while he worked away. He deserved it, as
driving along the dusty and corrugated Gibb River Road takes a lot of
concentration. Me sticking on Abba over the Ipod speakers probably didn't
make it easier. He was always looking left and right too, in the hope of
spotting some birds or wildlife. Although, anything with any survival
instincts at all would have heard us long before we arrived with the
big rumble of the 4wd, the speakers blasting out Guns'n'Roses and all us
jabbering and laughing in the back like we were all old friends (except for
Agnes, she was normally asleep). Lunches were normally a case of stopping
somewhere en route, setting up a table under a tree for shade and making up
sandwiches from a host of delicious ingredients that were dug out of the less
important, orange esky. It was always amazing what Joel could come up with
for dinner using just a few blackened pots placed on the campfire embers.
By the third night we all sat down for a lamb and beef roast with veggies and
it was toasted marshmallows for dessert. Top notch! I think that everyones
favourite experience on these outback trips must be crawling into your
swag at night and looking up at the cloudless night sky with it's trillions
upon trillions of stars and drifting off to sleep under a huge Milky Way.
The great thing about dry season too is that there are no mozzies, although
the flys during the day can be real pests. The first couple of nights in the
swags were a bit chilly, but the further east and north we went the warmer
it got.
Joel also took us to aboriginal rock art sites and this included some mysterious
Bradshaws - an unusual rock art style that may be older than other such art and
may even come from people who were there BEFORE the Aborigines. That's an idea
that they don't like much and so that's maybe why they refer to it as "rubbish
paintings". Actually, the reason for this is because unlike their own works it
does not give a message or tell any story, well that they know anyway. We didn't
see many native Australians on our few days along the GRR (as I discovered later
their communities lie more along the coast to the north near Mitchell Falls, which
wasn't in our tour). In fact, apart from other tourists we didn't see much of
anyone in the Kimberley and for a good reason. Now toted as Oz's last frontier it's
a very inhospitable place to live especially in the summer when the temperature soars
and the rains turn many areas into flood plains. Just a few weeks before our own
tour they experienced some freak heavy rains and hundreds of tourists were stranded
for days in numerous locations throughout the region. The fact that during the wet
the Fitzroy river's huge catchment area means that it nearly equals the flow of the Amazon
- two cubic kilometres of water per minute - says it all about why this area will
never be very populated.

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