The Kimberley

I’ve survived the entire trek up from Perth, and have safely arrived in Darwin, the capital of the Northern Territory. Near 3 weeks straight of being on a tour bus! But here I am, at the top end of Australia!

The tour was divided into 2 sections, Perth to Broome and then Broome to Darwin. They gave us 2 days off in Broome to explore the area, which was a nice break. Plus I needed desperately to do laundry. The red dirt from Karijini national park was very much caked in to everything I owned.

Broome is a nice seaside town of about 15,000 people. It’s weird though, for a small town it’s very spread out. You can’t really walk in between sections, it’s just too far. Anyway, the tour company put us in a hostel for 3 nights in the Cable Beach section of town, and we’d be left to our own devices for 2 full days before getting on the next bus to continue the trek. The hostel they put us in was disgusting. I walked into the bathroom and started thinking about just how inappropriate it would be to continue peeing in the bush in a populated area… I spent one night there, in the tropical prison-like atmosphere, and then the next morning marched myself down the road to a hostel I’d heard was quite lovely. By 8:30 myself and all of my possessions were parked at Beaches of Broome, my new home at Cable Beach. I am generally not a fan of spending more money when things are already paid for, but this was a necessity. The first hostel was gross, and this place was one of the nicest I’d ever stayed in. I spent a very nice and comfortable 2 days at my swanky hostel down the road, and was quite happy to pee in their toilets.

Our first night in Broome we went out as a group as a bit of a farewell party. We went to the beach to watch the sunset, and then ended up at a local bar, where we met the tour guides who were taking those of us continuing on to Darwin. They had just driven in straight from Darwin (which is about 1,950 miles away…) and were letting off some steam, so they consumed quite a bit of alcohol and made me a bit skeptical about their abilities to act like non-Neanderthals once the tour officially started. I went to bed early that night, but apparently one of them was running around drunk and naked on the beach later on in the evening. Not a good sign.

Broome is famous for its pearling history, and for camel rides along the beach. I had considered going for a camel ride, but since I forked over unplanned funds to set myself up in a new establishment, I decided to not do the ride. I did walk down at the right time with a bunch of people who were going though, and the staff assumed I was a paying customer and let me pet a camel and took my picture. I like camels. They are a bit stinky, but they are always smiling!

Of our original group, only 6 of us from the first tour were going up to Darwin, so it was basically a fresh group, along with the new guides who had a habit of getting drunk and naked in public. The new bus was a 4WD tour truck. For where we were going, you can’t not have a 4WD. The unsealed roads would eat a 2-wheel drive bus alive and spit out the remains. The group was surprisingly a bit of an older crowd, and even included a few Aussies. The tour company I went with was the most budget option you could do across the Kimberley region of Northwestern Australia, so it attracted all sorts of people that just didn’t have ginormous amounts of money to spend. During the course of the trip, we often ended up in the same places as the fancier, more expensive tours. To me the difference was negligible. Everyone was in the same kind of 4WD truck and went to the same places. But we slept in swags on the floor (inside a tent if you wanted), whereas the fancy tours gave you taller tents with collapsible beds. We cut up cold cuts and lettuce and tomato for lunch every day and then washed the plates and bowls, whereas the fancy tours would get pre-wrapped sandwiches from local roadhouses or cafes. We went to go watch the sunset, they would get nice beach chairs and wine and cheese to eat while they watched the sunset. To me that kind of crap isn’t worth an extra $800/day, which is what some of those people paid in comparison to what we did. I’ll suffer the indignity of slicing tomatoes instead, thank you very much.

So the Kimberley region is pretty remote. It’s 162,000 square miles, and has something like 35,000 people in it, almost half of whom are in Broome, where we started from. It sure is pretty though. Not much in terms of civilization, but lots of natural beauty. One of the first things we did once we started moving was to visit a 2,000-year-old boab tree. Boab trees are only found in the Kimberley. Ordinarily, while I can appreciate a unique, historic tree, I don’t get my breath taken away by them. This one was different though. Definitely the coolest tree I’ve ever seen

The Europeans back in the day actually used to use it as a holding cell for aboriginals that were caught in the area, so it has a bit of a sad history as well.

The Kimberley is all about the gorges and scenery and watering holes. The first water spot we tackled was an underground body of water called Tunnel Creek

It was pretty, but it was also the first place where I spotted wild crocodiles! Tunnel Creek was filled with freshwater crocs, who can grow up to 10-12 feet, but they only eat little things. They never developed the massive jaws of the Estuarine croc, more commonly known as the “Saltie.”

