Kakadu Calling

Kakadu calling

You will all have heard of Kakadu National Park in the Northern Territory I’m sure, and many of you have no doubt visited this huge (1/2 the size of Tasmania) world heritage listed site. The Park borders can be reached in about 2 hours drive either from Katherine in the south (which is where we came from) or Darwin in the north. There is a town in the Park, called Jabiru (also the name of the species of stork common in these parts – large, dark blue and white plumage, very handsome birds), which is basically a mining service town because Kakadu is rich in (among other minerals) uranium. So it’s a classic example of the clash between exploitation and conservation. The latter seems to be winning currently, for example with the toppling of the Rio Tinto Jabiluka uranium mine proposal in 1998. The Park is owned by the aboriginal people and managed in partnership with the National Parks people.

I wasn’t quite sure what to expect at Kakadu: maybe more spectacular scenery, a plethora of wildlife, and rare plants. These things are here, but the real essence of Kakadu is the Aboriginal view of their land and their art (especially the rock art). And there are numerous opportunities to learn about these. In the 3 days we’ve been here, we have:

- checked out the Warradjan cultural centre (near Cooinda), and enjoyed a good couple of hours looking at displays on aboriginal culture and artefacts relating to the region. Good, informative stuff
- taken a boat cruise on an eerily silent and dark billabong under bright night stars. Our guide Jenny, a local indigenous person with her brother Doug, found white-bellied sea eagle, azure kingfisher (damned hard to see), freshwater croc (equally hard to see - very well concealed among the panadanus at the edge of the billabong) and a saltie sitting on a fallen tree trunk. A pretty typical ‘haul’ for water levels that are higher than usual for this time of year
- checked out the rock art at Nourlangie and Nanguluwur, the latter much less crowded because it involves a bit of a hike and the tour groups tend to give it a miss in favour of Nourlangie which is easy to reach. Age of the art is a bit of a guessing game – some is recent, 1960’s, though this is restoration work of older paintings; and there is some that is several thousand years old. Aboriginal rock drawings are the oldest continuous form of visual art anywhere in the world, and some of the best examples are right here.
- a big highlight, today we took a tour across into western Arnhem Land, to a town called Oenpelli where there is a renowned arts and crafts centre, and nearby a site called Injalak Hill which is covered in outstanding rock art examples. We had an older bloke from the local tribe lead us up the Hill and explain the various drawings and their meanings. Only possible to visit with a permit (if you know where to go and what to look for), or on an organised tour. Besides the amazing art work, the views of the East Alligator river floodplain and Arnhem, Land escarpment were amazing, and the bird life was fair bustling. Much more like what I had expected to see in Kakadu.

We’ve also seen some great sites in Kakadu, especially Gunlom Falls, where we camped the first night and climbed to the top of the falls to swim in the pools above.

There’s lots of other interesting history here too, like wild buffaloes (used in early British settlements in Arnhem Land and released into the wild when those settlements failed), old uranium mines (there were about 12 active ones in the 1960’s, now all closed down, though the Ranger uranium mine near Jabiru continues), some pastoral leases, and of course the salt water crocodiles. One of the most recent episodes of croc-feeding-on-human in Oz was in 2002 at a billabong adjacent to the one where we did our night tour – a German tourist, swimming in the billabong along with fellow tour members on the advice of their tour guide (would you believe). Nah, not a good idea. Several of the Park sites are still closed because of the late rains and high water levels in creeks and rivers, which means crocs are still to be found in waterholes like Jim Jim Falls, and Twin Falls. The rangers have to find them all, trap them and move them out before they’ll re-open these sites, which will take another 3 weeks or so, we are told.

Tomorrow we head for Darwin for 3-4 days, where we will catch up with Vicky and Mark Connolly who are flying over from Brisbane to join us. After Darwin, we are heading to Garig Gunak Barlu National Park, which is NE of Darwin, and requires a permit to enter (check it out on Google). Only 15 vehicles are allowed in the Park at any one time and we have been lucky enough to get a slot. It is on the coast, and has pristine coastal scenery and some pretty agonising history of failed British settlements from the mid 1800’s.

So, we won’t be on-line again until more than week from today. In the meantime, hope all is well with you and yours

Cheers

The Chappies

Gunlom Falls

Nanguluwur rock art

Ooops. This is Cahills Crossing, over East Alligator River, into Arnhem Land. The vehicle belonged to some Oenpelli fellas who were crossing back to Jabiru to buy grog (Oenpelli is a dry community) with HIGH tide flowing out - doh, got washed off.

