Advertisement
Published: September 2nd 2009
Edit Blog Post
After leaving Broome behind we know we have large distances to cover now. Its not good that John’s ankle is still sore and, had we been back in the UK he would probably have it strapped up properly and be off it completely. But we’re not so we have to do the best that we can and have to limit his driving to the odd bits here and there when I’m feeling tired. As we arrive at the small town of Fitzroy Crossing we get a sense that we are now well and truly hitting the outback. There are far more aboriginal families about although I get a sense that their communities exist separately from the Australian communities. Its also weird as most of the towns that we are now passing through all have signs either saying that they are ‘dry’ towns or that alcohol sales are limited to certain hours. Apparently there is a huge problem within the aboriginal communities of alcohol abuse and this is one way of trying to tackle the problem.
In Fitzroy we head over to The Crossing Inn, an infamous bar that is decorated on the outside by paintings completed by the local schoolchildren. At
night the bar is usually the place to come to speak to locals and while the night away but unfortunately we are not stopping and head on out of town to the Mary Pool rest area. Rather than continue driving we decide to stop for the night here as for once we have reached our rest stop early and its lovely to be able to sit outside with a beer, read and chill in the afternoon. There are a few other campervans doing the same thing and someone has a stereo with music playing so we have a very calm end to our day as we watch the sun go down. Later on that evening we overhear someone warning not to go too close to the river edge as there have been a few crocodile attacks over the past few weeks as crocodiles inhabit the riverbed along this area!! Its only as we drive out the following morning that we see the crocodile warning signs...how did we miss them on the way in? More importantly its a good job we didn’t go for a walk along the river as we had originally planned to do!!
There seem to be
fewer and fewer people on the road if that is possible and we hardly see a soul as we head towards the small town of Halls Creek. On the way we pass the turnoff for Wolf Creek and toy with the idea of making the 130km detour. As its all on an unsealed road though we decide against it and, having watched the film before we left the UK I really didn’t fancy breaking down up there!! It all makes sense from the film how you could drive for miles and miles and be taken completely off into some little outback farm and not be discovered. I know it was only a film but being out here now it all makes so much sense!!!
Halls Creek doesn’t really have much to it as a town, although it is famous for having west Australia’s first gold discovery in 1885. We head out of town along 3km of unsealed road (will we never learn!) to the China Wall, a sub vertical quartz rock protruding 6m off the ground. After a quick look around and deciding that John’s ankle really doesn’t need to be tested with a climb, we decide to skip
the remaining 13km of unsealed road and head back into Halls Creek to fill up with petrol before hitting the highway again. After another short stop at Turkey Creek (see some lovely rock art paintings) we also pass by our first closed aboriginal community- apparently you have to have permission to enter it as its a closed village. About 30 km outside of Kununurra we stop at the Cockburn rest area, knowing that we won’t find any free camping anywhere in Kununurra and knowing that we can get up early and drive the 30km very easily (it suddenly dawns on us why people leave rest stops so early in the mornings now!!) Not being sure if this is an overnight stop as no one else is here, we tuck ourselves in behind some bushes but are soon joined by a few other campervans so don’t feel too isolated!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.086s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 15; qc: 48; dbt: 0.0504s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb