Thursday 22 October 2009

Goodbye Broome....

So that's what I've been up to in Broome. As well as kayaking (and swimming!) through the mangroves and opaque turquoise water that makes up the Town Beach side of Broome. Maybe not so wise in crocodile country.... but the water is such an amazing colour, and at a balmy 28-29C is almost irresistable! Of course a major reason why I've been so busy and therefore fallen so far behind with my blog has been in the form of a guy that works in the laundry at the hotel... It seems that I have myself an Aussie toyboy... He's also the reason why I'm so sad to be leaving Australia in 6 days, and why I'm heading to New Zealand where he'll join me in a few months! So in 6 days the adventure continues further south and back into temperatures below 30C... New Zealands south island in Spring, so significantly below 30C... I'm going to freeze....

Pindan Land


Other adventures around Broome included a trip up North to Cape Leveque, with its' white sand beaches, turquoise sea and red rock cliffs. 5 people, from 5 different countries (England, Germany, New Zealand, China (Hong Kong) and South Korea if you're interested) in one automatic 4WD (seriously, what's the point of an automatic 4WD?? You lose so much control when you have an automatic car!). Muggins here was the only one over 26 and with a valid driving license and therefore allowed to drive off sealed roads in the hire car, so I got to drive. Which of course lead to arguments as I thought that someone else should take on the task of navigating, but a general lack of road signs, and lack of attention on behalf of all the passengers (and possibly the lack of an insane father - who taught me how to read maps properly) meant that no navigation got done, we got lost, and the driver got ratty. Fortunately we had brought a decent supply of junk food with us (in fact more junk food than real food....) and sugar calms all wrongs, or so it seemed. Or it may have been the beautiful sunset over middle lagoon where the tide had gone out quickly leaving wet reflective sand, just down the dune from our secluded campsite, ripe for many silly photos and running around barefoot. And then trying to work out where we'd left our flip flops, and more importantly, where we'd left the path to the campsite and car....





The first night we got very damp as condensation fell over the tents. We charred food in the fire, and eventually gave up and cooked the rest on a gas stove. Much alcohol was drunk, resulting in a display of Korean disco dancing... “sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry...” I'm not sure if that was the song, or just a warning for what was to come, but no matter how drunk we got him he never did repeat that display! The next day we headed up to Cape Leveque (along more red sand roads), after New Zealand insisting we all take many papparazi style shots of him...






We went snorkelling at Cape Leveque, watching the fish dart among the rocks in the sand below us. Only after about 20 minutes did I realise that the sea was so salty that I wasn't swimming so much as floating and solely moving my limbs to change the direction that I was looking in! We wastched the sunset, and got a very confused solo tourist to take group photos of us, before heading along towards One Arm Point to camp for the night. Here we caught the end of the sunset as we watched the sharks feeding off the remains left by fishermen on the rocks as the tide came in.






The next day we headed to the turtle hatchery at One Arm Point Aboriginal Community, where we saw sea turtles, but unfortunately didn't see any babies, then it was a pretty fast drive back down to Broome to get the car back in time to remove all the pindan (red dirt) that had eked its' way into every crevice (of both the car and us!)

Friday 16 October 2009

Shake, Rattle and Please Don't Roll!

Many months ago now I hired a 4WD (called “Fluffy”) and drove the Gibb River Road with a friend. Having never driven a 4WD before (and having never needed to) I was a little reticent to get behind the wheel of such a large and powerful car to begin with. The end of the trip had me sulking that the last major river crossing had a bridge built over it! On this trip we took in some truly spectacular scenery, inhaled a lot of dust, washed a lot of dust off by swimming in gorges and waterfall pools, discovered what happens when gas cookers go bad and I learnt what it must feel like to be an ice cube in a cocktail shaker. Yes the Gibb River Road is unsealed and dusty (in the dry, impassable in the wet), which means it has ever present corrugations that you just have to trust are not going to shake your eyeballs out of your head before you hit the magic speed of 75 kph where you stop feeling them. Even with a reserve tank you have to fill up at every petrol station that you pass, because you certainly won't make it anywhere close to the next station if you don't, and this is where the corrugations really come into their own. You know that you have to fill the tank, but the diesel is so shaken up that it has foamed up like washing-up liquid! As you put liquid in, bubbles are spilling out...

