Crossing the Nullarbor

The highway to Caiguna boasts the longest straight stretch of road in Australia – constructed by mindless engineers for mindless drivers and gee, watch that first curve at the end, it’s a dilly! You think, “What do I do now? Oh yeah, turn the wheel.” But the Nullarbor is the Nullarbor and it’s mostly long straight stretches and it’s mostly good when it comes to an end. We stayed at Eucla that night. The only mildly interesting aside was the girl at reception telling us, “Park anywhere you like, but some of the power outlets aren’t working and we don’t know which ones they are.” Now there’s a challenge for crusty old campers. Usually you select your site, set up your camper and then plug in the power, but clearly that strategy wasn’t going to work today. Luckily I have a power cord that lights up in an active socket, so I dug that out and proceeded to test for power, rather like a water diviner with a 15 metre long forked stick. I had a miss then a hit. Power! Raise the flag and make camp! Halleluiah! We saw another guy wandering around with an electric hand-mixer, obviously on a similar mission. Malcolm Fraser may be dead but he’s still right, “Life wasn’t meant to be easy”.

Keeping on the straight and narrow

 

It’s funny how you make plans sometimes only for them to be broken, and we fully expected that our next long leg, from Eucla to Baird Bay (some 600-700 km) would be too far and that we would stop somewhere in between, especially seeing that you turn your clocks forward 2 ½ hours when you cross the South Australian border. We got to Ceduna and figured that we could still make Streaky Bay (another 100 km on). We made Streaky Bay and tried to check in to the caravan park – they were full up. We did a hasty shop, fuelled up and sped on to Baird Bay, encountering yet another road works area that coated the car and camper in thick mud.

                                          More roadworks - 5 km of wet clay

 

There was a space in the small camping ground and as we were backing into position our friend Alan (the reason we made for the place) showed up and told us to park over the road on the beach (right in front of a large “Camping Prohibited” sign). Great spot, and Alan looks after the camping area in his “spare” time so who are we to argue. There’s no power, limited water and drop toilets – just perfect for us to test out our new solar power gear and general set-up (and test it, it did). It turns out that we had developed a gas leak (well the camper, not us – well, for the purposes of this story it was the camper…) which put us in danger of gassing ourselves at night while trying to run the refrigerator on gas. The solar system worked well but running the fridge on 12 Volts overnight would only drain the battery. So we only had an Engel to keep things cold and no ice cubes for drinks (I know, First World problem). Something to fix at a later date.

View from our camp site

The locals eat fish around here

Alan and Maurs - friends for over 50 years

 

Alan and Trish run Baird Bay Eco Experience (Google it if you’re interested) that offers people the chance to get up and personal with wild dolphins and sea lions in their natural habitat. We did the tour last time we were here and found it really special. We noticed a lot of European tourists (French, Spanish and German mostly) so word is getting around about how special this place is - it is so remote you have to want to get here. Alan has nurtured a relationship with the local seal colony over 23 years and they have rescued a few orphans in that time. At the moment Alan is helping “Johnno”, a 9 month old male who lost his mum and has been rejected by the colony. He was badly emaciated so they milk-fed him for a while and then weaned him on to fish. Johnno likes it at their place, a little too much. Alan takes him by boat back to the colony and releases him and then Johnno finds his way back to Alan’s place, sometimes ahead of Alan. He is such a cute thing but Alan is trying to maintain him as a wild creature so that Johnno can have the future that he ought to have. We wish them both good luck.

Alan hand-feeding Johnno

Quite a mob wait on for any scraps

White-bellied Sea Eagle

Johnno (so cute). He's about 17 kg at the moment.

It was okay leaving Baird Bay really (we would have loved to stay longer) but a change in the weather was on the cards that promised to blow us off the beach anyway. Our next stop was planned to be the town of Quorn, and the journey there was particularly uninspiring – it’s flat and dry country – although as you get closer to Quorn you’re in the hills and it becomes much more interesting. The town itself is quaint (another Q word!) and the surrounding country is quintessentially Quorny (I’ve just run out of Q words).