That sign was NOT photographed at Tunnel Creek. Salties are the big guns. They are the ones that stalk, and occasionally eat, the unsuspecting traveler. I’ve yet to see one of these guys in the wild, but when I do, I hope that it’s from a safe distance away. Salties can grow over 20 feet long. I would not want to be chased by a 20-foot long mean-spirited ancient reptile with razor sharp teeth.

Our first night of camping was at a place called Windjana gorge, which we explored the morning after we camped. I slept outside in just a swag for the first time. No tent, just swag on the floor. It’s kind of neat. You open your eyes and are looking up at the stars. Here’s a photo of Windjana gorge:

And here’s a photo of some lizards sunning themselves on the sunny side of the gorge. They are also the freshwater kind:

As we travelled across the Kimberley, we went across the Gibb River road. Despite the overall ruralness of the area, it’s quite a touristed track. It’s only open for half the year though. Up in this part of Australia, there are only 2 seasons, as is the case with all places in the tropics. There’s just the wet and the dry. I’m doing my traveling during the dry, which is necessary to really see this part of the country. You can still easily tour the southern parts of Australia during the winter (as I’ve just done), it’s just a bit nippy at times and you can’t really take advantage of swimming in all of the beautiful water that you see. But the winter down south is the dry up in the tropics, and that’s the only time you can really travel. Once the wet season starts, a lot of things shut completely, including the entire Gibb River road. It just completely floods out. Even a lot of the gorges we went into are entirely inaccessible during the wet season.

And what of the crazy inebriated drunkards who were taking us across one of Australia’s most remote regions on a dirt road? Once they put on their professional sides, they were quite good. Still laid back bush guys, but they were great. They were also quite good-naturedly apologetic that first morning of the tour to those of us who witnessed their less-than-professional side. By the middle of the first day of the tour I’d pretty much forgotten about one of them drunkenly grabbing me on the street in Broome and asking me what my thoughts were on pooping in holes.

Here’s an example of one of the gorges that we hiked to and then swam at. There were so many beautiful ones, and this is certainly a nice reward at the end of a long, hot hike:

We also came across a couple of natural hot springs. Here’s one at El Questro Wilderness Park. This thing is completely natural, no design went into it:

I think that’s pretty impressive for mother nature!

One of the things about the Gibb River road that made the track fun was the fact that sometimes you had to cross an actual… river. Here’s a photo of our bus, named Jeffrey (although the bus was a female), cutting through the Pentecost River crossing along the track:

As you can imagine, cutting across and through rivers is quite bumpy. By the 4^th day of the tour I finally needed to tap into the fresh 15 pack of coke that I bought in Broome. I went to the back of the bus to find that only 12 of my 15 cans had survived the first 4 days of 4 wheel driving. 3 exploded, and the rest looked like they’d been through a war.

One of the guides told me that only losing 3 cans after all that time was actually a pretty good success rate though, so I tried not to be too upset about my loss.

One of the highlights of the tour was visiting Purnululu National Park, more commonly known as the Bungle Bungles. It’s been world heritage listed, even though it only became a national park in the late 1980’s. The area has been known by the local Aboriginal people for thousands of years, but white man only “discovered” it back in the 1950s. This was the most rural spot we visited on the tour, but even this park at least had long-drop toilets at all of the campsites and starting points of major hikes. So while I did have to use an outhouse for a few days, there was no point when anyone ever had to actually dig a hole to poo in. I’ll have to save that glorious life experience for a future date. Also, the 4WD track into the park is known as one of the toughest (passable) roads in Australia. I sat for 2 hours in and out of bumpy road, bouncing around in my seat with my remaining coke cans in a cooler bag on my lap. I wasn’t going to risk losing any more.

That’s a photo of some of the famous domes of the Bungle Bungles. They are made up of iron oxide (the red) and cyanobacteria (the black). There’s nowhere else like this in the world, and it’s pretty friggin remote, so it was special to be able to see it.

The below is a photo of Cathedral gorge, also in the Bungle Bungles park. Our tour guide had us go into the gorge in silence and sit for a few minutes without any noise. It was really cool. The moment was ruined though when another tour group arrived, and we all just silently got up and walked away J

This one is a place called Echidna chasm, in another part of the Bungles. It was a long, narrow passageway in between giant rocks. In the past the tour guide found a brown snake, which is one of the world’s most venomous. It was kind of Indian Jones-esque!

