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Published: November 19th 2006
4/11/06 - 11/11/06 Broome to Darwin
Day 1
06:30 AM. Our new guide, Leigh rocked up in the 21 Seater 4x4 coach. All our tucker (food), Grog (beer!) and water was loaded onto the bus. Fully loaded we were about 17 tonnes (mostly the beer). With swags, sleeping bags and all our gear, we could survive off the bus for 8 days. The last tour coming down from Darwin had hit a lot of rain and almost got stuck. Leigh’s opening speech was pretty much as follows;
“Firstly, throw away your itinerary for this trip. We can’t get to most of the places cause the roads are closed. I’ll try to get you to Darwin but I can’t promise anything. Once we get on the Gibb River road, there’s only one way on and one way off. We might get a few hundred k’s down it and have to turn round and come all the way back. The nearest flying doctor services are here and here (pointing at map). If any one has any reservations about joining this trip then please decide now not to get on the bus, cause once you’re on, then you can’t change your mind.”
Excitement plus!! Every one got on the bus.
October, November is the ‘Big build up’ towards the cyclone season when the storm clouds form and thunder and lightning can rage all around you. The roads will stay open or close off depending on exactly where the rain falls.
We stopped in Derby, a small town where everything was named after the Boab trees. Walking down the road passed the Boab pharmacy and Boab Hardware store we popped into the Derby information centre “Beyond the Boabs” for an update on the roads (and also read that thousands of head of cattle are lost each year, taken by the ‘saltys’ - big saltwater crocs!
We lunched at the prison tree, a huge….Boab! And headed up the Gibb River road, covering 555Kms of the unsealed road on the first day. Our first night’s camping saw lightning flashing all around us. All we had on our tents was a light sprinkle of rain, just enough to force us to keep the flysheets on and sweltering us in the trapped heat.
Day 2
Woke at 4:15 to the alarm call of the blue wing kookaburras and corellas. A dawn chorus
like no other! Our early morning 8km walk was to Manning Gorge for a dip. We spied 2 rainbow bee-eaters on route and some ‘Bradshaw’ Aboriginal art showing a boomerang and hand ‘signature’ in the rock face. Our second walk of the day was to Galvan’s gorge. A huge monitor Lizard lounged on a branch in the shade by the pool, staring down at our antics with the rope swing. Huge Ants with bright green bums crawled up our legs and bit us if we stood in the same spot to long. Our guide insisted that they actually tasted good and were eaten by Aboriginal people. After being bitten several times, I opted to take my revenge and ate one. They actually tasted quite citrus, their big green bums providing a lime-like flavour!
After spotting many interesting spiders such as the St Andrews Cross and rock spiders, I decided to hunt around the nooks and crannies of the rocks and shrubs a bit more to see what I might spy. I suddenly came across one single bush with the most fascinating bugs I’ve ever seen. I called out to the group to come see and no-one took me too
seriously but our guide came over and declared that the bugs were nothing that he’d ever seen before. They had iridescent rainbow coloured bodies and bright orange under-bellies and legs. The closest recognizable bug our guide could muster was Christmas beetles, but these were still very different.
On a return trip from the gorge, we suddenly stopped for a large frill neck lizard in the road. Our guide managed to hold it for a while to give us a chance to see it’s huge flame coloured defense mechanism. Fascinating for us all to see, but not very wise as its bite is very septic and would definitely have required hospitalization. Luckily there was no incident!
Back at our campsite, the ant life was fascinating. We experimented with the huge red, black and green, black and red ants, dropping pieces of pepper, chicken, sweets and cucumber and watching them drag the food to their respective homes. Inadvertently we seemed to start an ant war by luring the black and green ants to the red ants lair, until the red ants were completely overrun.
Day 3
Driving, driving and more driving, the length of the Gibb River Road. We
Lee adjusting the tyres
Letting down the pressure for the dirt roadstried to approach Adcock Gorge but the road was too sodden and the soft black soil made us turn back. Our guide rang through asking about the state of the roads and the good news was that the Gibb River road was open heading north. The lightning all night long had been from the storms dumping their water in Derby, that we’d already past. We arrived at the Pentecost River and set up our swags and mossy nets for a night of camping under the stars. Tents were way too hot. The Croc Safety sign warned against swimming and lingering to near the riverbank. We camped a good way back and up hill from the river and watched the sunset with a beer. Then diagonally opposite in the sky, watched the full moon rise over the Cockburn range.
Day 4
Our air conditioning curse struck again, but only half the bus this time. The purchase of cooling water spray bottles led to numerous water fights on the coach but a good soaking was preferable to the heat.
