Wiped out by Flood and Fire

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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. It's thought that this was sparked by some bits of metal rubbing together when some road building equipment was being unloaded from a truck.

First stop for the day is Zebedee Springs. The road in is a mass of corrugations and we’re getting what we’re told is affectionately known as a Kimberley Massage. The spring emerges from the base of a sheer cliff at a warm thirty two degrees, and then flows through a series of small pools separated by large rocks. It's all surrounded by a thick forest of tropical palms. It seems that this is a bit of an elitist hangout. They close the gates at midday every day, and only guests from the El Questro Homestead are allowed in after that. Rooms at that establishment start at about two thousand dollars a night, so we suspect that the only people who stay there are probably either oil tycoons, movie stars or big city lawyers. I guess it wouldn’t do to have any of their peaceful dips interrupted by riff raff such as us. Apparently a lot of the scenes from the movie “Australia” were filmed around here, and Nicole Kidman and co stayed at the Homestead during production. She bathed in the springs and then soon fell pregnant, which she apparently attributed to something magical in the water. Hmmm.

Our bus was full when we got here, but our group seems to have expanded. We’re not sure how - maybe they were hiding in the bushes. Anyway it seems there's no longer room for everyone so a few of us are shepherded into the back of a rusty old truck with an open cage on the back of it. It feels like we’re off on an African safari, aside perhaps from the lack of lions and elephants.

We continue on to the El Questro Station Township for lunch. Township? There’s a bar and a few tents, so "township" might be stretching it a bit. We were asked at the start of the day what we all wanted for lunch. They ran out of room in the barramundi column, a handful chose the steak, and only one, my beloved, chose the vegetarian option. She asked what it was and Mick said he didn’t know. Hmmm. So she started the day not knowing where the tour was going, and then ordered an unknown dish for lunch. My girl clearly likes to live mysteriously. It comes out last - a bowl heaped high with lettuce, with a few baby tomatoes tossed in to provide the variety. We're starting to suspect that not a lot of people ever order the vegetarian option. I think the waiters are feeling guilty; a few minutes later they present her with a giant bowl of chips, which we're very much suspecting is a peace offering. Oh well at least the lettuce is healthy, assuming of course you don’t eat any of the chips.

We're loaded back into our safari truck and driven a few kilometres along a dusty track to the banks of the Chamberlain River, where we board a boat for a cruise through the spectacular Chamberlain Gorge. This is right up there with Nitmiluk and Windjana Gorges in spectacularity (if that's a word - Issy says that every word originated from somewhere, so if it wasn't a word before it is now), with all the usual offerings of sheer seventy metre high red and orange sandstone cliffs. We’re introduced to Monster, the resident saltwater croc, who seems to be enjoying an afternoon sunning himself on the bank. We cruise past a couple of rocks the size of trucks which we're told fell from the sides of the Gorge when a massive flood came through here after a cyclone about fifteen years ago. The same flood should have washed away the luxury accommodation at the Homestead which sits on the riverbank overlooking the Gorge; the only thing that saved it was a boab tree which got washed in under the floor and ended up propping the whole structure up. The major item of terrestrial fauna here is the resident population of short eared rock wallabies, which somehow manage to eke out an existence on ledges and crevices in the Gorge's walls. It seems staggering that they can somehow navigate their way up and down the virtually vertical rock faces to get food and water.

We reach a rock bar blocking our progress and stop in what we’re told is a fish sanctuary. We’re given food pellets and told by our guides to hold them in our fingers out over the side of the boat. I hope these guys know what they’re doing and we’re not all about to become croc food. We start to feel drops of rain. No wait, the seating in the boat's all undercover. It seems that the local archer fish are world experts at squirting water at the food we’re holding so that it dislodges and falls into the water. We're told that the water's coming at us at something like four metres per second. It's certainly an entertaining show; there’s water flying in all directions. We’re told that if we weren’t here these guys’d be using this skill to dislodge insects from vegetation along the banks.

As we head back to Emma Gorge we notice some unusual white fluffy things covering most of the sky. We remember now, they’re called clouds and we haven’t seen anything like this many of them since we left home more than a month ago. It’s almost cool….

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Comments

[D MJ Binkley]

Western Australia
Beautiful

[DaveandIssy]

Chamberlain Gorge
Thx. It was stunning.