Reflection

On board - I'd do it all again in a flash!
See the group photo here
See a random selection of photos here

I've been lucky enough to make several trips to the UK and Europe, a stunning visit to Tunisia in North Africa, and last year I had a fantastic eight weeks in the US and Canada. Finally, I get to see a bit of my own country – and it has to be the most amazing thing I've ever done.


At the WA border

I loved everything about it – with the exception of the mosquitoes I do admit. I loved the remoteness; the views to the horizon that was many, many miles away; the beauty of water in dry, dry land; the red rocks and earth; the quaintness of remote shops, like general stores of 50+ years ago; did I say the remoteness?; the blue sea; the wide open sky; the light of the full moon and the brightness of so many stars when sleeping in the open, and so much more.

However, the final word after this amazing trip can go to someone who says it so much better than I can, Dorothea Mackellar .....


My Country

The love of field and coppice,
Of green and shaded lanes.
Of ordered woods and gardens
Is running in your veins,
Strong love of grey-blue distance
Brown streams and soft dim skies
I know but cannot share it,
My love is otherwise.

I love a sunburnt country,
A land of sweeping plains,
Of ragged mountain ranges,
Of droughts and flooding rains.
I love her far horizons,
I love her jewel-sea,
Her beauty and her terror -
The wide brown land for me!

A stark white ring-barked forest
All tragic to the moon,
The sapphire-misted mountains,
The hot gold hush of noon.
Green tangle of the brushes,
Where lithe lianas coil,
And orchids deck the tree-tops
And ferns the warm dark soil.

Core of my heart, my country!
Her pitiless blue sky,
When sick at heart, around us,
We see the cattle die -
But then the grey clouds gather,
And we can bless again
The drumming of an army,
The steady, soaking rain.

Core of my heart, my country!
Land of the Rainbow Gold,
For flood and fire and famine,
She pays us back threefold -
Over the thirsty paddocks,
Watch, after many days,
The filmy veil of greenness
That thickens as we gaze.

An opal-hearted country,
A wilful, lavish land -
All you who have not loved her,
You will not understand -
Though earth holds many splendours,
Wherever I may die
I know to what brown country
My homing thoughts will fly.

Jedda Rock, Katherine River Gorge

Whose problem??

I arrived home on the day that the Alice Springs Coroner released his findings on yet another Aboriginal death in police custody. The police involved were castigated on a number of accounts but all remain serving officers. Their shortcomings were not criminal offences apparently. But what of moral shortcomings? The law has nothing to say there.

And now, early in the week that I'm finally finishing writing about this trip, the front page of The Age was full of a report of the catastrophic effects of alcohol on the Aboriginal population around Fitzroy Crossing, ranging from deaths, including suicide, to half of all eight-year-olds suffering from Foetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder.

Jabiru Court House

 












A three week visit to the Kimberley region is, almost by definition, superficial. Yet when police stations, courts and legal aid offices were so prominent in small outback towns, alarm bells rang for me. It's not the “Aboriginal Problem” but the “Aboriginals' Problem” ... and that is us, we Europeans who have trampled on a 40,000+year old culture, expecting those people to conform to European culture and yardsticks within the space of a mere two centuries. Failure to comply is being punished, mercilessly in most cases. I don't know what the answer is but what we are currently doing is wrong, and it isn't working.

Flora and Fauna

Plants and animals are not even my vague area of general knowledge, let alone expertise.
If anyone knows what the unnamed flowers are, do let me know .... provided it's a common name. If it's botanical names for the plants – keep those to yourself! One couple on board were plant nuts. None had a common name: never called a flower a daisy when they could call it Asteraceae. If I ever hear another Latin name again it will be too soon!! Very keen on always doing the right thing they were, except they had a real blind spot when it came to picking flowers.

Kakadu
More flowery things here

These are a few photos that worked – or almost worked! There aren't many photos of wildlife simply because we didn't see that many. The country is so vast, and so poor in terms of growing feed, that the animals are few and far between and most of the ones we did see were from the moving bus. If you think some of these photos are bad you should see the ones that didn't make it here!

Blue-winged kookaburra
More living creatures here

 















One photo I didn't even try to get as it never would have worked – sparkly-eyed spiders. Walking to the loo one night my head torch picked up these tiny, tiny sparkles, like pale blue diamonds, so, so pretty. On looking closely, they were spiders' eyes. An opportunity awaits for a professional photographer.

Last stop: Darwin

On leaving Kakadu, we travelled across to Litchfield National Park then, we headed to Darwin, arriving late afternoon. When I've been away before, no matter how much I loved it and how interesting, exciting, fun, a trip had been, by the end I always looked forward to home. Not this time. It was a great disappointment to see the tin and tile roofs of suburbia loom into view on the outskirts of Darwin.

