Ozzie Diary... October 2002

Text by: Anna

And at last our van got its new engine.............

It purred sooo beautifully we could hardly believe it and for the first 100km we did we sat waiting expectantly for backfiring noises and smoke. But there was none. And even better, every time we pulled up at traffic lights or at a junction it didn't stall once. It took some getting used to, but once Toby/Fortuna had regained our trust we cruised happily down the Victoria Highway away from Darwin at a staggering 80km(50m)/ph!

First stop on route was Adelaide River. Not a lot happening here but a good place to pull up and camp for the night. Even made it to the pub there but all we could manage was just the one scooner each!

We took the "scenic route"(basically a very bendy, hilly, barely two laned road but bitch-a-man (think that might be bitumen) none-the-less!) to Douglas Hot springs the following day.
With water temperatures at 40 degrees and outside temperatures at almost the same this wasn't pleasant water! But just a little further down stream the waters became cooler and there we sat admiring the surroundings and relaxing in perfect clear waters.
With a snorkel on, you were able to lie on your stomach with your face in the water for ages simply admiring all the tiny little fishes swim arround you. But the heat was all too much for us and so we departed in the mid afternoon to do the next 200km with air conditioning (that is our windows were open!) in order to find shade on a campsite at Edith Falls.

Maybe you will recall Edith Falls from a previous entry. Edith Falls is part of Nitmiluk National Park which stretches down to Katherine where the famous gorges are. Our previous visit to this part of the park had been cut short by wild bushfires and an unbearable number of flies. This time however there were no fires and we were able to walk up to the very beautiful upper pool which due to an early start (very unusual for us!) we had all to ourselves for the first hour. This was perhaps the most beautiful swimming hole I had been in and included a fast falling waterfall which provided us with a good shower!

And after this it was on to Katherine for fuel, gas, and lunch before we began our journey west.
The first couple of hundred kms felt long and tedious with not a lot to look at. By 6pm we were at Mary River Road house which according to the "Rough Guide" offers the cheapest camping in Australia, but do not be fooled. As usual the Rough guide/lonely Planet had it wrong. The state of the caravan park made it look like this should indeed be the case, but alas the price had obviously somewhat soared since the previous year and the site quality hadn't!

With no shade, disgusting toilet facilities, and water which came out the tap a tinted yellow with floating bits we decided to pinch a bit of power which they had wanted an extortianate extra $5 for!

But onwards and upwards the following day and the further West we got the more impressive the scenery became. The landscapes were beginning to look beautifully rugged and the colours were rich reds, yellows and greens set against blue sky. We drove on to Keep River National Park just before the edge of the Western border.
This stunning little national park was almost deserted and we set up camp at a little site 15km in over an unsealed track (this is as far as the van was going to take us!). A short 2km loop walk takes you through and over these amazing coloured rock formations and gives you a view of what have become known as the "minature bungles". Many little crevices and rock holes provided excellent shelter from the sun whilst you could admire the beautiful landscapes surrounding you.

With a fire burning that night, we cooked all our fresh food in a desperate attempt to get rid of it before crossing the border into western oz (no fresh food aloud to be taken across this border). So we feasted on baked potatoes, roasted onion and garlic, and a make-shift ratatouille. With plates of delicious looking food we started to get tucked in, but only to be disturbed by a funny little man!
This man (very much as you would picture a train-spotter and even talked like one!) insisted on rabbiting on at us for ages constantly disputing anything we said and generally boring us to death! And he went on and went on and went on......... and I left Carl with him whilst I made a rather over enthusiastic run to do the washing up (best washing up I have ever done in my life - everything was so metticulously clean!). And he was still going even after everything had been dryed and put away - poor Carl!!

The next day we finally made it across the border and we were into the western state. Since we gained an extra hour and a half this put us at 6.30am at time of border crossing - a very impressive feat for us! - and in the centre of Kununarra by 8am.

THE BUNGLE BUNGLES!!!

