Gibb River Road

This will be an episodic post as we’ve been out of internet service for about 10 days:

August 20:

After a restful three days in Derby . . . explored that old port town; found jam, fruit cake, honey and scones at the Saturday markets in the CWA cottage grounds; and discovered a butcher with not only fabulous meat but also lots of frozen barramundi and threadfin salmon . . . we stocked up with groceries and left town, pausing only to view the old prison boab and the longest cattle trough in the southern hemisphere.

500 cattle could drink at once from this trough.

The boab, of huge significance to the local Aborigines, is believed to be 1500 years old and was so big, with a hollow interior, that it was often used to keep prisoners contained on their way to Derby jail. The trough, attached to a bore, was used to water stock arriving at the town and could water 500 at a time, being 322m long.

Then we left town, but stopped on the Gibb River Road after only 3km to visit the Mowanjum Arts Centre, a glorious building hosting work by local Aboriginal artists. I’d done research on their website and knew we wanted to see some work by some talented sisters, one of whom specialises in Gyorn Gyorns, slim black figures. We found one that we liked and it’s to be posted to us at home in late October.

The prison boab in which men were held.

Just another 10 or so kms on, we stopped for the day at Birdwood Downs, a property run by the US-based Institute of Ecotechnics. It’s owned it since the late 1970s and has restored badly-overgrazed land to improved pasture. There’s a small campground and a set of nice little cabins surrounded by flourishing bougainvillea, and a pineapple and banana orchard, as well as horses and cattle. We were the only campers for some hours, then a Welsh couple arrived in a tiny little Suzuki with a ‘topper’ tent which unfolded on the vehicle roof.

The next morning, we drove 124 km (and the bitumen ended, putting us back on red dirt corrugations) before turning south towards Windjana Gorge National Park.

The campground has a dramatic backdrop of the Napier Range, an ancient Devonian-age reef through which a river has made its way, so the gorge walk is great, with freshwater crocs lying around in the water of the dry season pools. So definitely no swimming!

Another 35km down the road is the Tunnel Creek National Park, with a creek actually making its way through the range. So reef-walking shoes and a torch were necessary as the water was about up to our knees in places. The dirt road was appalling and it took us an hour to do the 35km but well worth it for the walk in the dark. 

Freshwater crocs at Windjana Gorge.

A National Parks volunteer had told us the day before to go outside the tunnel at the far end before returning and look for some Aboriginal rock art about 50m along the creek edge. This we found, much to our delight, but most people just came to the end of the tunnel, and turned around for the return journey.

The end of the tunnel.

We’ll have another shortish drive tomorrow to Mt Hart, about 50km north of the Gibb River Road, a former pastoral property now controlled by the WA Dept of Parks and Wildlife as a conservation park, with the homestead accommodation and campground run by the tour company APT. It has some pretty gorges . . . and a bar and restaurant!

 

August 23:

We had a wonderful time at Mt Hart, an oasis in dry season Kimberley weather. The manager was Bob, who’s there with his wife from Tumbulgum in the Tweed area for a few months. There were only a few other groups in the campground beside the Barker River, with a nice swimming hole right there. As well we drove to some other pools and gorges, having them all to ourselves, which was great.

Cooling off in Annie's Pool.

The DPaW is trying to destock the million-acre property, where it seems nobody made any money out of cattle, as they could fatten them all right, but mustering them out of the mountains and gorges was nigh impossible. Just before we arrived a contractor had managed to muster around 800 and they got trucked off to meatworks. But when we drove to some little gorges we saw some big old scrubber bulls that’ve obviously been hiding out for some time, as well as a family group of a bull, some cows and calves, and there were plenty of cowpats everywhere, so some more destocking is needed.

Reluctantly we left Mt Hart, which has an airstrip right beside the two homesteads and lush garden. Quite a lot of people fly in by light aircraft or helicopter and a very funny sign greets them.

