Broome: beaches, beaches and... um... more beaches

Broome is a great place. There are lots of things you can do there - like tours of the pearl farm, trips up the coast, shopping, exploring history and culture............... or you can just go to the beach. Cable Beach is apparently regarded as one of the top five beaches in the world - and it's not hard to see why it would receive such a rating. It is 22km of white sand, with gentle but consistent waves great for boogie-boarding and not even cold! The sunsets are remarkable and they even throw in a few dozen camels for an exotic (if rather smelly) effect. We spent most of our four day stay on the beach, including boogie-boarding and body-surfing, camel riding for the girls and happy hours at sunset. We did also wander around the old part of town - Chinatown - whose origin is in providing accommodation for the Asian workers on the pearl luggers, who were not supposed to live on land at all because of the white Australia policy from which they received a partial exemption because the pearl diving industry couldn't manage without them. We learned about pearling and its history in Broome - including visiting the Japanese cemetery, where over 900 people are buried, most of whom were pearl divers who died as a result of the job - especially during cyclones. The museum was great: Kendall loved the personal shell collection of a previous resident, Kirralee read accounts of cyclone survival and Tahlia read the visitors' book. Kendall and I were both fascinated by the story of the bombing of flying boats in Roebuck Bay in March 1942 - the planes filled with Dutch refugees from Indonesia. Their wrecks remain out in the Bay but are only visible at very low tide. Also visible at very low tide, on a different beach, are dinosaur footprints (so they say - we had to satisfy ourselves with the replica on the cliff top). The coast is amazing because it has this deep red rock that comes down to the sand, creating a vivid contrast.

The other thing we did while in Broome was vote. This felt very surreal, partly because of being so far away from home, and partly because we'd seen virtually nothing of the election campaign - except some WA-specific anti-Labor adverts. It still feels surreal, because as far as we can work out, there hasn't yet been a result. Maybe the government is going to remain in suspended animation, like us, until October.

And talking of beaches.......... when we left Broome we stopped at Eighty-Mile Beach for two nights. I don't know if it is really 80 miles long but it certainly goes on as far as the eye can see in both directions, covered in shells and so tidal that when the tide is out, you can hardly see (or hear) the sea at all - just a massive expanse of wet sand, almost like a salt lake. All you can do there is fish, walk, collect shells and watch the sunsets - which we did in spades. The caravan is now half-full of shells!

Fishing statistics

Andrew - one stingray, three salmon

Kendall - one shark, one catfish, two salmon

Captions for pictures

- Amazing red Pindan rock (Gantheaume Point)

- Dinosaur footprints (yes, honestly!)

- Trying on a $29,000 pearl necklace

- One of the upmarket beauty salons in Broome (note it accepts male customers)

- Classic Broome shot (just to prove I could)

- My favourite picture: a restored pearl lugger (boat) used for tourist cruises

- Broome: "Oh what a feeling!"

- Shells on 80-mile beach

- Shells collected and sorted (teachers note maths activity!)

- My "staircase to the sun" picture. Sun reflects in pools of water across the tidal flats at low tide

Across the Kimberley - not the end of the world (but close)

If you are going to cross the Kimberley, you really should go along the Gibb River Road, according to most travellers. That's where all the interesting scenery and adventure is to be found. Trouble is - it's all dirt and not suitable for caravans, Ford Territories or softies like me who hate the constant drone of the corrugations and lack of facilities. So (much to Andrew's disappointment) we took the "low road" from Kununurra to Derby - via Hall's Creek and Fitzroy Crossing. I can't say that this was a particularly interesting part of the journey - in fact there was absolutely nothing along the road between the major towns - not even a cow or a boab tree for hundreds of kilometres. A friend said that Hall's Creek is not at the end of the world, but that you can see it from there. This is unkind but not entirely unfair. Anyway, we passed the journey happily enough listening to "The secret garden" (rather a change from the Paul Jennings!) and made the most of our stopover in Hall's Creek byTown Lodge" but which enabled us to have a quiet site with a campfire. It was set in the ruins of the old Hall's Creek (the town was moved in the 1950s because it was in a really bad spot for the main road) and Kendall and I enjoyed reading the amazing story of the drover who (in 1917) was operated on by the postmaster on the counter of the post office with a penknife, and the doctor from Perth who issued directions by morse code to the postmaster, and then travelled to Hall's Creek by boat, car, horse and foot - taking nine days to arrive and then finding the patient had died the previous day - having survived the operation but not the subsequent malaria and infection.