If you're ever through Baird Bay drop in and say Hi to Alan and Trish!

Off again

I had a few requests to start up the blog again seeing as I was on the road and not doing anything! So here it is. I’ll begin (fittingly) with a tropical cyclone story. We had set a date a long time before to leave Perth on 15 March and suddenly on 12 March TC Olwyn looms up on the scene with the chance of delaying our start as it moved down over the south of the state. As it was Olwyn moved past and weakened on the Saturday (14^th) and we happily set sail on the Sunday (not much of a story really but there you go, it’s early yet). However it did produce some dust-settling rain and cooler weather for our travel.

Roadside lunch stop.

Kinda quiet at the Carabin Pub

We made for the little town of Southern Cross which is 380 km from Perth on the road to Kalgoorlie and the Goldfields. Maureen’s sister Noeline had lived in various towns in the area when husband Mike was a teacher so it was a bit of a nostalgia tour, remembering different places – and we just had to stop at the Carabin Pub, which was the scene of a few crimes from those days – it was a pretty quiet Sunday as we passed through – very different to what we remember.

Kinda quiet at Southern Cross as well

Southern Cross itself was quite a pleasant town. It looked very innocent but it’s a mining town, a truck stop for the big rigs, and a grain town – there has to be a wild side to it somewhere! Probably luckily, we didn’t find it.

There was an early casualty. I lost the tow-ball cover when I left it loose on the camper and it simply blew away as we drove east. Consequently there is an exposed grease-covered tow-ball at the end of the X-Trail so Maurs has all these black stripes on her legs (she never learns). Don’t worry though – she keeps letting me know every time she brushes against it. And every servo I stop at doesn’t seem to have a replacement.

That loss paled into insignificance the next day. The highway had been converted into a fifth rate country track courtesy of the Main Roads Department’s efforts to improve it. While bouncing around at 40 km/h my Anderson Plug (electrical connection to the trailer) popped out of its socket and ran along the dirt, then bitumen, until we hit Coolgardie and discovered the damage of which there was plenty. We drove on to Norseman, found an auto-electrician who replaced it for us. “Second one today!” he said.

One dead Anderson Plug

All better!!

We had only stopped at Coolgardie to buy me some deodorant (might have forgotten to pack it). When I went to use it that night, the top of it snapped apart and what I thought was plastic packing turned out to be – sticky tape. The bums at the store had obviously busted it and bodgied up a repair job, selling it at full price – and I didn’t have enough principles to travel backwards 200 km at night to get my 5 bucks back. I’ve now re-repaired it and sucked it up.

My ripped off deodorant - this stinks!

We stopped at a place called Widgiemooltha for lunch, partly because it was our 41^st wedding anniversary and I wanted to treat my wife to a chicken and salad sandwich, and partly because it’s a place from my past. As a forecaster in the 80’s I used to get calls from weird sounding guys wanting the winds below 1000 feet and the weather between Widgiemooltha and Perth. Why? For pigeon racing! Widgie (as they called it) was a mecca for the pigeon fancier back then but according to the young guy who served us, not any more. The chicken sandwiches were very good by the way (at least I thought it was chicken! It couldn’t have been pigeon, surely!)

Widgiemooltha - and not a pigeon in sight!

Fraser Range - not all fences are this old

We made camp at Fraser Range that night. We do like the station stay there but they have charge showers - $1 for 5 minutes – feed the meter. Do you know how hard it is to count “one Mississippi, two Mississippi…up to 300 Mississippi” so that you get your money’s worth from the shower (and not be left covered in suds when the water stops)? It’s not all beer and skittles on the road, let me tell you. Onwards to the Nullarbor!