Our second to last day we went to visit Lake Argyle, which is a beautiful man made lake. It’s huge, 19 times the size of Sydney Harbor. It was very pretty scenery, and actually reminded me a bit of Lake Havasu, where my aunt and uncle live in Arizona. The main difference was that Lake Havasu isn’t filled with 30,000 of these:

Hehehe. We also spotted some rock wallabies, who are slightly less threatening looking.

Towards the end of the tour, we finally got to the Northern Territory. Woo Hoo! Back to God’s country for me. I was quite happy to see the sign:

So it was farewell to Western Australia, after about 3 weeks of exploring the state. Our last day was a relaxed one, swimming at a gorge and visiting a member of the local Aboriginal Jarwan tribe to learn a bit about indigenous culture.

I’m writing this from the Darwin YHA, which is not where I am staying, but they have good unlimited Internet packages. The group went out for one last hurrah in town last night. It was odd being back in civilization. People looked at me funny because instead of my grungy shorts with caked on dirt I showed up in a dress with a splash of makeup. I wanted to feel like a real girl again, instead of a bush nomad.

What’s next? A stressful day in Darwin during which I did my laundry, wrote and posted this, caught up on emails, put up pictures on facebook, explored Darwin, ate, and re-packed my bag. Then it’s off to Kakadu and Litchfield national parks, followed by a 3-day trip down the Stuart Highway to my beloved Alice Springs. A sh*thole of a town, but the area has become a bit of a home away from home for me, so I very much look forward to going back.

Next post should come from Adelaide! It’ll be my 4^th and FINAL time checking into the Adelaide YHA. I like Adelaide well enough, but holy crap have I seen enough of it.

Keep your fingers crossed for me that I don’t get eaten by the vicious tropical mosquitoes, or even worse – eaten by a local friendly saltie J.

Heading North: Perth to Broome

Greetings from Broome. WA! I’m finally up in the tropics, which means it’s hot, humid, and unidentifiable insects are constantly biting me and leaving large welts in their wake.  I’ve bought special bug cream though that’s manufactured in the tropics. It’s 80% deet. I don’t think we can get that high of a concentration in the United States. This stuff is like potential cancer in a tube, but if it will keep the weird tropical bugs from eating me, then I’ll take my chances.

I left you all last time when I was about to explore Perth. It’s one of the world’s most isolated cities, and it’s about as close to Southeast Asia as it is to places like Melbourne and Sydney. Perth is a pretty cool town though, I liked it a lot. It’s very laid back and has a Mediterranean vibe with a big city feel. Very pretty and relaxed. I very much enjoyed wandering around and wished that I’d had a bit more time to explore the greater area.

Here’s a photo of the city skyline from a park:

My 21-day tour from Perth to Darwin picked me up on June 1^st. The tour is really split into 2 sections, with the first leg being 10 days from Perth to Broome, and the second leg Broome to Darwin. We have 2 free days in Broome (where this is being posted from), which is about the halfway point in the drive between the two cities. Once you get outside of the Perth area, Western Australia gets really rural really fast. It’s a HUGE state, with not a whole lot of people. In fact, if Western Australia was its own country, it would be the 10^th largest country in geographical size in the world. There are less than 2 million people in the whole thing, and most of them live in Perth, so once you leave the city it’ pretty much just you and empty space.

Our first stop was a couple of hours outside of Perth, at a place called the Pinnacles Desert, famous for all these petrified tree things that dot the landscape. It’s pretty unique, they go on for as far as the eye can see:

The next destination of interest for us was Kalbarri National Park. The gorges in the park were sort of like the ones found in the West MacDonnell ranges (that’s where I worked….), only on a MUCH larger scale. They are bigger and deeper and a bit more dramatic. Here’s me on the way down to one of the gorges:

And here is a spot called nature’s window. It’s a rock shaped like a window, and through it you can see the gorge and river below. It’s pretty cool:

After tackling Kalbarri, we drove up towards the Ningaloo Reef area. The Ningaloo Reef is one of the few coral reefs in the world found on the western side of a continent, and it’s a fringing reef, meaning that it’s quite near the shore. No long boat rides to get to the good stuff. Our introduction to the area was a day spent at Shark Bay, which is a world heritage area because of its unique geography and marine life. Our first stop up there was shell beach, where we arrived just in time for sunset:

