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Published: August 14th 2011
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Tiwi barbeque
Cook the wallaby! After the desert adventures, we returned to Darwin, reclaimed our car and van from Tania’s front lawn and back to the campground at Howard Springs. While we’d been away, Tania had had a swimming pool installed and Peter Carr, her father, was ensconced in it every afternoon plus a beer.
At last, we got the caravan awning fixed at the Coromal agent (see Longreach), it needed a set of new arms. We added a track on the other side of the van and bought a shade cloth which fits there and also on the awning side of the van. We’re using it every day as the temperatures are starting to climb into the low 30’s during the day, cooling to 20 or so at night.
John & Jenny Henley are in Darwin; John is doing a 2 month locum at Darwin Hospital. We’ve been with them several times this week, lots of fun. Jenny and us had a day excursion to the Tiwi Islands, which are an aboriginal reserve. Good trip. Unscheduled event was to see a group of aboriginal blokes cook a wallaby they had just shot for their Sunday barbeque. Skin it around the middle, gut it
Tiwi Islander
More melanesian than abo. Family painting on face. and throw it on the fire. Take it off periodically and cut off the cooked/burnt meat and throw it back on. Not for the squeamish. If there was anything left, they’d take it back for the womenfolk.
On the 8th the four of us went to Batchelor for the night. Batchelor is the entry point for the Litchfield National Park. The advertising blurb claims it is the match for Kakadu. It isn’t. It isn’t even on the same page. Litchfield has an old building, and some great swimming holes, and that’s all. Kakadu has rock art, great views and stunning wildlife observation places (Yellow Waters). Plus entry to Arnhem Land and abo culture. There’s no comparison.
From Batchelor we traveled south to Katherine for the third time and then turned west to Victoria River Roadhouse for the night. Then on to Kununurra for the rest of the week. We are just in WA, but by road it’s over 3,000km from Perth! There’s a border control for honey, fruit and veg. We thought we were OK, but they confiscated two fruit boxes we had had in the van since March! Bureaucrats! We have moved another 1½ hours in time
zones, making us 4 hours behind NZ. It gets light at 5.30am and is dark again before 6.00pm!
Kununurra was started in the 1960’s as a huge irrigated agricultural system based on two new lakes – Lake Argyll and Lake Kununurra. Lake Argyll is over 100skm in size compared to Sydney Harbour’s 54sqkm.
The area below the dam is “black soil”, in places over 30 feet deep. Kununura is about 90m above sea level and about 200km away. The fall is very even. The area irrigated is over 750 sqkm, with lots more when the next stages of the irrigation plan are implemented.
They started growing cotton, rice, sugar cane and bananas, but these have not been very successful. Melons and mangoes have been good for a while, but the coming crop is Indian Sandalwood, used for perfume, etc. Genetically modified cotton is under trial too. Transport is a major cost, which seems to kill most perishable products.
We took a tour up to the Argyle dam and on to the lake and then down the Ord River into Lake Kununurra. Very lovely country. Our campground is on the edge of Lake Kununurra, we are front
row and we get great sunsets. We played Lake Kununurra Golf Club (Beware of the crocs) and Don won and is now 3 up.
Just north west (100km) is the old port town of Wyndham, which features in the old cattle books for exports from the district. It has very striking scenery and the view above the town from the Five Rivers Outlook is stunning. While a port, Wyndham is still over 100km from the open sea. It started to service a gold strike at Halls Creek, then became a major cattle export port, and had a meatworks for a while. Again we stumbled across the fact that the new wharf was just being commissioned for the export of iron ore from the local mine! They are everywhere!!
A feature of the district is the Boab trees, which look like bottles with branches from the top. The wet season drops lots of water and locals all reckon it’s a good time. The “build up” where its humid but doesn’t rain is October/November is “difficult”, but the wet December to May is OK. The average temperature are 21/34 deg and rainfall is about 850mm falling all in the wet.
Lake Kununurra
Our campsite - van in middle - lovely. May to August averages less than 15mm rain total.
P n D
14 August 2011
Photos: 11 photos in all.
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