Home again, home again jiggety-jig

            The highway through the Pilbara - unusually green after unseasonal rain

Question: What’s fat, has a beard, wears reflective clothing and drives a road train?

Answer: Everybody in the Pilbara!

Well it seems that way! We left Barn Hill and after refuelling at the Sandfire Roadhouse made our way on to Port Hedland. It’s been a few years since I was visiting the town regularly – it was a hive of industrial activity then with all of its iron ore and salt exports but it’s really stepped up a gear now. The road trains run around like Thai tuk-tuks on a Saturday night. It was a pleasure to see the “Thank you for visiting - please call again” sign on the way out. We continued on to the Karratha area but called in to Point Samson in the hope of a safe haven for the night and their famous Fish & Chips. The Cove caravan park was packed (like every other piece of accommodation up here) but we managed a spot with a great ocean view. It was late and the owners said that they did a great Fish & Chips so we said that we’d have two – and we did – and they were very passable fish and chips with a salad thrown in for good measure. Mind you, after driving 700 odd kilometres between us that day, I could have gulped down a mullet-gut sandwich and enjoyed it really. We stayed another day in Point Samson because it was warm and pleasant. I made my traditional pilgrimage to the nearby historic town of Cossack – a town that holds a certain fascination for me and I always seem to gravitate to it whenever I am in the area. It’s a lonely little place but nicely restored.

Carnarvon next – another 700 kilometres of pretty well...nothing. Arid country through those parts. The only excitement occurred when Maurs went to overtake a slower caravan and while moving out, an idiot in souped-up Commodore Ute who had been tailgating us for about 10 km decided he would try a simultaneous manoeuvre. Two vehicles don’t really fit in a single lane but Maurs just managed to slip back behind the van while this guy zoomed past, hopefully towards oblivion.

                                                     The blowholes at Quobba...blowin' hard

We spent a day at the blowholes at Quobba, about 60 kilometres north of Carnarvon, checking out the campsites for another time. The blowholes were blowing so all was right in the world, even if Maurs camera lost power and she had to resort to using my poor old relic instead. It’s terribly civilised there now with a coffee truck parked nearby serving cappuccinos and making a fortune. We also had a magnificent swim in “The Aquarium”, a sheltered bay full of tropical fish, coral, clams etc – just a natural joy. There are some marvellous places in this country.

                              Maurs emerges from the Aquarium - a little James Bond don't you think?

I don’t know who originally thought “Carnarvon looks like desert country; the river is almost always dry; I think I’ll grow tropical fruit and vegetables here!” – but it works magnificently. After being largely fresh produce deprived for the last couple of weeks we hit the local farms with gusto and bought a ton of fresh, tasty stuff. We had plates of vegetables every night, except one. Maurs celebrated her birthday there and I decided that we’d go to a really good seafood restaurant – well that’s what the brochure said. It most decidedly wasn’t. It was an ordinary restaurant – very disappointing but on the returd highway sometimes you turn up gems sometimes you don’t.

                                                 Fresh crab with Carnarvon salads

After decimating the Carnarvon vegetable crop we looked around for our next destination. Unfortunately it was school holiday time and our possible venues of Shark Bay and Kalbarri were both heavily booked by mainstream society. What to do? We decided to head inland and try a station stay at Wooleen Station. Maurs had been there before – it was used for a couple of her survival walks (where she set off with a compass, a teabag and an aspirin and walked 50 or 100 or 200 kilometres with other so inclined individuals – no food – it’s a wonder there wasn’t an outbreak of cannibalism). This time we had food and spent four days there in very pleasant if not sparse surroundings, enjoying the serenity in a bush setting.

