Australia Darwin to Broome: Part Three - Bungle Bungles to Broome

promises promises - we see one (live)wallaby and lots of roadkill

The landscape changes very little unless it's the size colour and number of termite mounds.  The bush is sparse and at times the roadside is charred where planned burn-offs have taken place.  Our new travel game, one point for any feature we haven't seen before, fails to get lift off.

Our singular excitement is driving through a roadside fire just before Halls Creek - no photos as the h-g didn't have a camera ready and I wasn't about to stop in the middle of a raging conflagration no matter how loud he shouted - I wasn't keen to be roasted alive, nor would blistered paint work in our favour when returning the rental car. The police closed the road shortly after we went through.

Halls Creek is fascinating in its nothingness - and that it's the only town for 600kms.  As with all these small settlements in the middle of nowhere it's a sad place. There are few shops, any there are have shutters or wire gates protecting them from break-ins after hours, there's usually two or three big petrol stations, a caravan park/camp ground or two, and a reasonably large supermarket to service travellers and anyone living within several hundred kilometres.

We'd been told about the China Wall just out of town so made that pilgrimage.  Despite looking as if a talented stonemason had had a flight of fancy in the wilderness, it's a natural white quartz wall rising out of the limestone, which must have eroded around it.  It runs 15 kms into nowhere.

China Wall outside Halls Creek, not the Great Wall of China

There's not much to engage us on the road from Halls Creek through Fitzroy Crossing to Derby then on to Broome.  The detour to Derby takes us to a sensationally large 1500 year old boab tree.  As they age the trees hollow out in the middle, and just out of Derby there's the Prison Tree - now, various stories abound as to whether this was a holding place for aboriginal prisoners, or a staging place for those engaged in trafficking aboriginal slave labour.  As I've researched a bit more about it, it seems these stories are myths and the tree was never used as a lock up.  However it's a handy history for the town to promulgate as there's not much else to recommend Derby.  More about the tree's history here if you are interested.

the famous 'prison tree'

It is clear there's social problems in the Northern Territory and Western Australia. Alcohol abuse, and the violence, crime, and social disenfranchisement that accompanies it, is visible in every town.  In every small town shop windows are barred and security gates locked after closing. 

Rules abound for how you can buy and consume alcohol - a set of rules applied after the proverbial horse had bolted. In bars we couldn't buy a double shot of anything. In bottle stores, if you want two bottles of wine, there must be two people with ID to make the purchase.  At a drive through bottle store (yes, there is irony at every turn) it's a "no car, no service" policy, ostensibly to prevent walk-ins (code for aboriginals) purchasing alcohol. 

It seems that for every Aborigine owned or co-owned business we see on this trip, such as cafes, Art Galleries, River trips, and other tourism ventures, there’s a greater number of very black people sitting in groups under trees, lounging outside supermarkets or sitting in bars with cans of beer.

It’s hard to challenge stereotypes when they’re constantly reinforced.

In Darwin we waited for the bottle store to open at 10.00am to get some beers for that night after our drive. The only person who beat us through the door was an aboriginal woman buying a bottle of rum and two litres of coke. 

At Fitzroy Crossing, about 500kms east of Broome, we detour to check out the Fitzroy Crossing Inn, said to be the oldest in the Kimberleys.  We anticipate a charming old homestead with a shady garden bar where we’d enjoy lunch and an ale or two. We find a concrete block reeking of urine and disinfectant; we’re the only white people there aside from the barman, a traveller from South America.  About 15 to 20 Aboriginal people sit with cans of beer looking like they’d been there since opening and wouldn’t be leaving any time soon. They ignore us. The atmosphere seeps lethargy. 

We’ve met French, Estonian, Chilean, Argentinian, Welsh and a host of others working here through the dry season. They work in camp grounds, coffee shops, restaurants, anywhere there’s a service role. At the supermarket in Kununurra there was one Aboriginal woman on checkout. It seems unless they start their own businesses, there’s no employment for them. 

Do they not want to work? Or do businesses not want to employ them? Anyone I ask says it’s a combination of both. I’m told that if an aboriginal wants a job they get it and the Government pays, or at least subsidises. I don’t know if this is true.  Given it wasn't until 1962 indigenous Australians got the right to vote in Federal elections, and it took a referendum in 1967 to include Aboriginal Australians in determinations of population", there's a lot of catching up to do.

I promise the next, and final, Darwin to Broome instalment will be more uplifting!