Brolgas, on E Alligator River floodplain

Injalak Hill rock art

What’s in a name? Part 2: The Bungle Bungles

The Bungle Bungle Range is a captivating area of very old sandstone that has been eroded by wind and rain over millions of years to create strange, striped bee-hive like domes in the southern part, and deep chasms in the northern part. The name ‘Bungle Bungle’ is also an oddity, no-one seems to know how it came about. It’s not a traditional aboriginal name, at least not a literal version of an aboriginal name. Anyway, again the name seems to suit, because it looks like something out of an Alice in Wonderland type story. Curiously, it wasn’t until the early 1980’s that it became known by anyone outside of the indigenous people and local pastoralists. Now it is a World Heritage Listed site, and protected inside the Purnululu National Park.

The BBs are about 250 km from Kununarra by road, but we decided to take a flight from Kununarra first (8-seater, there are 4 companies that run basically the same flight path from Kununarra), which also tracked over Lake Argyle (created by a dam on the Ord River in 1970) and the Argyle diamond mine (produces about ¼ of the world’s diamond supply!). This was a 2 hour flight and it got a bit, ahem, bumpy, such that I spent a fair bit of the journey with my head in a paper bag rather than seeing all the sights. Jen fared a bit better, so we got some good shots.

The next day we drove into the National Park, and walked Echidna Chasm and Mini Palms Gorge in the northern part of the BBs on the first day, and then Cathedral Gorge and Domes Walk in the southern part the next day (yep, more gorges, but these are different from the Kimberley).

Hard to describe the BBs really. Maybe best left to the photos. The stripe effect is due to different porosity of different layers of sandstone. The more-porous layers are covered on the outside by cyanobacteria that leave a dark stain – hence the dark stripes. Less-porous layers have a coat of iron oxide, which gives them the red colour, hence the reddish strips. Both the bacteria and the iron oxide protect the surface of the structures, but you can see how they are eroding in large chunks, slowly. So, if you want to see ‘em, don’t leave it too long but any time within the next 300 or 400 million years should be fine. It’s interesting how the vast age of rock in Australia gives rise to these totally different types of landscapes - only time can do it.

The Argyle diamond mine is huge – see photo. It is basically a big hole drilled down into a volcanic ‘pipe’ or plug that is rich with diamonds. The first diamonds were found in 1979, just lying among the stones in the beds of Bow River and Smoke Creek, by a geologist working for a company that was looking for uranium. They traced the source back to one hill. Or, rather, what was a hill - it has pretty much been hollowed out since. Not possible to visit the mine except as part of a one-and-only tour. All very tightly controlled – they don’t want anyone else accidentally finding some of their diamonds (which apparently was the case when there was a visitor area and a look-out – which was promptly removed!).

We arte now in the Northern territory, en route to Katherine, having had a fabulous 5 weeks or so in Western Australia. Great place … if only they could squeeze all the attractions a bit closer together, so it doesn’t take so long to reach them.

Bye for now

The Chappies

Ord River Dam and Lake Argyle

Bungle Bungle Ranges - aerial shot

Argyle diamond mine

Echidna Chasm in the BB range - vertical panorama

Mini Palms Gorge walk, BB Range

The Domes walk

Cathedral Gorge. This cavern is huge.

What’s in a name? Part 1: El Questro

Maybe it’s because Australia is so vast, and there are so many things to name, that sometimes the names themselves become a curiosity. First we had Mt Nameless above the town of Tom Price (Tom Price was an American mining engineer), now we have come across El Questro and the Bungle Bungles.

El Questro is a big, privately owned wilderness park, at the eastern end of the Gibb River Road. We had a great 3 days there, taking in several of the walks and 4WD tracks on the property, and a bit of the guided stuff that you pay more for. The name El Questro has no literal meaning, even in Spanish which would seem the logical source. It was bestowed by a guy called Thomas McMicking who first took up the pastoral lease on the property in 1958 and apparently had a penchant for the rum. The wilderness park idea came later, via a young couple who must have taken over the lease around 1991 and started from there, building it up into a major tourist attraction. Until quite recently it was owned by a company called Voyagers, and now has been taken over by an American company called Delaware North, or something like that – they run resorts at places like Niagara Falls and Yosemite, so it is big business. But, still offers a great opportunity to see some spectacular sights in an environment that has only been known to non-indigenous people for 100 years, and accessible to the great masses for about the last 30 years. El Questro is a funny name, but it suits rather nicely.