                    The country road to Wooleen Station - about 200 kilometres of this stuff

                                              Old wood stove relic at Wooleen Homestead

                                           Lunch in a lonely place - the dry lake at Wooleen

We went out sight-seeing and bird-watching – but not so many birds. Finally she spotted a rather beautiful blue wren in the binoculars and handed it to me for a look. Just as I brought the bird to bear I felt a weird sensation in my legs. I looked down and discovered I was standing over a nest of rather large ants who took exception to my presence. I was covered below the knees in ants and some had started chewing on me. The irish jig that I performed was mildly amusing for Maurs, especially as I dropped my pants halfway through the performance to get the blighters out, but after I had extricated the invaders all she said was “You scared the birds away.” Well pardon me!

                                                           "You scared the birds!!"

Our run of luck with dodging rain finished here. We got a downpour on a sheep station that has resigned itself to never getting rain with the result that all our canvas was wet when we packed for the home stretch. We drove along slippery, muddy country roads, heading for a little town in the northern wheatbelt called Mingenew. The rain system had passed by then and we happily dried out the annex in the afternoon sun and packed it away. Unfortunately after the rain came the fog – heavy fog – which saturated the camper as effectively as rain ever could! So we packed it up wet again and sailed for home. Seems every time we finish an adventure we are destined to end it wet. Such is life on the Returd Highway.

                                        Foggy day at Mingenew (didn't even see it coming!)

          Hitch hiker we found in the camper. We actually got him a ride back home to Wooleen.

Blog Epilogue

Maurs and I set out in February 2012 to search for Australia. Here it is July 2013 and we only found a bit of it. We clocked up 34,000 kilometres in that time and visited all States and Territories except Tassie (we had to keep something in reserve). We also managed sojourns to the USA and Canada, Vietnam and Singapore as side visits just to mix it up a little. The vehicle and camper performed well beyond our expectations and could do it again tomorrow if we asked nicely. What was satisfying for me personally was the fact that we used just about every piece of equipment that we originally packed in the hope that it might be useful, with the exception of one jaffle iron (somehow jaffles didn’t seem appropriate at any stage of the journey). We must have encountered every configuration of camping equipment around from the sublime to the ridiculous but we remain happy with what we have (no big-rig envy around here). We also came into contact with the entire spectrum of people – some wonderful, some dodgy, some German and some abjectly stupid – but all interesting (especially the stupid...and some of the Germans).

Our favourite place that we visited? A lot of people have asked us that and it usually shuts us up completely because there are so many wonderful moments to consider that we can’t judge them one against the other. In summary, our favourite place is Australia – for all of its faults and for all of its natural beauty; for all of its harshness and its gentler moments; for its rip-off merchants and for the sights that no one can charge for; it’s not such a bad place. And some of the gob-smacking stuff  we saw that didn’t even make the blog – like the night we witnessed a Gordian worm emerge from a dying Praying Mantis (google Gordian worms if you have a spare moment, it’s fascinating).

Maybe we will have to go again sometime and see all the stuff we missed on this trip (there’s quite a lot of that) but it won’t be for a while. Shorter trips closer in will be the order in the immediate future for us.

Thanks for following us around too. I hope you enjoyed the e-tour. We loved your feedback and it certainly kept me going when my mind kept telling me “that’s not interesting Gus, that’s just being a travelogue!” Oh, you mean it was just a travelogue after all? So it was.

Barn Hill

                      Barn Hill from the beach (go on, click on the image, it won't bite you!)

It’s a cattle station about 140 kilometres by road from Broome (50 kilometres as the crow flies) and within it lies a caravan park nestled on cliffs overlooking the Indian Ocean: Barn Hill is really quite pretty if not a little on the unsophisticated side. We are camped in the unpowered area meaning we are relying on Vic and Cheryl’s generator for any electricity we may need (we get by on 12 hours a day quite easily). The amenities block is...very airy, to say the least. But at least the toilets flush and if you shower in the afternoon then the coils of black poly pipe lying on the ground will provide warm water (woe betide those who shower late for they are consigned to a cold water, hurried wash – we even overheard a lady [obviously not in the “know”] trying to have a shower at 5.30 in the morning saying to her husband “I’ve tried both taps and they’re both cold!”) You see, this is what you get if you don’t ask questions around the camp – ignorance is no excuse).