Tides out at Derby

Australia - Darwin to Broome: Part Two - Kununurra and the Bungle Bungles

At the end of Part One we were on the seemingly endless drive through the Kimberley region from Katherine to Kununurra.  We'd had dinner at the local Katherine Golf and Country Club, which welcomes visitors as long as they aren't wearing singlets or work boots.  

The bar doubled as a TAB and in general it was the sort of place where you puff on your asthma inhaler then go outside for a couple of ciggies before making a second pass at the bainmarie.

next corner?

Man, you don't realise how big and empty this country is until you drive it.

The one change in the landscape is the appearance of the fabulously rotund Boab trees.  These fat babies vary in size according to age, and there are giants that are several hundred years old, many likely over a thousand years old.   They're deciduous lose their leaves in the dry, but as we reach Kununurra and a greater water source,  we notice more keep their leaves. The fruit is very high in vitamin C and traditional food source for Aborigines.

The hunter-gatherer becomes a tree hugger

After endless red dust and brown grass as our constant companions we cross the Northern Territory into Western Australia.   Nothing changes.    We pass through a border check,  where they ensure we are not transporting cane toads or fresh fruit and vegetables.  Drugs and alcohol are fine though.

Turn the clock back a couple of hours and 40kms from the border we arrive in Kununurra.  What a difference water makes.  The town (pop 7,000, tripling in the tourist season and harvest times) was originally settled to service the Ord River irrigation system and the surrounds are now expansive agricultural land growing melons, mangoes, chickpeas, bananas, citrus and other tropical crops, but also sandalwood which fetches good prices for both the oil and wood.  It's positively lush after the land we've driven through.

An hour drive west along the Gibb River Road and we reach Emma Gorge, part of the massive El Questro station.  We have a couple of nights in rather nice safari tents and spend the days walking the gorges and finding swimming holes.  At the natural oasis of Zebedee Springs the pools are thermal and the palms make it feel like you are in an expensively landscaped luxury spa resort.

thermal luxury in the middle of nowhere

A flight over the area and another 250kms south takes us over  the green and verdant cropping lands, Lake Argyle,  the Bungle Bungles and Argyle Diamond Mine.  Lake Argyle is massive and, of course, even more massive in the wet.  Apparently you can water ski 60kms from the north end of the lake to the south end without making a turn.  And I'd suggest you do it without falling off as there are approximately 30,000 crocs living in those waters.

Lake Argyle with its thousands of islands and even more crocs

The diamond mine is not as huge  - about 1600m by 600 m - but a lot uglier.  They initially underestimated the size of the strike and have now had to go underground; the walls of the open pit became too steep and liable to collapse as they went deeper.  The volume of mined diamonds is the largest in the world, however most are industrial quality as opposed to those sparkly ones you see on the bodies of the rich and famous.

There's diamonds in them there hills

I hadn't realised how seismic Australia was until we flew over this area. Between 375 and 500 million years ago active faults changed the landscape.  It's awesome - and I mean that literally.


Our flight also takes us over Purnululu National Park and the Bungle Bungles, a geographic oddity of beehive shaped towers, only  brought to general attention in 1982 when a documentary film crew was in Kununurra.  In the pub one night they were asked by a local helicopter pilot if they were including the Bungle Bungles in their story.  "The what?" was the response, no-one other the local aborigines and cattle station pilots having seen them.  It's now a World Heritage site.  

and we thought we had seismic shift in New Zealand

Bungles Bungles from the air

From the main road it's nearly two hours on a rough 4WD track to get into the Bungle Bungle formations - you would have had to be seriously lost to stumble on them.  And when you get there it is spectacular, but hot as hell with no shade until you get up into one of the canyons.  The layers are made up of sandstone and compressed pebbles and stones cemented together by finer material, and the shapes have been formed over thousands of years of wind from the desert, and rain.  The rich red layer comes from the iron and manganese in the sandstone and the darker layers, which hold more moisture, are an algal growth called cyanobacteria.  

Purnululu National Park -  walking in to the Bungle Bungles

inside Cathedral canyon

The contrast from drought dryness to lush growth when there's water about means you just don't know what you will find next.  In the gorges we were stunned to find palm trees and the sorts of flora you'd find in a much less harsh climate. The massive rock formations and folded terrain take your breath away. Spending time in the landscape here puts meaning back into the words amazing, spectacular and awesome. 

sunset at Lake Kununurra - our cabin looked out over this view