Missing the Wet T-Shirt Competition

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Today we have a long day of travelling - a three hour drive back to Darwin followed by a flight across the border to Kununurra in the great fiefdom of Western Australia. The WA fief is the most COVID averse of the lot, and slams his border shut to anyone from anywhere with even a whiff of the virus. Travellers who’ve been in any states/territories except the Northern Territory or Tasmania within the last two weeks are only allowed in after quarantining for two weeks. We’ve been in the Territory for fifteen days now so we should be OK, but I think we’ll really only start to relax when we actually get there… well get there without being locked up in a barbed wire surrounded quarantine prison more precisely.

The sun’s only just managed to peek above the horizon as we leave Jabiru, and there’s a thin mist over some of the wetlands which looks spectacular.

We’ve been half jokingly discussing what we might do if there are still COVID restrictions in place in Victoria when we’re due to fly home in a couple of weeks time, which is a distinct possibility. The other factor at play is Melbourne’s weather. Nothing’s more certain than it will be very cold. We both agree we could get very used to living up here in the dry season. We’re due to be in Broome in a few days time. Maybe we could buy a tent and set up camp on the beach there for a couple more months. Well maybe not exactly on the beach - I think that’s a bit of a croc hangout.

Our taxi driver from Kununurra airport into town introduces himself as Keith. He looks about 80 and says that he’s lived up here for 52 years. He tells us that he’s a qualified pharmacist and ran the chemist shop in nearby Wyndham for many years. He’s since worked as a cotton picker, owned and run a chook farm, and now operates a local fleet of buses and taxis. Yep, I think that wins today’s career diversity award.

We check into our accommodation, the Kununurra Hotel. Judging by the number of people throwing down beers in the bar at lunchtime we suspect that this might be the town’s social centre. Technology however doesn’t seem to have quite caught up - I think it’s probably been a decade since we last stayed in a hotel without wifi…. So this is what it feels like living off the grid, well almost, our phones still work; we wouldn’t want to get too carried away.

When we booked our Broome accommodation several months ago it seemed that it was the go-to destination for heat and overseas travel starved southern Aussies. We got the last available room in town at a backpackers pub, where the most notable attraction seemed to be the weekly wet t-shirt competition. When half the country subsequently got locked down again due to COVID, the tables suddenly turned and there was accommodation available by the truckload. We check, and sure enough we‘re able to upgrade again, as we did for the first time a few weeks ago. Issy is of course shattered - all that training for the wet t-shirt competition gone to waste.

I take a late afternoon hike up to Kelly’s Knob, the highest point in Kununurra. The plan was to get there for sunset, but the time zones are a bit out of whack here so I miss quite a bit of the show. We’re just over the border from the Northern Territory, but an hour and a half behind it in time - we landed here half an hour before we left Darwin. We’re in the same zone as Perth which is the best part of fifteen hundred kilometres further west. This time zone might suit the residents of that fair city perfectly well, but here in Kununurra it means that the sun sets mid-afternoon and rises again in the wee small hours of the morning. I’m sure the Kununurra-ites will eventually get around to seceding and getting their own time zone, although not of course if the almighty fief’s got anything to do with it…. The Knob is clearly a popular sunset viewing spot, and the views out over the town and the Ord River floodplain are spectacular.

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Photos

The residents of Kununurra are proud of their town....
... although I've got a sneaking suspicion that the last word in the second last line might have originally read "boabs" (iconic local trees)....