                                                          The shower block, Barn Hill

                                                        Loos with views, Barn Hill

We have been blessed with a campsite right on the coastal cliff, much coveted by other campers who become relegated to a spot in the backblocks – it’s a site that you hang on to if you can and we are staying for as long as possible, weather permitting, while the other campers plot and scheme and try to guess when the prime space may become available. And yes, we have been caught up in some unseasonal rain through this part of the world although Barn Hill has fared better than the poor sods down the road in Karratha where 200 mm were dumped on them in 24 hours. We might have got a tenth of that amount. Can’t complain though, this is the first bit of weather that we have seen since leaving the Clare Valley in South Australia at Easter. A bonus from the rain was witnessing a flight of Frigate birds hovering above the shore and taking turns to dive and flutter their wings to shake off the annoying raindrops accumulating on their feathers (be careful we don’t subject you to the movie we took of it next time we see you).

                                                         The Barn Hill campsite

                                                       Sunset from the campsite

We discovered a casualty to our camper, probably from the Gibb River Road experience, but the long plastic tube on the back that carries our tent poles had been jolted loose and was found just hanging on. Repairs were needed lest our tube of tent poles be found lying on the highway next to Kevin’s caravan door (see last episode for further explanation). With Vic’s help and electric drill and another camper’s pop rivet gun we made the necessary repairs, ready to resume the travels safe in the knowledge that there’s a secure home for the tent poles.

                                    A tradesman (Vic) and his mug helper fixing the camper

A lot of people come to Barn Hill year after year to sit out the southern winter so it’s a real community feel down at the powered area, probably like the feel one gets in an old people’s home when one’s special time has come. Everyone says hello whether you want to or not. The beach is beautiful and behind the beach abuts sandstone rock formations with vivid red shades to contrast against the blue sea and white sand. There are a lot of keen fishermen here but we’ve yet to see evidence of many fish (a familiar story). I saw one old bloke simply give up and feed his remaining bait to the grateful seagulls.

                                                             Maurs on the Rocks

                                      The foreshore at Barn Hill (Gus digs a hole for himself)

The other day we decided to visit the Eco Resort that lies up the beach past a few headlands. We didn’t know how far it was – now we do – a 17.4 kilometre round trip, best done at low tide to get around the rocky bits. We had lunch there – all very nice and civilised. Being there though took me back to 2000 when Barry Hanstrum and I were working the cyclone warning centre and we watched on radar as cyclone Rosita blew the whole resort away with Category 5 ferocity, but it has recovered very well.

The first week here we just walked the beach and swam and suntanned but then we had those few days of watching the rain form puddles around us and wondering when it will go away. Well it did go away but was replaced with a blast of easterlies that has been buffeting us and testing the sturdiness of our campers and annexes. I figured it out – this is why people live in HOUSES!!! We have limited internet access here - we must be right on the edge of internet range as it floats in and out – mostly out.

                                                        Victor in repose - on the beach

We have spent 15 days in the warmth of Barn Hill but it’s getting to be July and we need to be back in Perth in order to get off the Returd Highway and back into a more normal existence. I mean, we can’t have fun forever can we? So it’s a compass heading of south soon, leaving our friends Vic and Cheryl to squeeze the last bit of heat into their remaining holiday while we plunge into cooler climes. However, it’s not over til it’s finally over.

And what’s biting me today? Sandflies!!