Needless to say - we did not hang around in HC but pushed on to Fitzroy Crossing, where we were told there is only one place to stay and they don't take bookings. This turned out to be the Fitzroy Crossing Lodge - an oasis of green grass and flash facilities in a very grotty town. As you reach it before you get to the main street, it gives you quite a false impression of the rest of the place - where the supermarket is "temporarily" housed in a basketball stadium and there isn't a single cafe, park or anything interesting to visit. Despite this, we liked the caravan park so much we stayed an extra night and explored the extraordinary nearby Devonian reef (an exposed rock formation that was once an underwater reef, formed over 350 million years ago). On our first day we took a guided tour of "Mimbi caves" - where you can walk into caves within the reef system - with an Aboriginal guide called Ronnie, who played country music on the guitar to entertain us during morning tea, and had the girls enraptured. On the second day we travelled out to Tunnel Creek - a two hour run mostly on dirt - which is a famous tunnel that runs right through another section of the reef, and you walk/wade/clamber through it in complete darkness apart from your own torches (we had head torches - thanks Heather!). This was a very thrilling and memorable experience. 100 years ago the tunnel was a hide-out for three years for an Aboriginal freedom fighter called Jandawarra, who was eventually killed outside the entrance.

On the third day we explored Geikie Gorge, the nearest accessible part of the reef to FX and rather tame compared with Tunnel Creek and Mimbi caves. Still - we had fun exploring a couple of walking trails and risking a paddle in crocodile-infested waters (yes, really - but they were only freshies) and finished with a lovely cruise along the gorge, again with a very knowledgeable and entertaining Aboriginal guide. NB This gorge was named after a British geologist who never even visited the place, but whoever named it obviously wanted to earn some brownie points there. The local Aboriginals are in the process of having their name for it officially adopted - as has happened with Nitmiluk (Katherine Gorge) and Uluru/Kata Tjuta. (Sorry I can't remember what it was!)

Another important activity in FX was the (early) celebration of Tahlia's birthday, with dinner on the deck of the rather posh restaurant. Oh these lovely warm nights!

From FX we drove to Derby and checked into the only caravan park, which for no good reason completely gave me the creeps. I still shiver to think about it! There wasn't much to do in Derby, but watching the sun set on the jetty (with a few drinks and some hot chips) was pretty good - and the local swimming pool was a real bonus. Andrew and I even did some laps. Our big adventure was to go to Windjana Gorge (also part of the Devonian reef system), which required a short stint on the Gibb River Road and reminded me why we hadn't attempted the whole 600km. If you have a look at a map, you'll see we were completely daft to go to Tunnel Creek from FX and then Windjana Gorge from Derby - each round trips of around 300km - when they are only 35km apart. But that's just how it worked out, and doing both in one day would have been a massive effort, as it is VERY HOT up here in the daytime! There was a walk through the gorge, which was hot and very dusty and not all that interesting beyond the first kilometre or so, which was the most scenic and had bats and crocodiles to look at. The number of crocodiles was mind-blowing - all just lying around in the pools of the mostly dry river bed. Freshies again, of course (or no-one would be allowed in there) but none the less impressive - especially to get so close to them "in the wild".

From Derby it was just a short hop to Broome, where we had five days of beaches and general "chilling out" to look forward to. Woo hoo!

Captions for pictures

- Very inviting entrance to the Hall's Creek "Old Town Lodge"

- Burning off in Tunnel Creek national park - quite spectacular

- Windjana Gorge

- Flying fox posing (WG)

- Freshwater crocodile (about two feet away from me) - also at WG

- Prepared for the walk through Tunnel Creek

- More Devonian reef at Geikie Gorge

- Interesting gap in caves at Mimbi

- Sunset on Derby jetty (how sweet!)

