Monkey Mia to Darwin

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Nov 2009 - Monkey Mia - Carnarvon - Coral Bay

We arranged our free transport out of Monkey Mia with one of the tour companies that visit there on a weekly basis and the day before leaving Mair decided she wanted to come with us so the three of us loaded our bags and said our goodbyes and Emma gave us all a fruit salad stolen from the breakfast buffet. As we were now spending a couple of days with a tour group we got to visit the places we went to the week before, Shell beach and the lookout points and this time the flies were worse! Before getting to Coral Bay we had to spend a night in Carnarvon, What a dump! We had to find a hostel to stay in for the night and the one we found was full of cockroaches and mosquitos, In need of a drink we had a couple of glasses of goon and cooked lots of chicken for dinner. The following morning we were picked up and driven to Coral Bay where we would be leaving this tour group and spending a few days relaxing on the beach. We decided we would start camping, we may have been suffering withdrawals from tents after being in Africa but mainly it was because it was so much cheaper. Emma had given us an old tent before we left MM so when we got to Coral Bay we saw Mair to her hostel then set up camp. This tent was a nightmare, apparently two man and broken poles so it was half collapsing. Add two backpacks, two day packs, a large laundry bag full of crap and the heat to that and it doesn’t make for a comfortable night. We decided as little time as possible should be spent in the tent so it was straight to the bottle shop and beach. The water here was perfect, clear, calm and warm. We spent hours in the water with our bag of goon floating by our side. Now for anyone that doesn’t know, hours of sitting in the sun drinking and not eating is not a good combination, by evening Michelle was a little worse for wear and spent a lot of the night with her head outside the tent as she couldn’t make it to the camp toilets!
In Coral bay you can go out to the sea to swim with Whale Sharks and Manta Rays, unfortunately it wasn’t the season for sharks so we picked a snorkel trip that included the Rays. Not being very confident snorkellers we had a guide come out with us to show us round the coral we were doing ok until she signalled for us to take our head out the water so she could tell us something. She started with “don’t want you to be alarmed, but!” well, at this we were ready to get back on the boat. There was a Nurse shark behind us but we didn’t see it coz it had swam away by the time we looked back in the water and she assured us it was not dangerous so we stayed in a bit longer and saw a turtle which took our mind off it for a bit. Back on the boat Michelle decided to look at the fish chart to see what a nurse shark looks like, we were both thankful after that we didn’t see it otherwise there might have been some soiled trunks!
The second snorkelling of the day took us to find the manta rays when we were near enough we were to get in the water and follow the guide as wherever she was, the mantas would be underneath. We had two of them gliding back and forth feeding just underneath us, this was a great experience and they were huge. We had one more snorkelling destination left today and this time we went out on our own, this time was less enjoyable, we were in really deep water which freaked Michelle out and I kept getting water in my mask so after 5 minutes we called it quits and headed back to the boat. Back on dry land we took a walk around the beach and up to a view point to watch the sunset followed by music and more goon on the beach.

Coral Bay - Broome

We exchanged gifts and said our goodbyes to Mair and boarded the Greyhound bus to Broome. After a long and boring trip we arrived in Broome ready to spend some more time on a beach, this one was unadvisable to swim in though due to the jelly fish and there were ’stinger stations’ all along with vinegar in just incase you were stupid enough to get in the water during stinger season. We weren’t! We treated ourselves to a double room here as we managed to get a good price and were only here for a few nights. In the morning we took the courtesy shuttle into the town to have a look around, not a great deal going on so we got lunch and headed back to the hostel, it was so hot that we got into the swimming pool and spent the majority of our stay there. In the evening when it had cooled down we headed to the beach with, you guessed it, music and drink. Cable beach was one of our favourites even though we couldn’t get in the water. It was so wide and the sand stretched on for miles with camels taking passengers for a trip up and down. I went to look for the toilet and got the shock of my life when a security light turned on and I nearly bumped into a bbq with a snake slithering over it. Naturally, when I told Michelle she was up there like a shot to try and find it but was disappointed as it had obviously slithered away.
A few days after arriving it was back onto the Greyhound to our next destination Kununurra.