Tales from the Gibb River Road Part 4: The end of the road to Derby and beyond

The time had come to drag Cheryl kicking and screaming from her beloved swimming spot and move on. The sweetener was that we had booked a trip out of Derby to see the Horizontal Waterfalls – more on that later. I had travelled part of the last section of the Gibb River Road (GRR) five times now – twice on the mission for a new battery, twice to see Bell Gorge and now our exit trip. The road itself was akin to the old curate’s egg, good in parts. There were still your bone-rattling corrugations but then strangely you would happen across a stretch of super-smooth dirt road and you find that your speedo had leapt up to 100 km/h. Of course reuniting with the real GRR could come as a surprise if you weren’t watchful and you could find yourself airborne no matter what sort of rig you were driving. Speaking of camping rigs, just sitting in one spot like Mt Barnett gave us the opportunity to watch lots of people move in and out around us, in every conceivable mobile home ranging from “take it all with you” super-big caravans to camper-trailers to tents to minimalist swags, and not least the Britz and Apollo hire motor-homes, so favoured by Germans in a hurry (they mostly swoop in to Mount Barnett, see the gorge, tick the box, and then move on at speed to the next Lonely Planet attraction). Seeing all these rigs, I don’t believe that there is any perfect camper – all have flaws and fall short in places, but work well in other situations (you just don’t want to have the one that shakes itself apart and you leave it twitching in its death throe on the side of the GRR).

Aerial view of the tidal flats out of Derby

It’s about 340 km on to Derby, a town that appears to me to have been unduly maligned over the years and the word you hear down the road is to avoid Derby because of this issue and that problem, but it seemed quite a neat little town, well stocked and with good facilities - and no more or less issues than any other northern town that we had been in. It’s not worth starting a world movement over, but Derby deserves a fair go!

One of the horizontal falls from the seaplane - lot of turbulence there!

We waited outside of our caravan park on Friday afternoon, to be absorbed into the well oiled machine that is the Horizontal Waterfalls tour; a bus to Derby Airport where a seaplane whisked us north to Talbot Bay, the site of this remarkable phenomenon. The landing was nothing short of spectacular as the aircraft followed a path between steep hills (much like landing at the old Kai Tak Airport in Hong Kong) and then onto the bay itself. The seaplane taxied up to the large pontoon complex where we were welcomed, shown our cabins for the night and then invited out to feed the sharks and have a swim (in cages). Maurs and Cheryl were the first ones in swimming of course. The group (about 20 of us) then boarded a large and zippy speedboat in which we toured the bay and the horizontal falls. Safety is the tour operator’s main priority and we were issued lifejackets for the trip. Some of the more “age-challenged” guests did have a little difficulty working out the intricacies of donning the garment for some reason. It did amuse to watch the struggle.

Women swimmin' with sharks!

                                                           Lifejackets for the gifted!

The shore - Talbot Bay

I should explain that the falls are a result of the large tidal variation in the area (up to 10 or 11 metres) with water rushing in and out of three adjoining bays as they drain and fill. There are two narrow openings between the bays and the water just can’t leave in an orderly fashion. This results in “jumps” in the water levels between the three bays causing the water to rush through the narrow gaps. Apparently David Attenborough coined the phrase horizontal waterfalls many years ago and it stuck. They can be quite dangerous to negotiate when there are really big tides but we were able to jet through them several times much to the thrill of the passengers (although the next morning was considered too dangerous for the smaller falls).

                                                           "Yesh! That is a fast ride!!!"

                          The Horizontal Waterfalls with one water level higher than the other

Back on board the pontoon we pondered the sunset with the aid of a glass of wine - barramundi for dinner. The waters around the pontoon were floodlit allowing an intriguing variety of sea life to be observed all night long.  We spent the night in air-conditioned cabins (the first time we had slept in air-conditioned anything for months!) and after breakfast and the second trip to the falls area it was back on the seaplane for the trip back. Well recommended.

We had all agreed to give Broome a swerve as we had all been there before and we knew it was full of “snow geese” from down south who sit out the southern winter by the beach. However the vehicle was crying out for a service so we booked into Broome for two nights in order to achieve an oil change. It gave us an opportunity to catch up with old friends Kevin and Shirley G who also had no intention of staying in Broome but who had lost their caravan door on the way north and had called in for possible repairs. If anyone does happen to spot a door without a caravan attached out on the highway, let me know and I’ll put you in touch with Kevin.