We finished the Gibb River Road and onto tarmac road once more, heading into Wyndham, famed for it’s 20 meter giant
croc sculpture, and for a mean average annual temperature of 36 degrees C. We headed onto Kununurra, via Marglu Billabong where we spied our first wild ‘salty’ (well it’s eyes only) doing it’s best “I’m only a stick, it’s safe to come close - honest” impression. The bee-eaters, Jacanas, Broglas and Jabiru birds that we saw wading and swimming around the water hole didn’t seem to be fooled. After luch we headed to Lake Argyll and a fantastic 3 hour sunset cruise. The largest man-made lake in Australia measures approximately 75 x 30 km and holds approximately 20, 000 fresh water crocodiles. These are allegedly not dangerous, so we all swam quite happily, or with only minor trepidation, particularly after viewing the teeth on the one that we saw on the waters edge, slinking back into the lake. The sunset over the lake was beautiful and to accompany it we downed an esky of beer and nachos and salsa dip. Perfect!
Day 5
At our campsite, my day started with flushing a large green frog out from the side of the toilet bowl. There were often surprised sounds coming from toilet and shower blocks at the discovery of various
Boomernag Art
'Bradshaw' Aboriginal art frogs and bugs. Slightly back onto the ‘official’ itinerary now, we headed for Purnuluru national park, home of the famous Bungle Bungles.
The Bungle Bungles have only been a tourist destination for about 20 years, ever since they were shown on a TV documentary in 1986 and switchboards were jammed as hundreds of people phoned to find out where they were and if they could be visited. The giant beehive looking domes were mentioned in episodes of Neighbours as the location that Helen Daniels would visit for some piece and quiet. We wandered around the Domes walk and Cathedral gorge before heading to a lookout point for sunset.
Our journey into the Bungles was an evening and early morning experience only. The temperature was reading in the 40’s in the shade and the highest we saw was 53.5 in the sun on the thermometer on my watch. We bush-camped under our mossy nets with plans for a very early start to beat the heat of the sun, and walk in the cool of the day.
Day 6
Leigh stuck the kettle on for breakfast at 3:45 am!!! Our plan to beat the flies and the heat of
the sun. Our 2 early morning walks took us down dry stony riverbeds that would be rushing with water in a few weeks time; Mini Palm Walk and Echidna Gorge. The aboriginal Dreamtime story tells of an echidna being chased by a Gullah bird. The echidna took off his spikes and throw then at the bird, thus forming the spiky palm trees. The gorge narrowed to less than a meter wide in places and we squeezed through the rocks in the refreshing cool shade. We spied 2 bower bird’s nests. The male bower bird makes a tunnel-like nest on the ground and decorates it with his favourite colour. These birds seemed to like white, and one had added white stones, toilet paper and a polystyrene cup to is nest. We added 2 red leaves, which the bird instantly removed! The bird will perform a song and dance outside the front of his nest to attract a female. If she likes his song, dance and colour scheme, then she will go into the ‘Love tunnel’ for some action. In the morning the male kicks the female bird straight out. She has to build her own nest and then raise the young
Green tree ants
...with tasty citrus bums herself. This prompted lots of interesting conversation…
Day 7
Another long day of driving, crossing from Western Australia into the Northern Territory, and onto Katherine and our campsite at Edith Falls. We arrived in the campsite after dark and cooked with head torches and flashlights. A huge grasshopper drove every one crazy, attracted by the light it landed on people’s legs, shoulders, hair and face! Cane toads hopped around the site and in the morning I awoke to the drone of insects buzzing round the tree pollen and the sight of Agile Wallabies nibbling in the fields around us.
Day 8
As ever we rose early and headed for the waterfalls and pool for a morning swim. All the guys stripped for a photo for Wendy’s birthday (one of the girls on our tour), nicknamed Pyjama Girl for her striped pyjamas. Finally in mid-afternoon we arrived in Darwin.
The threat of road closures and rain was a real one but we’d skirted and bypassed it all to arrive on time without incident and ready to party!
The group of us met for dinner and Wendy’s birthday bash and she surprised us all with a quick change
into her PJ’s after dinner. The live band was great playing U2, The Killers, Bryan Adams… to many classics to mention and we sweated it out on the dance floor amidst a mix of uniformed armed forces men and local Darwinian girls who seemed to be stuck in an 80’s time warp, dressing as if they’d just seen ‘Desperately Seeking Susan’
What a Cracker!
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Jan
non-member comment
Rainbow
All this talk of Bungles...! No one's given a thought to zippy!x