While we were at ELQ we:

- walked the Amalia and El Questro Gorges – both terrific and very different from each other, even though only a few km apart. El Questro Gorge is narrow and long, and has lovely livistona palms growing from the gorge floor trying to reach the light. Most people go only ½ the distance up the length of the gorge where there is a huge boulder that blocks the way, but being nimble 50-somethings we clambered past this and made it to the delightful top pool and waterfall where we had the mandatory swim in crystal clear and cool water. Lovely.
- Did some “oh shit, I’m not sure this is such a good idea” 4 wheel driving, notably across the Chamberlain River which was flowing pretty strong and deep (so we discovered, when we were too far in to reconsider the idea) and took us nearly three minutes to ford. Jen was ready to end the marriage about right then, but we got some great views from Branco’s lookout over the Pentecost River as a reward
- Took a cruise on the Chamberlain River, and learned about some of the flora and fauna of the region, plus the geology. Stars of the show were the archer fish which can spit with deadly accuracy 2-3 m in the air – their purpose being top knock down insects flying just above the water. In our case, their target was our hands holding fish food, or the camera lens poking over the side of the boat …
- After leaving ELQ camp site, we called in at Emma Gorge on the Gibb Road, probably the most well-known of the gorges at the eastern end of the Gibb. It is on ELQ property, but anyone travelling down the GRR can visit. It was nice, and swimmable of course ... but think we have seen enough gorges for the time being.

From ELQ, we headed to Kununarra en route to the Bungle Bungles (more on this weird and wonderful place in the following blog) – our plan being to take a flight from Kununarra, over Lake Argyle, the BBs, and the Argyle diamond mine before driving down to the Purnululu National Park (where the BB Range sits) to explore by wheel and foot. Check out the next blog to see what we found.

Ciao

The Chappies

7000 km after we left Lake Argyle this morning

Amalia Gorge

El Questro Gorge

Chamberlain River crossing. Note, that is not the far bank in the distance - landfall cannot be seen for quite a while ...

Chamberlain River cruise view

Emma Gorge with Jen modelling the new season style in Aussie swimming cossies

Gibb River Road Running

It’s a while since the last blog. We have been a long way from any form of modern telecommunications since leaving Derby about eight days ago. We are currently at Home Valley Station, towards the eastern end of the Gibb River Road (GRR), nearly 600 km from Derby. This is classic Kimberley country, famous for its sweeping vistas, savannah vegetation, huge cattle stations (1 million acres being about the standard size) settled in the late 1800s, boab trees, and colourful rock. We’ve seen all these, plus several of the deep gorges for which the GRR is famous.

The GRR was built as a stock route originally, between Derby and Wyndham. It’s only in fairly recent time that it has become a mecca for tourists in the north. The road itself is about 600 km of gravel/mud/corrugations/creek and river crossings, deteriorating in condition as you go from west to east (which is the direction we are taking). But it is not too bad despite all the recent rain in these parts, which has meant that access roads from the GRR to several of the attractions along the way are still closed. We have missed out on Bells Gorge and Windjana Gorge / Tunnel Creek but will save those for another time.

Highlights have been:

- 2 nights at Birdwood Downs Station just out of Derby. This is a small (5000 acres) station carved off from Meda Station (which is now only 995,000 acres!) for purposes of developing more sustainable farming methods in the Kimberley. It is run by a loose alliance of indigenous groups and overseas institutes with various forms of funding. We spent about 3 hours with one of the pioneers of the project (a native New Yorker, who now spends most of his time in the Kimberley and other remote parts of the planet). Fascinating story, too long to cover here. Among other things, we stood alongside boab trees carbon-dated at 1500 years old! BTW, cattle carrying capacity in the Kimberley appears to range from 1 beast per 40 acres on the better country, to 1 per 100 acres and more on the rougher stuff.
- Mt Matthew (at Mt Hart Station – one of our camping stops along the GRR), Addocks, Galvans, Mannings and Barnett Gorges – all stunning in their own ways. We swam in most of these, in beautiful deep pools. Amazing to see such plentiful fresh water in a dry landscape, but important to note that places along the GRR can expect 650 mm annual rainfall, ranging from as low as 150 to as high as 1500. Both these extremes having been experienced in the last 10 years, and both very scary no doubt!
- Sitting outside in full moonlight, on a balmy 27o-ish evening at Manning Gorge campsite, just star-gazing.
- Second flat tyre, yesterday on the GRR when we covered 300 km from Manning Gorge to Home Valley. No less than 5 other passing vehicles all stopped to offer help and we ended up with a crowd of spectators at least as large as the crowd that turns out to watch the Melbourne Demons AFL side.
- The amazing Pentecost River with Cockburn Ranges in the background and salt water crocs lurking just below the surface …

Some of you may have heard of and/or read Mary Durack’s book ‘Kings in Grass Castles’. I haven’t, but am reading the sequel ‘Sons in the Saddle’ which tells the story of her father and his brothers developing their cattle business in the east Kimberley at Ivanhoe and Argyle from about 1890 onwards. (I think ‘Kings in Grass Castles’ may have been about her grandfather who took up cattle runs in south-west Queensland) Argyle Station is now mostly under the water of Lake Argyle created by the Ord River Dam, but the original homestead was relocated stone block by stone block and re-assembled and can now be visited as a museum – which we plan to visit while still in these parts. Anyway, Durack is a well-known name here, and the book is an excellent insight into what life and business was like in those days – if you’re interested in those sorts of things.