The next day, after spending the night in Denham, Shark Bay’s only town, we drove over to a place called Monkey Mia. Monkey Mia is basically a resort, but the bay that it sits on became famous back in the 1960s for the wild dolphins who used to swim up into the shallows (like 2 feet of water) to get fed a bit. The dolphins still come every day, and even passed down the ritual to their offspring. There are grandparents, parents, and kids of dolphin families who swim in for the free snacks. The park rangers know almost all of the dolphins that come in, their personalities, and who is related to whom. The feedings are all quite regulated now. There’s no touching of the dolphins (back in the day they used to get pissed off sometimes when hundreds of people wanted to pet them, and the occasional tourist got bit), we have to stand in certain spots, only 5 dolphins are chosen to be fed, and each one gets a maximum of a kilo and a half of fish, which is only about 10% of the food that a grown dolphin needs to eat every day. So they don’t rely on the people to feed them, it’s more of a free snack and a chance to show themselves off to a crowd full of silly humans, should they be in the mood. It’s completely up to the dolphin if they feel like coming in each day. Some love it and show up like clockwork, others only pop up every once in a while. The rangers will do a maximum of 3 feedings a day, and they all have to be before noon. The dolphins are smart though. As soon as the feeders rinse out the buckets the dolphins know that there are no more fish and they swim off. Sometimes a few come back a second or third time, and if so then there is another feeding or two. If not, then just the first one. They almost always come in for the first feeding.  They only don’t come in when there’s a specific reason, like if the tide goes down extremely low and they can’t physically get in, or if there’s a big school of fish elsewhere and they go on a feeding frenzy, and therefore couldn’t give a shit about the 2 fish that the silly people will throw them.

That’s a photo of them in the shallows, and here is one hovering around a ranger, showing itself off:

They’re so much fun, they are amazingly smart creatures. The rangers usually talk to us about the dolphins for about 20 minutes before the feeding, and during that time the dolphins slowly lounge on by, blatantly showing themselves off while we all oooooohhhhhhh and ahhhhhh and take their photo. The dolphins absolutely know that we all gather to admire them, and they are more than happy to bask in the attention J

The resort is also neat because of all the wild emus that just sort of wander around. They’re funny birds:

Here’s a photo of me at a place called Eagle Bluff. Check out the color of the water! The lighter colored water is obviously shallow, so if you’re lucky enough to walk by when a sea turtle or shark or something is swimming along, you get a clear overhead view. We were fortunate enough to spot a dugong (similar to our manatees) in the darker water, which is sea grass.

The below photo looks like a bunch of rocks, but they’re actually stromatolites, which are living creatures. This was actually a really interesting stop. Stromatolites were among the first living things on earth, showing up around 3.5 billion years ago. They took in the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and released oxygen as a byproduct. Basically, back in the day, these little rock dudes modified our atmosphere by adding oxygen to it, paving the way for future life forms – like us – who need oxygen to breathe. Thanks, stromatolites! Shark Bay is one of the few places in the world where you can see these guys still in action.

I did 2 boat excursions on the Ningaloo Reef. The first one was swimming with manta rays, who are HUGE:

These guys can have a “wingspan” of like 15 feet. The boat has a spotter plane that goes up and looks for them from above in the clear, shallow water, and then we all hop in. Manta rays are pretty smart as well, they’re considered to be amongst the more intelligent fish out there. They eat plankton, and feed by doing a series of continuous back flips that sucks the plankton into a sort of vortex, making it easier to get more in one gulp. Once we got into the water, the manta rays started doing their back flips much closer to the surface, because they were using us as shields of sort, bouncing the plankton off us to gulp up even more. So yeah, I got used by a manta ray. He didn’t even say thank you, but I didn’t mind so much! I was happy to help J.

We also did some regular snorkeling, and I found some sort of a squid or octopus thingamabopper. I thought it was a rock at first, but then I noticed that the rock had eyes and tentacles!

The next day was one of my must-do activities in Australia. Much like the great white shark dive, it was at the top of my list of things that absolutely could not be missed: Swimming with whale sharks! Now whale sharks are not whales, nor are they sharks in the familiar sense, in that they don’t have large teeth that like ripping things to shreds. They are plankton eaters as well, so no sharp snappers waiting to chew surfers in half. They technically are sharks because they have the same sort of anatomy, but whale sharks are harmless fish. BIG harmless fish. They are the biggest fish in the world. They can get up to about 50-55 feet long. Think for a second just how gigantic that actually is.

Ningaloo reef is special because it’s the only place in the world where whale sharks show up like clockwork every year to feed on the plankton that spawn in the area. They are only here for about 3 months though, so it worked out nicely that I was travelling through this area during the time when they show up. For some reason though, it’s generally only the juvenile males that come to Ningaloo, so we don’t get to swim with the 50 footers. Most of the ones sighted are in the 10-15 foot range since they are still young, but that’s still a big fish!

