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Published: December 14th 2008
We arrived in W.A. on the 10th of November. Along with the “Welcome to Western Australia” sign, crossing the border also involved a thorough inspection of our car and caravan - you can’t bring fruit, veges, honey, seeds etc. into the state and they even confiscated a fruit box we had been using for storage - even though we pointed out the label on the box showing it had come from WA in the first place!
Our first stop was Kununurra, the Queen of the East Kimberleys, and the surrounding area of Lake Argyle and the Ord River - now this is a most interesting place! They built a huge dam on the Ord about 40 years ago, forming Lake Argyle and transforming the dry arid countryside into lush green pastures. Now they have so much water it’s not funny! No restrictions on showers up this way. Apparently there’s enough water in Lake Argyle to fill 16 Sydney Harbours in a flash!
Kununurra was preparing itself for a big event the following week- the local premiere of the movie Australia - which was filmed around the East Kimberleys and in several other locations around Oz. Apparently Nicole Kidman, Hugh
The Bungle Bungles
showing how vast these beehives are!Jackman and other key actors spent a couple of months around town and the locals thought they were great. We didn’t stick around for it but enjoyed several days around the region. What a climate though - temperatures in the 40s every day, although luckily the humidity was low.
We visited the Zebra Rock gallery - the rock is mined locally and is unique to the area, and makes great jewellery and ornaments, and they make great mango smoothies too (getting quite a taste for these). We also went out to see the Ord Dam, the Ivanhoe River crossing, up Kelly’s Knob lookout over the town, and made a trip out to Wyndham, a frontier kind of town with a great lookout over the Five Rivers entering the Cambridge Gulf.
But the real highlight was our scenic flight over the Bungle Bungles!!! It was an amazing trip and well worth it. We were up at 4.45am as the flight was at 6am - it is too hot to do it later in the day this time of the year. We were treated to spectacular views over the whole 2.5 hour flight, which took us over Lake Argyle and
the Ord Dam, across several large cattle stations and then a loop over the Bungle Bungle mountains. Surprisingly this remote area of the Kimberleys was only “discovered” about 30 years ago, (although it has always been known to the local Aboriginal people). The range consists of a vast mass of beehive shaped domes and is probably best seen from the air. On the way back, we also flew over the huge Argyle Diamond mine, complete with its own “resort” accommodation for staff and commercial sized airport.
It was a long drive from Kununurra to our next stop at Fitzroy Crossing - but through some great East Kimberley mountain scenery. Stopped at Hall’s Creek to take a photo of the local supermarket for Mel, who knows the owner - there wasn’t much else to keep us there long - and a very hot day for travelling, so it was nice to make it into Fitzroy Crossing in time for a swim at the pool. Like Hall’s Creek, the town itself is a small outback aboriginal settlement. We stayed here for two nights, and took a short but very pleasant boat trip up the Geikie Gorge in the afternoon. Bill, our
guide explained some of the local Aboriginal traditions during the trip and the gorge itself was magnificent with its multi-coloured sheer cliffs and unusual limestone formations. The caravan park was rather interesting - with cattle roaming freely around and screeching bats at night!
We were surprised to wake the next morning to the sound of thunder and sprinkles of rain, so we decided to skip a planned trip up to Windjana Gorge and head for Derby, about 3 hours up the road. It was Sunday, and very quiet in Derby! We were the only people at the caravan park, and we had a restful Derby day. Derby is a bit like Wyndham really - not a great lot to see or do there. But it is very tidy wee town, and has a couple of quirky features. HUGE tidal movements of up to 11 metres - we trotted down to the wharf at high tide and then again at low tide to see for ourselves - quite fascinating really. And they had to build a very long jetty to cope with the tides. Derby also has a famous Boab tree called the Prison Boab, as it was used as
a holding cell during blackbirding (illegal transporting of aboriginals for forced labour).
Then it was off to Broome, which is a different kettle of fish altogether! Very modern, trendy resort- style town, in a magnificent coastal setting (and lots of red earth too). We stayed a week there at the Cable Beach caravan park, which was one street from the beach and very nice - lots of shade and a huge swimming pool. We really enjoyed Broome, the town was quiet and the pace was slow. Apparently it is quite the opposite in the peak tourist season though when it is busy and crowded. We were really lucky that the hot summer was yet to arrive, but the crowd had all gone home.
The first thing you notice when you get to Cable Beach is the colour of the water! It is so blue it doesn’t seem real. And the colour contrasts are wonderful - red cliffs, white sand and blue sea - doesn’t get much better than this! We did have one swim at the beach, but felt a bit nervous as it was almost stinger season, although we were told they hadn’t arrived as yet. We
didn’t really want to be the first of the season. It’s a lovely beach though and it goes for miles and miles. You can drive your car onto the northern part of the beach (just like Titahi Bay really!) and it is a good place to watch the sunset and of course the famous camels.
Broome itself has a very interesting history as was once the pearling capital of the world - in 1900 there were over 400 pearl lugger boats in Broome! Big enough to impact on Australian immigration policy in fact - the pearling industry at the time was so dependent on the skills of Asian divers that Broome was granted an exemption from the “white Australia” policy. Lots of info on all this at the local museum. We also visited the Broome cemetery where over 900 Japanese divers are buried, most succumbing to the “bends”. The town was bombed during the 2nd World War and over 100 lives were lost. I guess the Japanese divers were either interned or returned to Japan at the start of the war.
The shopping precinct of Broome is called Chinatown and has some interesting resort style shops - there
are also lots of pearl retailers and some pretty high class ones, you could easily spend thousands on just one necklace or an earring - nice for window shopping though! Broome also has the distinction of having the oldest open air picture theatre in the world (or something like that) and we enjoyed watching Mamma Mia in a deck-chair under the stars. We also had a great night at the local pub watching NZ beat Australia (that is always fun for me!) in the World Cup Rugby League Final and met a few kiwi bros doing the same thing.
We did a side trip up the Dampier Peninsula to Cape Leveque, left the caravan behind as half of the 200km road up to the Cape is unsealed, with some bull-dust holes, soft sand and corrugations. It’s quite a remote area of Australia - a long peninsula with about 7 or 8 small Aboriginal communities scattered along the coast. We stayed overnight in a cabin at the aboriginal community of Lombadina about 20km from the cape. The centre of the community is like a “village green” , a very tidy village, and they bake crusty bread in a wood-fired oven
three times a week -very yummy. On the way up we called into Beagle Bay to see the old white stone church which has a magnificent altar made of mother of pearl. We were a bit disappointed to find that the beach at Lombadina could only be reached by driving across soft dunes - we took a drive out but the track was a bit too soft and rough for us! But the beach at Cape Leveque was beautiful and almost deserted. Again, the colour contrasts there were stunning, red cliffs against vivid blue sea and pure white sand.
We left Broome and the Kimberley region on the 24 November, and drove south into the next part of the West, the mighty Pilbara region.
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