 

We drove the 50km back to the Gibb River Road (only took us 1.5hrs) and went on to the Imintji Store, run by the local Aboriginal community and staffed by young backpackers. We had a real coffee and some freshly-baked muffins, and stocked up with some groceries and frozen bread and meat. Just as we were paying for that, a lad brought a basket of fresh baguettes out from the kitchen. We pounced on them at once, buying all four, especially when we were told that they were made by a French pastrycook.

A bustard out for a stroll on the road.

Imagine, on the Gibb River Road, baguettes that tasted as if they’d just been baked in Paris!  That pastrycook then emerged with a fresh apple pie that another customer was having with coffee. Yumm!

On we went, turning off about 25km later for an 88km, rather gruelling drive to Mornington Wilderness Camp, run by the Australian Wildlife Conservancy. There are two spectacular gorges here for us to visit, yet another bar and restaurant, and camping beside a little creek. We’re looking out at pandanus, paperbarks and ghost gums on the side of the creek.

Staff have warned us that a young female dingo has been seen lurking around the campground, so said we should leave nothing outside . . . such as shoes, books, hats etc as she may take them away. They’ve set a trap for her and will remove her to some other part of the sanctuary, a former cattle station that covers 322,000 hectares. It’s been destocked, allowing the native vegetation to recover and the populations of small mammals and birds to recover.

We’ll stay here three nights, exploring the area, then tackle that vile road back to the Gibb, where we’ll find another interesting place to stay.

August 26:

Dramatic scenery on the way to Mornington.

We left Mornington earlier than expected, but more of that later. We really enjoyed that place, bumping over 24km  of rough road to Dimond Gorge, one of the most beautiful in the Kimberley. On the way back to the camp we called into a swimming spot on the Fitzroy River, which was glorious.

That was when we discovered that our #$**! batteries had gone again so we hightailed it back to camp (where no generators are allowed) and managed to get some plastic bottles full of frozen water to put in the bases of the fridge and freezer to get us through the 

Fabulous Dimond Gorge

night, as we obviously couldn’t keep the truck motor running all night.

Close to the end of the Gibb River Road . .  Pentecost River

At the crack of dawn, literally, we were out of there, and the 88km access road took us almost 3 hours but once we were back on the Gibb, John just kept driving, stopping once at a roadhouse on an Aboriginal community to get fuel, and again for a quick sandwich beside the road.

In all, he drove for nine hours, and we almost covered the rest of the Gibb River Road, arriving at Home Valley station, which has an excellent campground, a bar and restaurant, where we got a powered site for the night.

Today, we set off on the final 30km of rough dirt road, with the bitumen starting about 33km before the road ends. That was when John got out to change the truck’s 4WD wheel hubs . . . and found one of the rear dual wheels had just gone flat, probably pierced by one of the sharp rocks. So he changed it, we tootled along into Kununurra, only about 80km away, saw a tyre bloke and arranged to get a complete new set of rear wheels, as those have done sterling service of 60,000 km around some of Australia’s roughest roads. That will be done once we get our auto-electrics sorted.

The tyre bloke gave John the name and number of a fellow who’s coming to the caravan park tomorrow morning. We’re booked in for at least a week, and the park is glorious!

Our site is under trees, including the distinctive boab of the Kimberley, everything is very lush and green, and we have already soaked in the swimming pool, just a few steps from our site.

One of the first things we did after making sure we had a caravan site was take the truck to a car wash and get rid of the Gibb River Road dust. It came off in great red gushes, a bit like it will leave our clothes when I wash them tomorrow.

We have no regrets about not calling at even more of the Gibb River Road places, because of our battery problem.  We think we’d already seen the highlights of the road, explored some wonderful gorges and were frankly, a bit ‘gorged out’.

Now we’re in Kununurra, there are several tours we’ll take, including a flight south to the Bungle Bungles, landing to do some of the walks ( more gorges!); a day at El Questro (where we had told ourselves we’d spend some time); and a cruise on either Lake Argyle or Lake Kununurra.