With clean oil and a full mainsail this reprovisioned unit wheeled out of Broome heading south in pursuit of Vic and Cheryl – first stop would be Barn Hill.

Tales from the Gibb River Road Part 3: Mount Barnett

Most of us thought that we were only going to spend one night at Mount Barnett before moving on to other spots. How wrong most of us were! The campsite  at the Lower Manning Gorge sports probably the best swimming area along the whole GRR and Cheryl (who is searching warmth, sun and water away from the southern winter for her well-earned long service leave) was not about to let this slip through her fingers. We hiked to the (upper) Manning Gorge on the first day, which also boasts a magnificent stretch of water and falls. As the days passed by, the cool, clear waters of the swimming hole and the fact that we had found a little path down to the river at the back of our camp that led to a private stretch of deep water beckoned us to stay. Talking to a few other people, it was apparent that the other places that we had planned to visit were not as good as where we were. Our campsite was shady and well positioned and we figured why not use Mt Barnett as a base, visit the other sights, and keep swimming for as long as our provisions held up. We managed 15 nights! Most people only stay one night and move on.

Lower Manning Gorge swimming pool

Maurs and Cheryl checking out the swimming area from on high.

Maureen and Cheryl love to pad around rivers and creeks to check out wildlife and just...be. They think they are alone but they rarely are. On one field trip they found a Bower Bird's Bower. On another they had to gingerly tiptoe around a couple of rather large station bulls who believed that stretch of river to be their own bit of turf, and later they were checked out quite closely by a wild dog/dingo who looked hungry enough to have a go at anything. It eventually sloped off again into the bush and the ladies resumed their romp up river to our private beach behind our camp.

The Bower - this bird uses shells and vertebrae to attract its mate

Manning Gorge Falls

 

Close encounter of the dingo kind, and don't he look starved!

 

While they are away on these river trips Vic and I busy ourselves by talking about them, making cups of tea and eating our snack of choice up here, Black and Gold brand fruit cake. Cheryl and Maurs attempt to bake cake for us, but they only use healthy ingredients while the B&G cake contains ALL the food groups! Heaven...

The ladies a baking a cake camping-style...

The clear winner in cakes though...mmmmm!

We did a day trip (240 kilometres) to take in Galvans Gorge and Bell Gorge – both quite beautiful. Bell Gorge is spectacular with a cascade of waterfalls emptying into a big deep swimming area. We swam, but not alone. I noticed a splash from a rock ledge into the water where it took shape into a rather large python that swam to shore and slithered out of sight into the rocks. Headline would read – “Women Swimmin’ with Serpents”! The rest of the trip that day was relatively uneventful until we were about 200 metres from the Mount Barnett turn-off. I had slowed right down to make the turn and yet I managed to collide with and despatch a small (apparently suicidal) wallaby that leapt out of the long grass on the side of the road and under the vehicle before I could react. So much for the “Shoo Roo” I had fitted! I now call it the “Here Skippy!”

Bell Gorge from above

The punt across the Barnett River - spills and action aplenty for those who wish to stay dry but generally don't. It's much better to just swim across.

Hauling water from our "private stretch" of the river.

Every morning I wake up and suppose, “What is going to try to bite me today?” and up here in the Kimberley that can range from a sizeable crocodile through to dingoes and snakes right down the food chain to ticks, mosquitoes and sandflies with the smaller denizens mostly succeeding with their aftermath displayed as spots and welts on the legs and arms of numerous happy campers walking around the campsite. It may be a truism that human beings have a primal need to leave their perfectly comfortable surroundings from time to time to spend periods walking around in the dirt, foraging for firewood, living quite ferally really, and presenting their nether regions as a target for voracious insects. One day I may find that need also...

Our campsite - Lower Manning Gorge