Text by: Carlos

Kununurra is small town with big ideas. One of them was to flood the valleys with water nearby so they'd always have lots of water. So they did. Graeme, I've no idea on the enviromental disasters that ensued (except for the rescuing of many animals from slowly drowning islands), but the lake is pretty impressive now! Its about 65km long and has up to 20000 freshwater crocs living in it! Thats about the smae as the number of people in Kununurra.

The other thing close to town (in ozzy terms of course) is the Argyle diamond mine. Discoverd in the 80's it produces a third of the worlds diamonds!! It's huge!! And of course wholly owned by none of the local aborigines.

We stayed at an rather pricey campground in town, which was worth every penny due to the fantastic view we had over one of the smaller lagoons closer to town. But to be honest, nice town or not, there wasn't much to do here, except take a scenic flight across the famous

Bungle bungles!

These are sandstone mountains in the middle of nowhere, built over millions of years and then eroded over millions more, leaving these weird red stripey mountians poppin up all over the place. The only way to see em properly is by air.

We booked our flight for 5.30am the next day (you gotta go early to avoid the heat) with AlligatorAir in a 8-man cessna, and at 5.45am the next morning they finally turned up.

Now, I've flown before and haven't had any problems, in fact I rather enjoy it, and I believe Anna is in the smae boat (or plane) so we were extremley excited about getting into the air for 2.5hrs and seeing some of the remotest parts of WA.

Take off in small plane takes no time at all and we were suddenly on the runway and into the air before we'd even had chance to go through what the safety rigmarole and wether to have the fish or the chicken.
And just as suddenly we could see the town, the river, the dams and then we were over Lake Argyle, the huge man-made lake. A really impressive sight at 6am. After anohter 45mins of lake we started to get a little bored, which was good as it suddenly stopped and gave way to some big earthquake and plate-scarring action. Helly would have slid off the seat!!

And then the bungle bungles. And they were magnificent. Big Red stripey domes, all over the place, jutting up from the flat earth and looking really bizarre. We took a few passes over them, dived into a cnayon or 2 and began the flight back.

It was at this point I noticed we had no air-con and the cabin was starting to warm up. It was about 7.30ish. Within 1/2 hour we'd reached the Argyle diamond mine and although an impressive sight too, I no longer had the energy or the will to lift my camera up and photograph it. The cabin was hot and stuffy and the heat was bringing with it some uninvited guests, alos known as pockets of turbulence.

The pilot began asking if everyone was ok after 2 hours and as he turned around i believe everyone in the cabin (7 in all) managed to raise a smile for that 3 seconds and as he turned away they brought the "souvenir bags" out from the back of the seats.

The heat increased, my illness increased until finally I passed th bag over to Anna (still empty by god!!) and we hit the tarmac of the runway. What happened in the final 30 mins of the flight I'll never know as all I could do was breathe heavily and concentrate on the horizon. Never again!

Having made it back to the van, I then had to lie down for about 3 hours whilst my balance returned to normal. This meant Anna had to book us in for another night whilst I whinged and recovered. And how I whinged!! But it was worth it for the first 90 minutes. A whole new expereince and gorgeous scenery. I'd recommend it to anyone. Seriously!

Heading West...

Next day I decided to fix a small leaky radiator pipe. The problem was I couldn;t quite reach the pipe to pull it up the metal pipe and securwe it with the metal screwy thing. Being a qualified mechanic the next thing I did was remove the fan from next to the rad' and begun to get dirty and oily. I even managed to fix the pipe (I think). So all that needed to be done was scrwew the fan back on and away we could go. 90 minutes later the fan was still on the seat and I was no nearer getting it back on the engine. Oh dear.

As I swore profusely and sweated even more profusely in the heat of the van, Anna advised a shower (I think more for her sake than mine!) and then we took a walk to the reception desk to ask for a mechanic.

Luckily, the guy on the desk, as almost all ozzies do, knew something of engines, gave ame some advice about the fan and told me to have another go before getting a mechanic. So I did. And unbelievably after undoing some more things near something called an "alternator" and adjusting the "fan-belt" I got the fan back on!

Then I looked at the screws I had. They were old. Really old. And cross-threaded.
Oh no.
So, we took another walk, this time into town and into 4 different shops (2 mechanics, a cold drinks shop and a hardware store) and finally found some screws that fit.