In and around (and above) Kununurra

Kununurra is only 35km over the WA border - and it was a bonus to put the clock back 1.5 hours, which meant we arrived about 11am, thinking we'd have plenty of time to check out different caravan parks before choosing the best one for our four night stay. Turned out not to be quite that simple, because you can't really drive through them to have a good look and you don't know how many sites are available, so you don't like to turn away and try somewhere else, in case you end up back where you started and with fewer sites to choose from! So we pretty much went for the first one we liked the look of, although the site they had left for us wasn't that great. As usual Andrew did an amazing job of backing the van into a tricky spot and making it look easy. We spent the afternoon setting up, checking out the pool and planning our three days - including booking our (very exciting) scenic flight over the Bungle Bungle ranges and Lake Argyle. Yep - just take the $1000 off the credit card thank you very much!

We booked the flight for the next afternoon (I thought it would be best to do it early, as Andrew probably wouldn't sleep until it was over) so we just checked out a few local places in the morning - in particular the local Mirima National Park, where they have what they call the "mini Bungle Bungles" - the same sort of rock formations but smaller. We also checked out a couple of "zebra rock" galleries that produce jewellery, ornaments etc out of this naturally occurring striped rock that is only found in one particular spot near Kununurra (and is about 600 million years old). It was really interesting to see the massive Ord irrigation area around the town - huge acreages of crops reminiscent of the Riverland but with irrigation channels running alongside. The whole massive Lake Argyle has been created to service this irrigation area and its crops. And if I had sat and guessed for a week, I don't think I would ever have come up with the number one crop in Kununurra: sandalwood! Indian sandalwood grown for the oil. And does anyone know what the number two crop is? Not mangoes or pawpaws............ Baker's Delight is a clue.

Our plane was a 7-seater, so just two other passengers plus our family. Andrew got to sit up front next to the pilot (I was very jealous). It was extremely noisy in the plane, so you couldn't have a conversation, but we had a commentary from the pilot as well as pre-recorded information via our headphones, which was very interesting, although after every little section I found I had a question, which I couldn't ask! We flew over Kununurra, the Ord river, Lake Argyle, a very remote cattle station called Texas Downs, which is 25km on a dirt track from the main road (which is still dirt) and in the wet season can be completely cut off for months; and finally reached the Bungle Bungle range - or to give it its traditional name: Purnululu. The "beehive"-shaped domes with their classic stripes are quite extraordinary. The shapes are a result of sediment moving over a few hundred kilometres and being shaped by wind and water, and the stripes are cyanobacteria, which is basically holding the sandstone together. Much to Andrew's disappointment, we had concluded that we would not be able to visit the Bungle Bungle at ground level because of the amount of four-wheel driving and time involved, so this flight was our entire experience of the place - which was certainly as amazing as we had expected it to be. The flight was great for giving us a perspective of its extent as well, and how it fits into the surrounding landscape. It was also good for giving an understanding of how Lake Argyle was formed; some genius worked out this narrow little spot in the river where they simply built a wall, and the river spread out across the landscape behind the wall, covering lots of low peaks and hills, leaving some of them sticking out as islands. Seeing the tiny wall from the air, it is very hard to believe that this could hold back all that water, and so radically change the course of the rivers. Very impressive! We also flew over the Argyle Diamond Mine - which has made its own massive impression on the landscape, too. I can see why plenty of people argue against mining in our national parks - it's certainly not a good look!