That said, Darwin itself was not a disappointment at all. Originally I'd planned an extra day there but Qantas messed about with my flights. I saw enough to hope to get back there again and see it properly. Then again – reservation staff and I don't seem to hit it off in the Northern Territory. This time, the hotel couldn't find the booking for my second night there.

On the outskirts of Darwin we stopped at the Australian Aviation Heritage Centre which is more or less a giant hangar filled with old planes and associated memorabilia. My Aunty Hazel worked at Essendon Aerodrome during World War II, helping build aircraft, and she stayed on there until her retirement many years later, so I have that background interest. She started with ANA (Australian National Airways) which had morphed into Ansett by the time she stopped work. The largest exhibit is a B52 bomber. It was amusing to hear someone ask where it was when he walked into the hangar: it was so big he couldn't see it!

Only appropriate to put this here,
an exhibit at the Aviation Centre,
seeing as a similar plane has been the logo of this blog.

Then it was on into the city centre where our hotel was, overlooking the water. People, including me, pretty much flaked on arrival, taking time to luxuriate in a hot shower and put on fresh clothes before going down to drinks and our last dinner together.

Next morning it was an early start again. We had a morning tour of the city at the end of which some people were dropped off at the airport and various other places of accommodation for those staying on at cheaper hotel rates. I should have done that too for my extra night. I didn't realise how easy it was. However .....

The city tour fitted in more than I expected. Most of it was drive-by or drive-through, of course. But we got out near the Supreme Court, above the WWII oil storage tunnels and learned a bit of history, at East Point to admire the (smoky!) views, and spent a decent amount of time at the art gallery. The temporary exhibition at the gallery was the 2012 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art awards. There was some fabulous work there – and as with any exhibition some that you'd struggle to be polite about. But one piece reduced me to tears; “I bin learn” by Deann Grant – 20 old-fashioned school slates with racist, patronising, negative, etc, etc things she had learned over the years. I voted for it in the People's Choice Award (doubt it will win) and suggested it be put on a postcard and delivered to every mail box in Australia (doubt they'll do that either). The extensive Cyclone Tracy exhibit was also impressive, particularly the room you went into to hear how it sounded at the time. There was, understandably, a warning on the door that some people might find it upsetting.

Back at the hotel, that left me with one afternoon before returning to Melbourne on a 7.00am flight the next day. And what a terrific afternoon it was! I was picked up at the hotel by Dianne, a library technician from Humpty Doo, and driven via the scenic route out to the hospital where health library colleague Gill was, luckily for me, at work that afternoon. We had afternoon tea and talked shop in a pretty impressive library set-up, even if they are short-staffed like many health libraries. Then Dianne drove me back to the hotel via the sunset market at Mindil Beach. That too was fun and I picked up some reasonably healthy(!) food for tea. Seeing the sun set at the sunset market was an appropriate almost-last sight after the most amazing three weeks I think I've ever spent.

Sunset at Mindil Beach
More Darwin photos here

Stations – oases in the desert

Welcome to Ellenbrae!

We stopped at a number of stations throughout the trip. These were oases in the desert where we lunched, had morning or afternoon tea, or camped. Not to mention, better toilets and the essential refuelling points – most important when there could be hundreds of km from one fuel pump to the next. The water available to make a green oasis was in stark contrast to the water available to the rest of the million acres or so of these stations.

Our very first stop was on a station – Tilmouth Well, a planned oasis on Napperby for the benefit of travellers. A fairly dusty oasis, nothing too picturesque about it, but it had the required facilities and was a good spot to learn about how the camping would work for the next three weeks.
Then we didn't stay on stations, as such, until the Gibb River Road.

Manning Gorge is on Mt. Barnett Station (as is the eponymously named Roadhouse!). Apart from the shower block, this was a bare campgroud, i.e. no irrigation to water a lawn (or grassed area!) that didn't occur naturally. The oasis was natural though – the swimming hole. We arrived there late and left early so apart from the swim had no time to further explore the gorge.

We had a toilet stop and truck refuel at Drysdale River Station on the way up to Mitchell Plateau then we stayed one night at the homestead campground on the way back. Some were delighted to have bar facilities but that didn't interest me. What I remember most is, unlike everywhere else that was so laid back, here at the camp shop they were sticklers for business hours. I rocked up 2 minutes after closing time and they wouldn't serve me, even though I told them I wanted to buy three handmade cards/pictures (suitable for framing, made by local Aboriginal artists) that would have been worth an extra three minutes on their part I'd have thought. But no.