So after 5 hours of fiddling, some advice, some heaving around the engine, a lot of walking and 4 new nuts and bolts we were ready to leave Kununurra for the West Coast!! Who needs mechanics...

A couple of days later we found ourselves at Geikhe Gorge, a gorgous wee gorge from the devonshire period apparently. Some old reef system built up when Oz was Gondwanaland and the dinosaurs were just sparkles in the amoebas eyes. Very beautiful. And the water was lovely. If you ignored the several crocs floating around nearby. Which we did cos it was hot. The rocks here are also sriated and limesotne, so therey're white where the water level cleand them in teh wet and above that ahey're black, then red and there are in places some other colours thrown in for effect. Nicely done nature. we tooka small cruise around in a boat in the afternoon, looked at the rocks, heard about the fossils embedded in them (we didn't see an!) and then headed on to the next free campsite about 100km further down the road.

It was a pond in the middle of a farm, but dad how jealous would you have been! I've never seen pelicans swimming on a pond before! OR been woken at 5am by a dawn chorus from sulfur and black cockatoos, cockatiels, corellas, bee-eaters, bower birds, great bower birds, magpies, ibis's's's, waders, pied cormorants, little pied cormorants, black cormorants, parrakeets, snake birds, and a whole host of stuff I couldnt name unless I had another 2 dyas and a very big book! Dad, tell yer mate it was near Ellendale, on the gt Northern highway on the way to Derby. A really small bird sanctuary thats free to stay for as long as you want. It was lovely.

Then we drove off to Derby, home of the Prison Boab Tree. A huge 20m wide tree, hollow in the middle, where they used to confine "black fellahs" in the 1800's. Nothing else interesting except the 8m high tide, which comes i n at such a rate that you can see it literllay climbing up the pier. We missed it.

So we drove further down the road and decided to camp free ona track recommnended in our "freecamps" book. Unfortunately the gate was locked due to "mustering" and we had to go a further 6kms down the road and use another gate. The unsealed road started out ok, but about 4km from the river campsite it decied to get worse. A LOT worse. So at 1/2 kmh we limped dwon the track, over roacks, deep fine sand and eventually made it to the river. Phew.

Where we met the local ozzies. Waiting to fish.

Apparently this was a fave fishuing spot for Barramundi, the prize fish of the north. They get up to about 1metre in length and fight like small mexicans after a tequila party. So I decied to have a go. One of the ozzies promised me some live bait, which he delivered (mullet.. had to laugh!!) and I put a 2 inch long hook onto my live , a 6 inch long fish onto the hook an chucked it in.

One thing you have to remember In the north... if theres Barra theres saltwater crocs, and there were crocs in the water. And the most dangerous place to be... on the flat beachy bit using live bait to catch big fish that crocs are quite partial to.

And it's dark...

Needless to say, the wind got up, the fish never arrived and we saw only 1 croc. I lived to tell the tale of absolutely nothing happening and we ate cheese on toast for tea. As ozzies often say... "Bugger!"

And then we hit Broome and the West Coast. Not much to tell you here. We've just arrived, we went to the pictures (a 86 yr old outdoor deckchair cinema... very cool!) and saw a good brit flick... "Last Orders". Fantastic!

The ocean is lovely (Indian ocean). Clear, azure waters, the sand is golden (except for where the camels have crapped) and the sun beats down daily. Soon we'll head south to Kawinjini, Exmouth (swimming with whale sharks hopefully!) and finally Perth... where I'm sure we'll give you more updates! BUt first we'll get the van tuned, and the tappets fixed. Ho hum.

Till then...

Date: 4^th October
Text by: Carlos

Karijini National Park and Ningaloo Reef

Text by: Carlos

This is a quick update as we haven't much time. Suffice to say, I've finally caught some fish for tea!! I know Luca won't believe me, but I managed to catch 2 Salmon from 80mile beach (lovely long, long beach... strangely), which were filletted and bbq'd over an open fire, next to the riverside that night. And they were worth the wait!