 

 

 

 

 

A perfect beach, a pearlshell altar, and teeth-rattling roads

We left Gambanan near the top of the Dampier Peninsula reluctantly and travelled back south along the way we’d arrived.

First port of call was Lombadina, not only because it’s an interesting Aboriginal community, but also because it was a Monday, and the settlement’s bakery produces bread on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.

We called at the community office to get our entry pass (this is normal for most of these communities) and discovered that the gorgeous girl manning the office was French-Swiss. She was delighted to know that we’d been to her home city of Lausanne and that we’d also been to  Montreux, just a little way along Lake Geneva.

Lombadina's church

There was just one loaf of fresh bread not pre-ordered at the general store, next to the bakery, so we were lucky to get it. We then visited the church, a lovely tropical place built in 1934 by the Catholic priests who ran the community and some of the locals, from mangrove trunks and paperbark for the roof. It was later roofed over with corrugated iron. At the local craft shop I bought a screen-printed sarong.

Lombadina is a delightful tree-filled village, with about 70 inhabitants, and unlike some Aboriginal communities we had visited, everyone works. We were told later that the priests who had run it as a mission, along with those at Beagle Bay, further south, had been in charge of children of mixed race taken by the government from their Aboriginal mothers  . . . the stolen generation.  

The original paperbark roof at Lombadina.

About 50km south we turned off the bitumen road onto a fairly bad, corrugated, sandy track that goes west to Middle Lagoon, a popular campground. We turned off it and kept following the signs to the Gnylmarung (pronounced nill-ma-rung) Retreat, right on the beach at Beagle Bay, run by Alphonse and his wife Delma, as an outstation of the main Beagle Bay Aboriginal community.

It has fairly basic camping facilities, but there are barbecues for most campsites, what are described as ‘water sinks’ . . . and they’re just that, with a double sink standing on a frame, with a tap and a hose, and water from the sinks just goes onto the ground.

The road into Gnylmarung.

There are banks of solar panels to run the water pumps and lights for the amenities block, and in the middle of the campground is a towering solar-powered block which is a satellite phone, offering free calls to any landline in Australia. There’s no mobile service unless campers have special aerials. Because the power is solar, there’s also a free laundry, instead of the usual $3 or $4 needed for caravan park machines.

And then there’s the beach! It is a perfect curve of white sand, turquoise water and dramatic rock formations on the headlands. Because of the huge tides in the area, most of the water in this little bay drains right away as the high tide drops up to nine metres to low tide level. We’ve walked the beaches, swam in the clear water, and marvelled at the reefs and rocks emerging at low tide.

Bushfires in the distance at Gynlmarung, at half tide.

The campground has free firewood available so we’ve had roaring fires most nights. This is only because a nice retired man from Melbourne spends six months here each year giving Alphonse and Delma a hand with their fairly new tourist enterprise. He and a mate go off each day and cut firewood which is then placed in a trailer in a central position, with wheelbarrows available for campers to distribute it to their campsites.

Low tide, with reefs and firm sand.

His wife flies up to Broome each year for the month of August and this year their daughter and son-in-law and three kids have called in on a three-month lap of Australia to spend time here also.

Other campers include three couples from Lake Macquarie, accompanied by boats and caravans; and a few other couples in camper trailers.

We’re starting to run out of food so will leave tomorrow, explore a couple more places on the peninsula, then tackle that vile dirt road on the way south, arriving back on the bitumen just north of Broome. From there we’ll head north to Derby where we can re-group, re-stock, and get ready for our next adventure . . . the 600km Gibb River Road, which we may take a couple of weeks to negotiate as there are lots of stations offering camping along the way, as well as lots of gorges and wilderness areas to visit.

Postscript:

The red cliffs of the Kimberley at Whalesong.