Ellenbrae is owned by Big Business (the Grollos) but has the local, personal feel of a family run homestead. There's plenty of water for irrigation and it shows, with lush green lawns, beautiful gardens, and a vegie patch. This was the morning tea stop with the Devonshire tea!

Home Valley Station, HV8, is run by the Indigenous Land Corporation and is a training station for Aboriginal Australians across the Kimberley region. It was a great place for a lunch stop, on the Pentecost River (stay well clear, saltwater crocs!) and looking towards the Cockburn Ranges.

El Questro Wilderness Park is the station where rich folk stay. Not inappropriate that we stayed at Emma Gorge Resort, the cheaper of the two built accommodation areas at ELQ, because the tour itself wasn't cheap. The Homestead is much more expensive, apparently – we didn't get to see that! The camping area was certainly well watered and grassed. We had a morning tea stop at the camping area after our relax at Zebedee Thermal Springs, also located at El Questro.

The stations were all different but all equally appreciated. They provided variety and pleasant stopping spots along the way – and saved us from too many 'behind a bush' toilet stops!!  But I did love best our lunch and morning and afternoon tea stops that were in the middle of nowhere. The isolation was magical.

El Questro
More Station photos here

Two Climbs: One more gorge – Emma Gorge at El Questro Station – and Ubirr at Kakadu

As mentioned previously, the “walk” up to Emma Gorge waterfall was described as “medium level of fitness required”. I kept up reasonably well on the way up but coming back was a different story. I fell further and further behind. Tour director Les stayed with me the whole time. Whatever he was thinking, he didn't rush me at all, even stopping to point out different things to me – including poisonous seeds – as in kill you, not just make you sick, if you ate them. They were very pretty!

All the same, I had two aims, to get back before dark and to get back before they sent out the search party! I gather we were only about 20 minutes behind the next-but-last down, so they must have been a bit slow too, but it felt a much bigger time gap than that.

It was hard work, climbing on all fours in part, but because it was slow going, it wasn't the sort of “puff you out” difficult. It was the awkwardness and lack of flexibility on my part – which would make it hard for anyone who wasn't too nimble on their feet.

But soooo worth the effort! The swim was fun, the water having pockets of warm water in what was otherwise bracing, until you got used to it. And my two aims were met!! Plus, the added reward of a real shower in the ensuite bathroom in my 'tent'.

Easy part near the start of the walk.
Note the blue pathway indicator.
More Emma Gorge photos here.





*****

On the approach to Ubirr

Ubirr was a very different climb. First, there is the extensive rock art. The artwork was well sign-posted so you had a good idea of what you were looking at. Most fascinating of all was a painting of a Thylacine which I thought only existed in Tamania, because of its common name, the Tasmanian Tiger, and which finally became extinct in that state in the 1930s. What dingoes started, white man and his guns finished off.

About Thylacines



Thylacine painting
More rock art here

Then, after a bit of climbing along the art pathways, there's the climb to the top of Ubirr rock itself, giving fantastic 360 degree views.

I wasn't sure if I was going to be able to manage Ubirr. There were no warnings in the itinerary but the signs at the site were a bit off-putting: it was a particularly hot day and I was still feeling edgy after the sky-high blood pressure reading at Kununurra. However, I set off, thinking I could stop and go back if needs be. I'm glad the signs and my nerves didn't deter me. It wasn't that hard and the effort was more than amply rewarded.

Looking from the top of Ubirr Rock
across the monsoon forest
towards Arnhem land
More rock climb photos here

Rock Art - Leaving Mitchell Plateau

Every day I carried a light backpack with me – more of a fabric bag with straps really. In it I carried things I might need – and usually didn't. Twice, getting off the bus, I decided to travel light and leave it behind, both with dire consequences. Once was at a rock art site and my camera's SD card became full. The second was on the Yellow Waters Billabong cruise at Cooinda. At least on the latter occasion I had my phone with me and could take photos with that, after a fashion – the light was so bright it was all but impossible to see what I was actually snapping.

So it was that, coming back from Mitchell Plateau, near the King Edward River crossing, we turned off the road to this unmarked site and came to the most remarkable collection of Aboriginal rock art – only some of which I was able to photograph. Fortunately there was a second site nearby, by which time I'd replaced the SD card, but in deleting not so good pictures randomly at the first site, the pictures themselves became a bit of a muddle in terms of knowing what was taken where. But that was a minor hiccup.