It was tough work trying to spot one though. There were planes in the air to locate them, but once you get into the water you have to swim very fast to keep up. They’re big, so one swoosh of the tail fin and they’re off into the distance. I failed on the first attempt (as did most of the group) and failed on the second as well. It was only the very first 1-2 people in the water who had a shot of keeping up, everyone else was just too many seconds behind in jumping in to even have a chance. The third shark that we found though was a little baby, and he was just swimming in circles. Much better chance of spotting him.

The rule with the sharks is so stay at least 3 meters (8-9 feet) away from the body and 4 meters away from the tail. I hopped in the water, put my face in, and once again saw nothing. A nice lady was kind enough to spin me around, and then all of a sudden I was staring at a wall of gray with white spots. The 7-8 minutes that followed were complete chaos. I definitely broke the 3 meters rule several times. The whale shark bumped into me once, and I think at one point my flipper might have been in his mouth. He was swimming all around and through us, having a rocking good time, and he did not give a hoot about the department of conservation’s laws set in place to keep him safe. There were a few times where I was so close to him, but I couldn’t try and swim away from him – I would have whacked him with my hands or flippers, so I just curled up into a little ball under the water and tried to give him space. It was hard to actively avoid him though, the little guy was just everywhere!

Here’s a random person in the water with the “little” guy swimming by:

Zooming by while someone tries to keep their flipper out of the way:

And here is what he looks like:

You can see what a big mouth he has. This shark was probably about 8-9 feet long. Imagine what the mouths look like on the 50 foot ones! Big enough to swallow a person or two, although I imagine that if that accidentally happened they would be disgusted and spit us right back out, as we are somewhat larger than their target plankton. So in the end I didn’t see the larger ones that just swam on by in a straight line, but I did get pushed out of the way by a giant aquatic baby, so I was quite satisfied with the day’s events.

The rest of the first leg of the trip was mainly spent at Karijini national park, which lived up to its hype. Here’s a random road running through the park:

Isn’t that cool? Red earth, white trees – it’s very classical Australian outback.

Karijini, like Kalbarri, is all about the gorges – and WOW were they impressive! I had an amazing time in the park. We didn’t just go for hikes, we went on little adventures. The hikes we did were class 5 walks, which is 1) the most difficult walks that the tour company allows us to do, and 2) are the most difficult you can do without needing equipment to rock climb and abseil down cliffs. This was pretty good stuff. I’ve discovered on this trip that I really like climbing and caving and canyoning and all that, and these hikes were pretty much all that stuff, only without the equipment. We had to wade through water, climb down rocks, scale across near vertical rock faces, cascade down waterfalls backwards holding on to a handrail for dear life and “spider walk” through narrow canyons, feet and hands on the walls of the canyon with the river rushing below. It was a LOT of fun. Here are a few of the pictures I took. Wasn’t able to always stop to take amazing photos, because quite often I was concentrating too hard on not slipping and plummeting into water/rocks. Our tour guide was a great and eager photographer though, so at some point some interesting shots that I don’t possess quite yet should end up in my facebook album.

Here’s a gorge shot taken from a trail going around the upper rim:

Here I am in one of the first gorges we went into, standing by one of the swimming holes. I didn’t go in this one, it was WAY too nippy.

In the middle of a canyon:

Posing at a swimming hole at the end of one of the hikes. If you look closely over my shoulder to the right hand side of the photo, you’ll see the handrail we used to climb down the waterfall.

Here I am swimming in one of the pools:

And posing in another gorge, in the “amphitheater”

Last but not least, the swag! This what we sleep in when we camp. You can see the canvas bag and my sleeping bag inside.

That’s been the highlights of the past 10 days! I have 2 days in Broome, so one day is allotted to accomplishing stuff (like the blog) while the other will be for wandering around and playing. The next phase of the trip is going to be the most hardcore that I’ve ever done. We’re travelling up through the Kimberley region of Australia, which is supposed to be stunning but is incredible remote. This is one of the most remote parts of the country (that’s at least partially accessible – there are chunks of the country that are filled with lots of nothing, but since there’s nothing to see of interest there aren’t any roads), and we’ll be camping every night of the tour, sometimes just in the bush with no facilities. Should be entertaining! I saw the bus parked outside the hostel yesterday. It’s not really a bus, it’s a 4WD truck tour van. We need 4WD where we’re going, a regular tour bus wouldn’t have a shot in hell of making it to Darwin.

Talk to everyone in 10 days or so, once I get up to Darwin. That’s the part of the country where giant crocodiles eat people. Yay!!!