After a good night’s sleep we woke up at the crack of dawn, well 5.45 am along with the other campers who were moving on and had already started to pack up. No us! So we had a leisurely breakfast and planned our day.
We decided to drive out to Wyndham about an hour’s drive on the Great Northern Hwy to Australia’s most northerly town, 3216 km NNE of Perth. It was gazetted in 1886 and has had a diverse history of the cattle industry and mining. Today it is a small frontier town of the Kimberley region that mainly relies on adventure seeking travellers who can take 4WD drives into the most remote and scenic parts of this vast region.
This was the area that they filmed a great deal of the film “Australia” starring Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman, which was set in the Kimberley's
We had to be content to drive past the start of the Gibb River Road(4WD ONLY) past the salt plains and the road off to the boab prison tree, which we have visited some years ago, and on into Wyndham. Here we walked the town, which now mostly consists of derelict buildings with information boards in the front giving the history of its better days. As the Government in the late 1960’s decided to make Kununurra the main centre for the north it has brought the town to its knees. However cattle are still loaded here, being brought in by the road trains and minerals are also shipped out from the port.
We visited the local museum with all its past glory days on show with ageing and faded newspaper cuttings and the usual old hospital medical instruments, telephone exchange board and photos of past residents and how they survived and made a living.
As we started to walk back to the car we stopped and chatted to four local aboriginals, James who spoke beautiful English who introduced his brother and brother in law Clinton and Gregory to us after apologises for not having done so when we first started talking. He asked us our names and he told us about his community and how they still speak their own language and how proud they are of their race and of Australia. They are teaching the children about their history and the language and passing on the stories that have been told for many years. We saw they were carving boab pods with intricate detail of crocodiles and kangaroos and their own special markings. We were offered one for $80 which quickly went down to $40 however we didn’t think we could safely transport it for another 3 months so we declined the offer.
We headed out and stopped off to see the largest boab tree in captivity that is reported to be about 2000 years old.
Back on the road again we continued on until we reached the Grotto turn off and drove down for a couple of kms until we reached the hundred and forty steps we had to go down to reach the bottom. Climbing down vertical cliffs carry your lunch bag in 38 degs sounds a bit mad but we made it and it was a lot cooler down there. Unfortunately the water was covered in a film from the vegetation and with numerous goannas around and the water about 300ft deep we gave it a miss and ate our lunch before having to make the climb back up to the top.
With all this exercise and the heat exhaustion it was time to go back to camp for a rest and a cold beer, after all it was a Sunday, a day of rest and the temp had been up to 38 degs!and we had been out walking in it!!!! CRAZY!
Tomorrow we head off for Broome but will have to see how far we can make in one day, taking into account the roads and where we can spend the nights as we don’t travel in the dark.
No comments:
Post a Comment