Blogs from Kimberley, Western Australia, Australia, Oceania - page 5

For all the pictures from this part of the trip: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2321085&id=16912798&l=e3d2e60f27 After being able to sleep in for 4 days, I had to get up early to leave the lovely town of Broome and head towards Darwin. Our first stop was to see the Prison Boab Tree. It was used as a "prison cell" in the 1890s by the local police to lock up Aboriginal prisoners over night, on their way to Derby for sentencing. Our next stop was Windjana Gorge Nat'l Park. The Napier range is an ancient reef system that was pushed up into mountains. You can still see some coral in the rock. At Windjana Gorge we saw some freshwater crocs! Winjana Gorge was a starting point for an Indigenous man who ended up becoming an outlaw in the eyes of the Europeans. ... read more

DAY 213 We were all up early today as we were heading out from the Windjana camp ground, which was an excellent place to stay, Kirsty and Andrew were heading back to Derby sum 2 ½ hours away in the other direction as they needed to pick up their caravan that was being stored there. The reason for needing to put a caravan in storage is simple, most of the tracks are 4x4 only and to take a fairly conventional caravan down these tracks would be disastrous, they would just probably fall to bits or at least get grounded, some caravan manufacturers make off road Caravans but they are not cheap and you would certainly have to take one in very carefully, in order not to damage it too much. Our Wendy house on wheels is ... read more

We took a breakfast sunrise cruise on Katherine Gorge and it’s no surprise that we thought it was fantastic like everyone else who’s ever seen it. We know you've been having a flood there but how's this for some water. During their flood in 1998 the amount of water that flowed through the gorge would have filled Sydney Harbour every 9 hours. We climbed up to the lookout then trekked back down the long track behind the gorge - boy was it hot. In Katherine it’s really sad to see so many Aborigines hanging around aimlessly in the parks and street corners. There really wasn’t much for us in Katherine itself so we headed towards WA via Gregory National Park. I love Gregory National Park Luckily for us, Joe Creek’s walk is poorly signposted which meant ... read more

Karijini National Park Omdat er langs de kust tussen Exmouth en Broome vrijwel niets nieuws te zien is zijn we via het binnenland naar het noorden gereden. Karijini NP had geen leukere ‘omweg’ kunnen zijn. Met een groot aantal gorges (een soort ravijnen uitgesleten door, inmiddels opgedroogde, rivieren) waanden we ons in een soort survival-speeltuin; op de bodem van de gorges bevonden zich natuurlijke zwembaden, watervallen en riviertjes. Het grootste deel van de zwembaden waren alleen toegankelijk via nauwe rotsspleten waardoor er eerst geklommen en geklauterd moest worden. Hier hebben we ons een paar dagen prima vermaakt, en vooral de hitte ontlopen door veel in het water te liggen. Port Hedland Kenmerkend voor Noord West-Australie is de aanwezigheid van de tientallen ijzerertsmijnen. Door deze mijnen zijn er goed gefaciliteerde dorpen aanwezig op plekken waar anders niemand ... read more

They call it the last frontier of civilised travel. The Kimberley - a place I'm sure many of you have heard of, but like me, didn't know too much about it. I had an idea - rugged wilderness, thundering waterfalls, an abundance of wildlife - basically everything you expect a remote area to be. What I didn't know was the size of it - I thought it was I small pocket of Australia inhabited by no one. It is in fact a massive area spanning 420,000 square kilometres with a population of 30,000 - the vast majority of which are localised in the 3 main towns of Broome, Wyndam and Kununurra. It is typical Australia - a vast heap of nothingness with an occasional splattering of people. As soon as I saw a few pictures of ... read more