The girls were a bit airsick, but overall the experience was positive and very memorable. The next day we thought we'd venture out along the beginning of the Gibb River Road and into the famous El Questro wilderness park (which started out as a cattle station, until the owners worked out that they could make much more money from tourism!). I have to confess here - I don't see the attraction of the Gibb River Road. No matter what wonderful things you can find along it, or any other dirt road, just can't make up for the horrible jarring and noise of driving over the stones and corrugations. Anyway, we made it to El Questro with only about an hour of this, and were rewarded with some lovely natural hot springs - warm enough to persuade even Kendall to get wet! We then went up to the station and decided to hire a boat and take ourselves through one of the gorges. This was just beautiful, but took up most of the afternoon, so we didn't end up with time to visit any of the other - more high profile - visitor spots within the park. After the long drive back on the dirt, I think we were all a bit fed up and less than enamoured with the great El Questro - although this was probably unfair, and looking back at my photos, the scenery on the gorge boat ride was just glorious.

On our third day we went to Lake Argyle itself and drove over the massive dam wall, but there wasn't much else to do there - you couldn't even really swim or walk anywhere near the lake. Really it's just a dam like Happy Valley reservoir - not a tourism or recreational facility at all. Very scenic, though. So we headed back to town and in the afternoon we even had time to try barramundi fishing at "Ivanhoe Crossing" - where the road is a ramp over which water flows. Quite picturesque - but needless to say, no fish!

And that was it for Kununurra. We had to cut it a day short because of our dallying in Timber Creek, but it really didn't matter. We never made it up to Wyndham, but by all accounts we didn't miss much. Kununurra was a nice town, though, with all the modern facilities. It didn't feel nearly as remote as it appears on the map. I should also note that the weather was absolutely perfect - high 20s in the day and cooling off beautifully at night. What more could you ask for?

Captions for pictures

- Sunset over the lagoon at our caravan park

- Tahlia and Kendall reading out one of the interpretive signs at the Mirima National Park (teachers please take note)

- The "mini-Bungle Bungles"

- The girls with our pilot (actually taken after the flight)

- The real Bungle Bungle range seen from the air

- Hot springs at El Questro

- Boat ride through a gorge at El Q (we didn't really need to paddle!)

- Lake Argyle with the massive dam wall in the foreground. It wasn't built from the usual concrete and steel because it was too expensive to cart it in, and is a very cost-effective dam

- Tahlia trying her hand at casting at Ivanhoe Crossing

- The most amazing sunset also at Ivanhoe Crossing. I took about 20 pictures as the sky changed. Just at the top of the ramp is where the cars drive over the crossing.

Katherine to Kununurra - definitely slowing down!

After Kakadu we headed back to Katherine, where we set up our caravan on the block of some lovely friends of ours. What with the two gorgeous dogs, pom-pom making and big screen TV, the girls just didn't want to go anywhere. Andrew and I actually went to Edith Falls (Leliyn) without them - which felt rather strange but peaceful, and we all spent a day visiting Katherine Gorge (Aboriginal name Nitmiluk - after the sound of the cicadas) but apart from that we really didn't go out much for four days. We learned "from the horse's mouth" about the flood of 1998 where the river rose over 20m, roads were washed away and 5000 people were evacuated. What an amazing experience. Every wet season the river rises to 18m under the railway bridge and all the creeks fill up, which is so hard for us to visualise, who are used to so little rain in Adelaide. It was still unseasonably hot in Katherine, and it even rained one night - pelting down just after sunset when the girls were out with Andrew at the pontoon on the dam and had to shelter there until it eased up enough for them to make a dash for the house.

We really struggled to get going from there - in the end leaving so later we had to stop before our scheduled destination - at one of those roadside "free camps" that look great in the Camps 5 book but are actually awful: wall-to-wall caravans and motorhomes and a horrible pit toilet. I'm still having nightmares about it. It was just before Victoria River - where there is a very impressive (new) bridge, which has finally been built because the old one used to be under water for months every year! Apparently even the new one is under water for a few weeks every wet season. We did two really great walks around Victoria River the next morning: an escarpment walk that gave great views and a really good understanding of how water has shaped the landscape (as well as the Aboriginal dreaming story about the creation of the valleys and river) and another walk along the base of an escarpment - among these prehistoric trees called Livistona Victoria, which are nearly 100m tall and look like cabbage palms. The scenery looked like something from Jurassic Park.