We left Gnylmarung as planned, calling at Middle Lagoon,  which was full of campers right on the cliffs, then had coffee at a little cafe called Whalesong.  It’s the home to an Aboriginal couple and their four children, but they move out in the tourist season and the building is turned into a popular cafe, run by a couple of Caucasian women. The one who served us comes from Sydney but is a friend of the owners and has a partner in Broome, so is almost an honorary West Australian.

After we had tackled the rough road out to the main road, we called into the settlement of Beagle Bay to see its beautiful church decorated with pearlshell, built by the German order of priests who ran it, while under house arrest in World War I. It’s a glorious piece of history and apparently built from a picture of a German country church one of the priests had. 

 

Beagle Bay's Sacred Heart church, decorated with pearlshell.

The locals and the priests made all the clay bricks and as there was no cement, used lime made burning shell as mortar. In 2001 the bell tower collapsed after surviving almost 90 years of cyclones and baking heat, with just that lime mortar, but it was rebuilt in 2002 and the little church looks fabulous in its white outer paint.

Not a German country church, but in
 remote Beagle Bay, WA.

Then we girded our loins, checked that all our back teeth were cemented in place and survived the  86km of rough red sandy corrugations before reaching bitumen again.

We had intended turning left when we reached the Great Northern Highway, just out of Broome, and heading towards Derby, but luckily decided to duck into Broome (only 10km) to get some of life’s essentials that we had run out of, such as chocolate, beer and wine.

When we returned to the truck after buying these, we found the electric steps didn’t work. John climbed in, and found that after a week of wonderful full power during our off-the-grid camping, we had absolutely none. Zilch, nada, nothing!

So back around to the auto electrician we drove, who could not believe his readings when he tested the ver-r-r-y expensive batteries we’d had to wait for a week to arrive from Sydney. One was fine but the other was so dead it was giving a negative reading.

Once again luck intervened, as he’d had another batch of those same deep cycle batteries delivered and had sold all but one, so he replaced the ailing one, all the time shaking his head and determined to get to the bottom of its non-performance. It had a three-year warranty, so there was no cost to us and he was determined to have strong words with the manufacturer.

By then it was late,  late afternoon so I phoned the caravan park we’d stayed in for two weeks and organised a spot for the night, with them leaving our gate pass on what they call the ‘late board’ as by the time we arrived, after collecting a cooked chicken and some salad, it was around 7pm.

To say it had been an eventful day was an understatement, and naturally we slept like logs, before getting underway today on a most uneventful 200km drive on bitumen all the way to Derby.

 

 

 

Through fire and smoke to a campsite beside the sea

A bushfire delay on the red, red road along the peninsula.

And so we left Broome, after almost two weeks there. We’d had a great time, and best of all, our house batteries had been replaced and everything was working well.

We’d heard there had been bushfires on the Dampier Peninsula, north of Broome, and in fact had seen some when flying over it almost a week before on our way to the horizontal waterfalls. The road was closed because of the fires the day before we left, but open when we started.

The first 14km or so are sealed, then there’s 80+km of fine red sand and corrugations, then 115km of sealed road, linking a lot of Aboriginal communities.

We were about two-thirds along the dirt section when we saw lots of smoke ahead, then flashing lights, and a Rural Fire Service vehicle was parked across the road, stopping traffic. The chap told us there’d be a short wait while they did a bit of back-burning along the road, so a minor convoy  

Waiting in line.

formed behind us and eventually we were led through a fairly smoky bit by a small fire tanker.

Even further on, there was another smoke cloud and the fire was right beside the road, but once past that, the air cleared and soon we were on the big stretch of bitumen.

We bypassed lots of little communities that offer camping, heading for Cape Leveque, then turning right towards the final settlement. Just near a pearl farm we spotted the turnoff we sought: Gambanan. Like all the campgrounds on the cape, it is Aboriginal land and cared for by a particular family, who’ve put a caretaker there to collect fees, clean the toilets etc. He’s a bloke from Bonny Hills, near Port Macquarie, who’s been on the road for two years in a camper trailer with his wife. They each work at the nearby Kooljaman Resort, Theo as a chef and Pam in the resort cafe.