Driving the Gibb River Road we passed many flat tyres, many cheerful backpackers (the most memorable being the 5 French guys traveling in one car and sleeping in 2 two-man tents, spilling out of both whenever we saw them!) and even one very determined, but very sweaty, cyclist! Kudos to him, but I hope he hadn't misread the scale of the map – the Gibb River Road is 626 km long! If you look at maps of the Kimberley you will see a whole lot of nothing apart from rivers. Well these rivers have carved the “nothing” into series of gorges and waterfalls (still spectacular even if some of them weren't flowing during the dry – there are very few time you get the chance to stand in the middle at the top of a massive waterfall and look straight down over the edge!) that provide welcome relief from the heat in the form of cool clear pools. Most of which are crocodile-free!


On this journey we visited the Bungle Bungles – how mountain ranges would look if Disney did mountains! They are rounded orange and black striped rocks 200m high - basically they look like a swarm of giant bees have nosedived and become stuck in the ground... We then explored El Questro, taking in El Questro gorge and Zebedee springs – hot springs that form many natural small pools interspersed by palms and ferns – it couldn't have been designed any better if it was a man-made top-end beauty spa! We hiked Emma gorge, where the top pool has two waterfalls flowing into it from such a height that they move with the breeze, and where I realised at the top that I'd forgotten my bikini, so just jumped in fully clothed! Next we chilled out under the stars at Ellenbrae homestead, where they have hot showers – provided you remember to light the fire under the boiler the night before! We hightailed it down to Galvans gorge, with a mighty boab overlooking the pool and the falls, and then to Bell gorge where the sound of a didgeridoo echoed around the walls as we swam. Our final stops were Tunnel Creek, a waterway that carves its' way through the mountain , and Windjana gorge, which winds its' way into a wall of sheer cliffs that reminded me of “The Lost World”, and sure enough was populated with crocodiles. Freshwater crocodiles, but still we didn't swim there! Finally we headed down an avenue of boabs and termite mounds back to “civilisation”. Which we didn't find, but we figured that Broome would probably do.

Yes I am still alive - promise!

So it's been quite a while since I last wrote on this (the bad apple referred to in the last blog got fired!). I'm still in Broome, and maybe that's why. Not that I've done nothing, but more that I slowed to “Broometime” and what with work, beach and trips around The Kimberley I've not found time to write. I'm now nearing the end of my time in Australia as my visa will expire at the end of the month. This means that I will be on the road again very soon, and I feel that you should be updated with where I am so far before I start regaling you with my new adventures! Those of you who keep in touch over facebook already know a lot of what I'm about to say. Those of you who don't, well I hope you have a REALLY slow day at work because this is going to be long!

Last time I wrote was a few months ago now and it had just rained. Let me start by saying that the “dry” in Broome is not a misnomer. It hasn't rained since then. Not one drop! Although sometimes the temperature drops enough at night for the moisture in the air to condense on the metal roofs and drip down so persistently that it looks like rain. Until you step out from under the eaves. We are now in the buildup to the “wet” (charmingly nicknamed the “sweat” in housekeeping: it's physical work and as the humidity rises... well I don't really need to explain do I?), which basically means that instead of a balmy 32C every day it's now risen to a humid 36-39C daily, and the humidity is rising daily. Everyone has started looking for the storm clouds on the horizon that will bring the first rain, but I doubt I'll still be here when it happens. Of course the storm clouds are currently obscured by the smoke from the band of wildfire burning just outside of town and cutting Broome off from the North completely.