Tomorrow we will head for El Questro which is like a privately owned wilderness and tourist park with the statutory 1,000,000 acres, spend a few days there then push on to Kununarra, maybe Wyndham, definitely Lake Argyle, and then the Bungle Bungles – weather permitting.

Hope all is well in your neck of the woods.

Just shy of 6000 km so far

Boab carbon-dated at 1500 years old

Boab tree scene

Rock hopping at Mt Matthew Gorge

Adcock Gorge. Note the flock of cockatiels on the tree.

Galvan Gorge

Manning Gorge campsite ‘pool’

Barnett River Gorge lookout

GRR dodgems

Penetecost River and Cockburn Range. We cross the river tomorrow on the GRR – no bridge!

Pilbara Pilgrimage

Greetings from hot and sweaty Broome. We have weaved our way north-eastward from Exmouth where the last blog came from. Broome is in the Kimberly region of the far NE of Western Australia. Normally it is dry at this time of year but there has been unseasonal heavy rain, causing incredible humidity (just breathing causes a sweat) and, worse, on-going closure of key tourist routes such as the Gibb River Road. The Gibb is our target, we were hoping to set off on this by Sunday but might have to delay a few days in the hope that the weather clears and the road becomes passable.

In the meantime, we have had a great time since leaving Exmouth. Our route was via:

- Ningaloo Station, a working sheep and cattle station toward the southern end of the reef. It is on the western side of the NW Cape, and is reached via a crossing at low tide at Yardie Creek (where the bitumen ends) and a reasonable 4WD track for about 40km. Our reward was to be the only people sitting on a vast beach watching the sun sink over the Indian Ocean. Glorious.
- Pilbara mining area, notably the town of Tom Price which is effectively ‘owned’ by Rio Tinto and has a massive iron ore mine adjacent. Great views from Mt Nameless, 1230 m, reached by a pretty rugged 4WD only track, but the views are spectacular. Interestingly, the Aborigines of course had a name for this mountain ages ago but maybe no-one thought to ask them at the time …
- Best of all, the remarkable Karajini National Park, about 100 km on from Tom Price. Quite apart from the glorious colours of vegetation against red rock landscapes (this is the same rock mined at Tom Price and elsewhere for iron ore, so good foresight by the Govt to secure it as a NP), there are incredible deep gorges that you can clamber along, finding amazing pools at the bottom of caverns with beautiful clear running water. The rock here is shattered into layers, that make natural paths (almost like terracing), ‘cept these ‘paths’ often sit 5 m or more above the bottom of the gorge, and are slippery when wet! Needless to say, it is territory better handled by 20-somethings who are nimble and have no fear, rather than 50-somethings who are … not. Nonetheless, we saw some great sights, and got totally immersed in the experience – including two real immersions, one unintended (which also took the camera underwater, a shock from which it seems to have recovered) and one intended (a nice dip in Fern Pool). Karajini is brilliant.

After Karajini, which had a pretty bum-numbing 1000 km to reach Broome, broken overnight in Port Hedland which is where all the iron ore is shipped from. It is, not surprisingly, an industrial town, very much part of the Aussie commodities boom. Not a place for tourists, apart from getting tyres fixed and so on.

So far we have clocked up 4600 km, at about 290 km/day average (breaking Captain Courageous’s sustainable trip indicator of 200 km/day?? was it Tony?), and chewed through one tyre and about 800 l of diesel. Found out the air compressor that came with Ned for re-inflating tyres after going over soft sand is kaput (so weak the tyres actually started to go down rather than up when we got it running) and that the jack is useless for getting under the correct lift point below the axle and so that a 2-stage lift is needed with 2 jacks. We are geared up now.

Looks like we will be in Broome for a few days yet. We are actually one day ahead of schedule (having earlier decided to give Mon key Mia and the dolphins a miss – have seen dolphins before), and have a bit of wriggle room later if needed.

Hope all is well in your neck of the woods.