Then we went on to Timber Creek, where we booked into a beautiful caravan park - all grass and trees and bougainvillea with a creek along the back that supposedly had a freshwater crocodile in it, but we never saw any sign of it. Somehow we couldn't make ourselves rush off after one night, but stayed a second night - spending the day checking out potential fishing spots (not great) and other local sights. It was a bit of a luxury, really, because now we have to make up a night between Kununurra and Broome, which will be hard to do - but you make these choices at the time, don't you, and then you just have to live with them. I think we were still feeling too relaxed after our stay in Katherine, and not ready for too much rushing around. And that caravan park at Timber Creek was quite special. Definitely the nicest we've stayed in so far, in terms of surroundings.

Leaving Timber Creek we didn't have to hurry too much, knowing that we would put our clocks back 1.5 hours when we crossed the border into WA. It was a long, boring run of about 300km with no stops along the way until we hit the quarantine checkpoint just before Kununurra. Given my job, I was particularly paranoid about making sure we didn't have any "illegal" products with us - even giving up the girls' carefully collected seed samples from Mataranka! I also made Andrew clean all the road dirt off the caravan, after the stories I'd heard about harvesters trying to get over the border - but they barely even checked!

Over the border, cut speed down from 130km to 110km (ha ha only joking - we do 90km tops with the caravan) and next thing we were in Kununurra - our first stop in Western Australia.

Captions for pictures

- Lynne and the girls with Dexter and Frankie - instant best friends

- Impromptu flute concert for our hosts

- Wlldflowers along the walk above Edith Falls

- Swimming hole at base of Edith Falls

- First gorge at Nitmiluk. Closed for swimming because a tourist reported seeing a crocodile!

- We think this is a male bower bird. Can anyone confirm?

- View of Victoria River valley from escarpment walk

- "Jurassic Park" walk

- Morning cuddles in the caravan!

- Timber Creek caravan park - all that grass and space - amazing!

Kakadu: just look at the pictures

Kakadu (more correctly, Gagudju - the name of one of the Aboriginal languages previously spoken there) was nothing like Litchfield, so I am saved from making comparisons (but you can see my ultimate personal judgement at the end of this blog). It was less accessible and didn't have lots of waterholes for swimming. In fact, there was hardly anywhere that you could swim, and it was very hot and humid - so thank goodness for the pool at the caravan park, which was more like a massive lagoon (although a bit fake-looking!). The one spot where you can swim in the Park is at Jim Jim Falls - and you've really got to want to: it's a 90 minute drive on really difficult 4wd sandy tracks, followed by a good half-hour walk, the last part of which is over massive boulders. No wonder there are no crocs there! We thought seriously about tackling this adventure: after all, we've only got a Territory (not a "real" 4wd) and it has to get us back to Adelaide yet......... Andrew was very keen, of course, to try some off-road driving (and to save $750 on a guided tour) and he persuaded me that we could make it. Not only to Jim Jim, but past that to Twin Falls - another half-hour of rough tracks plus a water crossing where the water was about 60cm deep (not to mention croc-infested!). It must be love - that's all I can say. Of course now that we've made it safely there and back again, I can tell everyone (including my parents) about it!