Broome - Kununurra

We arrived in 40 degree heat with 20kg of luggage each and proceeded to walk to find the nearest camp site. After what felt like a day and losing 10lb in fluids we finally found one. We put our broken 2 man tent up and walked into the main town. Apparently this place is bustling in the high season as there are national parks nearby but we saw no evidence of that as this was the low and we discovered the Bungle Bungle park was closed due to the extreme temperatures and bush fires so we made do with the little Bungles (layered domed shape rock formations) which a friendly but very racist Australian offered to give us a lift to. We very quickly ran out of water and energy and still had to find our way back to camp which would take about 1hour in normal conditions. On the way we passed a cemetery with a sprinkler going so we took a brief detour to stand in the spray of water for some temporary relief. After this excursion we decided the best thing to do would be to not go out anymore but to spent the rest of our stay in the pool which is exactly what we did. The air was so still and the temperature didn’t drop to under 35 during the nights so we took the tarp off our tent and laid naked under the mesh but by this point we didn’t really care if anyone could see & we were getting up for cold showers several times throughout the night. We felt so relieved when the day came to board our bus out of here and was actually looking forward to a 19 hour overnight bus journey as there would be aircon!

Kununurra - Darwin

Upon arriving in Darwin we were astounded by the amount of folk walking around the streets wearing nothing but g-strings and mankini’s, upon enquiring whether this was usual attire for city dwellers in the northern territory we were told that the annual “hooker‘s ball” was tonight and it’s a pretty good party. Sadly as Michelle and I had left our crotchless panties and nipple clamps in England we decided to give it a miss and make do with watching the attendee’s strutting there stuff on the street from our hostel balcony. Hopefully it wont be the last time I see a man in just a sparkly thong calmly approach a police officer in the street and ask for direction without fear of being carted off in a meat wagon.
We spent about a week in Darwin and were impressed with what the city had to offer, it didn’t have the hustle and bustle of bigger cities yet still accommodated a good amount of night spots and shops for the spend happy traveller. We had hoped to get on a tour of Kakadu national park (the largest in Australia) but as usual our timing was all out and it was closed due to the start of the wet season, however, we did take a tour of Litchfield (not the Australia‘s largest national park but still beautiful all the same) and were treated to waterfall’s, giant termite mounds and some lake swimming with fish that like to eat dead foot skin, this wasn’t in the brochure and came as quite a shock when we were having a relaxing sit down on a rock with our feet in the shallows.
As Michelle had missed out on diving with sharks in cape town we took the opportunity to enter “the cage of death” at Crocadilious Park and swim with… yes that‘s right, crocodile‘s. Now the name “cage of death” is misleading in a couple of ways, one, it’s not so much a cage but more of a Perspex’s tube and two, the only way you could possibly die in this scenario’s is from drowning or the humiliation that come’s from looking at the photo’s of you holding your breath underwater with puffed out cheeks and a bewildered “where‘s the camera” stare in your eye’s. The croc’s were not in the slightest bit bothered that there were two edible humans meters away from them, who were also kicking and shouting “come on you lazy bastard MOOOOVE!”, they had clearly grown used to it and decided the best protest at having there already meagre space invaded was a peaceful one, which was incredibly effective as I wouldn‘t recommend doing this unless you want to see what it would be like to look like a tit in your swimming cozzie in front of about twenty people.
Our final activity in Darwin was to get my tongue pierced, I didn’t chose to do this in Darwin for any reason relating to the city and therefore it’s probably not blog worthy unless it was somehow a subtle tribute to Charles Darwin’s thought’s and that I’m “evolving” into a more rebellious and clearly tongue hating person considering the pain I put it through, the reason I put this into the blog is to simply let you know that for the following month or so all the event’s that happen do so with me not talking or me sounding like I’m on day release and Michelle is my carer, sentence’s like “thable for thwo pwleathe” and “sthorry I‘ve rethenthly had my thongue pierthed” would usually be accompanied by a gush of saliva and an extremely red face. Thankfully now the lisp has worn down to it’s usual (slightly funny) self.

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