Both sites have some protective fences but no signposts that they're there. Few people go there so there isn't a lot of chance of damage – although one member of our group had to be told “Don't touch!” - but no doubt looking to the future in protecting the sites from too many visitors. The art was amazing. It's also incredibly complex. As 21st century Europeans we see it as simple figures, but to the artists and the Aboriginal people looking at it, complex stories are being told. Too much for me to take it all in.
You can read a little more about this rock art site here 

At one point I could have taken photos but didn't. Again, some did in spite if being asked not to, as this was a sacred site. Aboriginal culture in this part of the world is to bury a body for a certain time and when, amongst other considerations, the bones are bare and parched, those bones are then moved to a permanent burial site. We saw some of those temporary burials, in rock niches, open to the elements, while we were there.

Not just any old rocks!

King Edward River (Munurru) Rock Art
More Photos here

Crossing the King Edward River, leaving the art behind

Mitchell Plateau

Getting to the plateau
After a feast of gorges, it was off to the Mitchell Plateau and Mitchell Falls. Dispensing with the bad stuff – this was the one and only place where the toilets made me gag and, unfortunately, we were there for two nights. It shouldn't have been that way – they were long-drops and there was a resident ranger who should have kept them up to scratch. OK. Done with the bad.

The Kalumburu Road wasn't too bad at all – about as bad as I'd expected the Gibb River Road to be but wasn't. It was slow going and we bounced along, but it was OK. I was astonished at the huge number of Livistona palms growing in the area. These were the palms I'd been so anxious to see at Palm Valley. Granted, the Palm Valley specimens were more lush, but they were growing in and around the Finke River so got more water.

That night we were half expecting our guide for the next day to arrive and give us a preview talk, but he didn't show. Not a wasted evening though, sitting around one of our better camp-fires.

Lots of Livistona palms
More photos here

Hiking to the Falls
Another expectation bites the dust. Because a helicopter flight back after the walk “down to the falls” was included in the price of the tour, I assumed it was going to be pretty steep going down. Not so. Rough, certainly, but that made it slow going more than anything, although coming up on even the slight rise from “the bottom” would probably have tested me and one or two others I suspect.

We made lots of stops along the way as Brownie, our guide, explained all about aboriginal lore, plants, animals, rock art ... and we looked at the scenery! First stop was Little Mertens Falls, no indicator of what was to come but giving another great cross-country view. Next was our first major rock art stop. It's amazing stuff. Aboriginals are allowed to refresh the artwork, according to their needs. Remember, these are the equivalent of Western arts' stained glass, paintings, mosaics, murals, etc for passing on stories in a pre-literate age. Not all rock art has been refreshed, so much so that for some, the colour is there but nothing of the 'paint' that can be carbon dated.

Next it was scrambling behind a small waterfall (not exactly reminiscent of being behind Niagara!) then across boulders that were a foretaste of the climb to Emma Gorge. Rest stops, be it amongst the boulders or along the rocky path, always involved a search, usually unsuccessful!, for a comfortable spot to sit. (Needing to search for safe and/or secure footstep places goes without saying!) Shade was often at a premium too. It was hot!

Then we got to Mertens Falls, with a sizeable gorge, some beautiful pools, and, joy, a Mertens' Water Monitor, a gorgeous fellow (or female?) who eyed us off but seemed unconcerned at our presence. Water was flowing over and down into the gorge - just! - but it's impossible, really, to imagine what the falls must be like in the Wet. More rough and rocky 'paths' to negotiate, and we were there!      

Tiny wildflowers on the way to Mitchell Falls
More photos of the hike here

Mitchell Falls
First stop before the falls proper was a swim in the Mitchell Falls pool. This is where I finished up jumping in fully clothed after thinking I'd just paddle my feet. The memory of the fun and deliciousness of it hasn't dimmed.

After swimming we got our first view of the falls. Pressing on, walking across rock, it was very easy to see in the rock markings, indentations, etc, that it was very like rock-pools at the coast. Hard to believe it was under water millions of years ago. Finally we came to where we were looking directly across to the falls – 35 storeys high was the figure quoted to us. Amazing sight. Again, hard to imagine the falls in the wet. I was pleased to see the rainbow at the bottom of the falls. It's one that is referred to as a Rainbow Serpent in Aboriginal mythology.

There were some spectacular views from the helicopter – I was in the front seat again – as we flew twice around and over the falls. In this situation my shortcomings as a photographer become all too evident. But even bad photos that I have taken make the memories come alive.       

Mitchell Falls
More photos here

                                       

Mitchell Falls in the wet
Photo credit

The perfect end to the day was a swim in the swimming hole by our camp. It was the most enclosed swimming spot we were in with the 'things' in the water a bit harder to ignore ... bugs, little fish, slimy rocks .... but it was nevertheless probably the longest time I was in the water apart from the pool at Cable Beach resort. And we had a bird guarding our towels and sandals.

Swimming hole near Mitchell Plateau camp ground

"Guard Bird" at the swimming hole