The poor girls didn't enjoy the journey much, but were very good about it. Same goes for me! Actually the water crossing was a great thrill (afterwards!), and when we arrived at Twin Falls I had a soppy moment of pride in my "little" Territory, parked among all those great Landcruisers and Range Rovers with their pose-y snorkels. Twin Falls was a great adventure, because you have to catch a little ferry downstream to the falls (Andrew remembers having floated down there on an airbed, but that's been banned since 2002 because of the crocs) and it's all very scenic - although it's hard to stand in the heat and look at the beautiful pool at the bottom of the falls and not be able to go in, especially after Litchfield. We didn't stay long, anyway, but scooted back on the ferry and headed for Jim Jim (back through the water - no qualms this time - just a smugly sympathetic smile for the guy in the BMW X5 who'd blown up his engine attempting to cross). At Jim Jim (named after the local Aboriginal word for the ubiquitous water pandanus) we successfully conquered the massive boulder walk and were rewarded at the end with a lovely swim (Kendall complained it was too cold). Then back in the car for the 2-hour drive back to the caravan park, where we had to have a very early dinner and head out again for a "night cruise" in a nearby billabong - preceded by some education in Aboriginal cultural activities - cooking, basket-weaving, spear-throwing and didgeridoo playing. Kendall was quite good at spear-throwing, and Andrew showed some genuine aptitude fo the didg (in my humble opinion). I just kept spraying everyone with Aeroguard and rationing the water. The cruise was pretty good, although we didn't see much wildlife. A glimpse of crocodile was a bit of a thrill, but the best thing was the night sky overhead - truly spectacular. It was pitch dark by the time we got on the boat, and I've still got the bruise from bumping into a pole on the way down to the water.

I haven't mentioned that on the way through the National Park to our accommodation at Cooinda, we stopped at a place called Mamukala - an internationally recognised wetland area that was still beautiful (and wet) despite being almost at its driest point in the annual cycle. The scale of it was very hard to take in. We also stopped in Jabiru at the Bowali Visitor's Centre, which had an incredible interpretive display all about Kakadu - its geology, flora and fauna, management, cultural history etc. I went through reading all this fascinating stuff just wishing I would be able to remember it (but of course I can't). I have never seen a visitor's centre like it - it was more like a really good museum/science centre. Kakadu is really a massive floodplain, with lots of that "boring" woodland, bordered on the southern and eastern edges by this massive escarpment, which becomes Arnhem Land to the east. It's character is shaped by the escarpment and by the South and East Alligator River (both so called because whichever European explorer first documented it thought that the saltwater crocodiles he saw there were alligators).

We only had two days in Kakadu - it's amazing how much we saw. On the second full day (after our 4wd adventure on the first day) we visited Nourlangie Rock, where you follow a path around the rocky outcrop from the main escarpment and come across numerous examples of Aboriginal rock art; visited a nearby billabong, climbed another rock to a spectacular look-out, checked out the beautifully laid-out Aboriginal cultural centre - named after and shaped like the Warradjan (pig-nosed turtle) and then.....................

The highlight of Kakadu - for me at least - was without doubt the last activity on our agenda: a sunset "Yellow Water" cruise. This cost $300 for the five of us for a two-hour cruise, starting at 4.30pm and finishing just after sunset. After our previous night cruise, I thought we'd be lucky to see a few birds and maybe a croc somewhere, but for two hours we were treated to the most beautiful birds, fantastic scenery, and more crocodiles (all "ginga" - ie saltwater crocs) than you would care to poke a stick at. And the sunset! I'm going to let the photos do the talking for me (I took about 100). I am still on a high from this experience, which I am sure I will never forget. I'm not sure that the girls found it quite so enthralling, as it just involved watching (without a TV), but they did appreciate it. The crowning moment was right at the end, after sunset, when you thought it couldn't get any better and we were headed for home and a beer in the bistro, and then there was a jabiru standing by itself on the bank....... so graceful and glorious. Sadly my camera couldn't do it justice because the light was so dim by then, but I did get a couple of shots. Our guide, Adam, deserves a mention because his humour and charm made the cruise so entertaining - but really the scenery did the work. And so - ultimately - for me Kakadu wins over Litchfield for sheer spell-binding effect.

Captions for pictures

- The water we drove through (shame I couldn't get a picture of our car in action)

- Twin Falls gorge from the ferry

- Anbangbang billabong

- Nourlangie Rock seen from nearby Nawurlandja Rock

- Tahlia taking sun protection very seriously

- Nabulwinjbulwinj - a dangerous spirit who eats females after striking them with a yam. From now on: the family boogie-man!

- An Australian darter drying out his wings before going in for another dive

- Spot the croc

- Jabiru nest

- Can you see the croc in this one? (It's roughly dead centre of the picture)

- The sunset. See what I mean?