4600 km, and counting

Ningaloo Station

Ningaloo Station

Tom Price iron ore mine, from Mt Nameless

Getting wet at Karajini

Handrail Pool, Karajini. Descent to pool via rope ladder from here

Fortescue Falls, Karajini

Circular Pool, Karajini

North west capers

Hi all,

We are currently in Exmouth, way up on the NW Cape of WA – see my crude map below for a trace of where we have been. We got here on Wednesday late afternoon, after a fair bit of driving via:
- Northam which is about 90 km east of Perth where we stayed with Murray and Jules McGregor, old friends from Lincoln days
- The northern wheat belt area, which is desperately dry – according to Murray, at Northam they have had only 18 mm of rain (that’s less than an inch) since start of October last year … and it shows from the photos
- the Pinnacles in Nambung National Park, near Cervantes (south of Geraldton) – crazy limestone pillars, like a graveyard or Aussie stonehenge - Carnarvon – nice town, but not much going on there
- Coral Bay – beautiful beach, but seriously overcrowded with hundreds of people cramming into a tiny little settlement with only 2 campgrounds
- Cape Ranges National Park, just south of Exmouth, where we did a beaut 2 hour walk over limestone plateau with huge ravines and good views across to Exmouth and the gulf looking north east

The clear highlight was yesterday’s trip to go snorkelling alongside whale sharks on the outer edge of the Ningaloo reef! It was a cracker. See photos, taken from underwater camera that we hired. The whale sharks come regularly to Ningaloo, between March and June each year, evidently for the food which is like a plankton soup as the corals and other sea life spawn. They are big gentle giants. This is the only place in the world where these tropical fish can be found consistently. Very little is known about their lifecycle, range, reproduction and so on. They are known as the mysterious fish, as well as the big spotty fish! Our excellent boat crew got us onto 4 fish (4- 6 m long) at various stages during the roughly 3 hours we were out there, which is good – sometimes there may only be one fish in the vicinity with 4 boats wanting to share and people might only get one or two drops to swim with it. So we had pretty good value.

Very windy today. We will probably head down the west side of NW Cape, camp somewhere in that area tonight, then head toward the Pilbarra/Karajini NP tomorrow. Next communication is likely to come from Broome. Hope all is well with you.

x marks the spot! A lazy 2200 km so far

Whale shark

Whale Shark


Cape Ranges NP

Coral Bay

Pinnacles

Drought in the wheat-sheep zone

South-west Sojourn

Hi,

Writing this at Mamjimup, which is about 300 km SW of Perth. We got here from Busselton via Dunsborough, Margaret River, Cape Leeuwin (the point where the Indian and Southern Oceans meet), Pemberton and Northcliffe (guess I should work out how to mark our route on a map and upload it to the blog - there again, you can just Google these places!).

Highlights have been:
- Meelup beach, a little corker - on the road between Dunsborough and Cape Naturaliste. So tranquil that we just lazed on the beach for a couple of hours reading our books. Nice to be able to make such choices, huh
- Margaret River - smart, trendy town, good feel to it. Jen was intent on checking our galleries. Well, at the first one, we saw some magnificent wood furniture and ended up buying some stools for new house ... gulp, that tore a big chunk out of the budget right there, so no more galleries that day (by mutual consent), AND for rest of the trip (that bit is still to be negotiated). But, the wood design and finish was something else.
- Cape Leeuwin - spectacular coast line scenery and historic old buildings. Weather was super while we were there - apparently this is rare!
- the karri forests of Pemberton area (1200-1400 mm rainfall). These are big eucalypts (not to be confused with the NZ kauri), they grow very straight with few branches and produce magnificent hardwood. Hence very sought-after in the early days of development of WA. Now there are large tracts of virgin forest protected in national parks which is great. The Gloucester tree (thanks Geoff and Sue for the tip) was used as a forest fire look-out for many years. The platform is 61 m above ground level. I climbed it (which is a bit surprising since I am not good with heights normally!), Jen didn't (sook!).
- at the little town of Northcliffe (the southern-most point of our WA sojourn) there is an excellent Forest Sculpture Walk (called 'Understory'). This is a series of commissioned and free-form sculptures in all sorts of materials and themes by mostly WA artists, telling different stories about the forest. Really well set-up, with an audio track to accompany the walk which has the artists explaining the idea behind their sculptures, and how they made them. Good stuff, highly recommended if you find your way to these parts.

Tomorrow we head north to visit friends at Northam east of Perth (and celebrate Jen's birthday!). Then further north from there - apparently it is quite a long way to the top, still ....

Cheers

Chappies

Gloucester tree

Gloucester tree

Karri forest scence

Cape Leeuwin

Meelup Beach