Blogs from Western Australia, Australia, Oceania - page 9

Yesterday I’m having a nightmare, but it’s OK, I’ve woken up. So how come it still feels like a nightmare, only worse. I blame the pizza. I‘m still having visions of pizza, with meat and cheese, so much meat and greasy cheese, and it’s burnt. Why did I eat it I think. The rest of the day is a nausea filled blur, spent half in bed and half in, well, another room. The highlight is Issy coming back after buying half the pharmacy - anti-nausea tablets, Panadol, electrolyte….. maybe we really should have gone to the hospital like she suggested. At least she’s not sick too, although I’m not sure how she’s escaped. We had at least one piece of each other’s pizza. We did have different drinks. That must be it, although I wasn’t aware ... read more

Today we travel back to Broome. We’re really only going there because the only other place we can fly to from Kununurra is Darwin, but if we go there we’ll get locked up for two weeks when we get home. We‘re probably a bit "Broomed-out", but it still feels like a much better option than going home to a cold and miserable lockdown. The news from home gets worse by the day. There were 57 COVID cases overnight which is the highest number in about a year. We’re starting to think that it’s only a matter of time until the Delta variant gets into Western Australia, and if that happens while we’re still here we’re sure to get locked up somewhere; either here or when we get back home. We’re driven from Emma Gorge to Kununurra ... read more

Today we‘ve booked a tour to…. well we don’t actually know. It was the only tour running either yesterday or today which wasn’t booked out so we thought we’d better grab it whatever it was. We’re now thinking that perhaps we should have asked a few more questions. Our guide Mick gives us a bit more information on the history of El Questro. It seems that it wasn't all plain sailing in the years immediately after tourist operations first started here in 1992. Emma Gorge started life with 27 tents, but they were all wiped out in a massive cyclone only a couple of years later, during which 440 mm of rain fell in only about 12 hours. A few years after they were rebuilt they were largely wiped out again, this time by a fire. ... read more

Today we fly back to Kununurra and from there on to El Questro in the East Kimberley. We’ve got some time to kill so we visit Broome’s Japanese and Chinese cemeteries. These were originally deliberately located outside the town boundary, probably for some obscure reason related to our racist past. Thankfully the town boundary was subsequently moved, so they’re now well inside. The Chinese section is a bit underwhelming and not particularly well maintained. I wonder if Premier Xi knows about this. If not I’m sure he soon will, which will undoubtedly result in yet another mark against us Aussies in his now probably not so little black book. The Japanese area is certainly more attractive, and there’s also a bit more information on its history. The first burial here was way back in the 1890s, ... read more

We decide to give ourselves a day off from sight seeing. News from home suggests that they’re going to be locked down for at least the next two weeks so we take our cue to spend the day trying to work out how and where we’re going to extend our time up here in warmth and freedom. We briefly consider heading across to North Queensland until we realise that this is now also a COVID hotspot, and if we go anywhere near it they’ll lock us up and throw away the key when we get home. (I'm not quite sure why but "locked up" somehow sounds a lot worse than "locked down".) We decide to opt for a few nights in a tent in the Kimberleys near Kununurra, followed by a week in Darwin. It’s a ... read more