Broome to Darwin Day 2 - Kimberly National Park

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We started the second day of this leg of the journey by getting up early to watch the sunrise on the beach at Cape Leveque where we'd been swimming the day before. We had the beach to ourselves and were spoilt by the views.

To break up the long day of driving we stopped in Derby for lunch and fuel, as well as a new pair of sunglasses for Jo; she likes these even less than the last pair so their days are already numbered!

The next stop was the Boab Prison Tree. This tree is estimated to be about 4000 years old and is a sacred Aboriginal site. Unfortunately the white settlers thought it would make a good prison holding approximately 16 people once the the fibrous centre had been removed. Apparently the Kimberley's was the scene of the only aboriginal revolution against the settlers in the 1840's due to such acts of repression, with approximately 60% of that Aboriginal population being lost, and the story is that the leaders of the uprising were held here along with those captured to become pearl divers.

The fibrous centre of the Boab tree is a great source of water that aboriginals and settlers would ring out if they couldn't find a water hole. Nick also told us the Aboriginal myth about the tree, and how the mother of creation uprooted the tree and replanted it upside down because all the other trees and plants complained it was too beautiful; so what you now see as branches is supposed to be the exposed Boab trees roots! Apparently this story is shared across the Aboriginal tribes although they speak very different languages. Interestingly there are very similar trees in Africa with the cause of the migration being attributed to the movements of the seeds through the ice age. Also at this site we apparently saw the biggest water trough in the southern hemisphere, although as this sounded like a bit of a joke we restrained from taking a picture!

Collecting fire wood was the next stop among the many roadhouses. Richard had an interesting approach for this which initially involved using the bull bars on our 14 tonne truck to encourage the tree to fall over! Next he and Phill (a German traveller in our group) pulled the tree the remainder of the way over before we loaded it into the back of the truck. Quite ironic really as there was loads of other wood on the ground around us but we put it down to 'boys being boys'!

With an ongoing commentary along our drive Nick pointed out Geeky Gorge, which is basically a decomposed Devonian reef system, and after millions of years it now takes the form of limestone. Quoting some numbers, apparently enough water flows through this gorge to fill up Sydney Harbour 16 Million times a year!

As the Kimberleys covers a range of 425 000 square kilometres (1.5 times the size of England), it was no surprise to us that we'd covered over 800km today once we'd driven 90km past Fitzroy Crossing, so we were glad to stop at our camp for the night which was a campground at the top of a gorge where we enjoyed our Kangaroo dinner with jacket potatoes cooked on the campfire.

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