This is a very simple campground with basic facilities like flush toilets and cold showers. The ground is all fine grey sand (where it’s not fine red sand!) so we have a bedtime ritual of washing our feet.  

The serenity of Gambanan.

The campground is only separated from the sea by rocks and there is a small sandy beach about 15 minutes walk away.

Theo warned us not to swim as a croc has been spotted there so we enjoyed a walk but didn’t venture in.

It’s been pretty multicultural, with an adventurous Italian family packing up to leave this morning. They are on a month’s holiday in Western Australia. Last year they had a month in Queensland. They have a hire vehicle and tents and after leaving here, will tackle the Gibb River Road, which is one of the roughest, most gorgeous parts of the Kimberley. The afternoon they arrived they were starting to dive into the water from the rocks until Theo spotted them and told them about the croc risk.

A Dutch couple were near us and as the sun set, he tried out the didgeridoo he’d bought somewhere. It all sounded just right for the surroundings, with lots of the signs around the campground in the language of the local Bardi people.

We’ve seen spectacular sunrises over the sea, as Gambanan faces east but this morning, a  

Spectacular sunrise.

combination of smoke and sea fog gave a spectacular show. Broome boasts of its Staircase to the Moon, but we had a staircase to the sun today.

It’s quite eerie when the tide is full as the bay is full of deep turquoise water, not making a sound. It’s only when there’s wind and a bit of a chop develops that one can hear the waves slapping on the rocks. Otherwise the tide just comes in and goes out, noiselessly.

Customised coil holder.

The sandflies have been merciless and I’m their particular favourite so am itching and scratching and trying all kinds of remedies. We had mossie coils but only one holder, so John devised another from a fork whose handle had become a bit dodgy. He bent one tine up to hold the coil, and two down to poke into the ground  . . . and one broke off! It is most effective.

We left our chairs, ground mat and bits and bobs on our site at Gambanan to go exploring. First was One Arm Point, the local aboriginal community (called Ardyaloon). We had to pay $10 each to enter the community, which seems well-organised and prosperous. Right at the end of the peninsula is the local trochus hatchery and aquaculture centre. It all seemed a bit ramshackle and the South African girl in charge just told us to have a look around, with a tour scheduled in about an hour when a bus arrived. We duly looked around, found one large circular tank obviously breeding trochus and some of the others had one or two fish in them, but nothing as we had imagined it. There were some polished trochus shell for sale . . . but we’re certainly not taking up shell collecting at our ages.

 

One of the signs at Gambanan.

Then we drove back along the road to the Cygnet Bay Pearl Farm, about the only privately-owned bit of land on the end of the Dampier Peninsula. One family, the Browns, have been cultivating pearls there since 1946 and they have a glorious gallery full of wonderful pieces of pearl jewellery.

About the only one that really appealed was a twisted rope of gold and white baroque pearls for just $20,000 . . . so that stayed firmly in its display case. We inquired about camping there, as it does have a small campground, but sadly, our vehicle is too high for the fairly bushy approach road.

On we went to the Kooljaman Resort, jointly owned by two of the Aboriginal communities and featuring a range of accommodation (but once again, we were considered too large for the campground) from cabins to safari tents.

The swimming beach at Kooljaman.

So we hightailed it back the 14km to Gambanan, which was almost deserted and gloriously serene. We watched the tide go out, further than we had seen it in previous days, as we’re starting to get the tidal difference of about eight metres. We’ve decided to stay at least two more nights, then will head south along the peninsula, trying to stay at some of the other community-run campgrounds.

 

 

Full speed through the waterfalls



Our first view of the gaps between the rocks,
called the horizontal waterfalls.

We’re still in Broome, but hope to be on the road again by the end of the week. This will mean almost two weeks here, but we’ve thoroughly enjoyed it.

Last Friday we took a seaplane to the wild Buccaneer Archipelago, supposedly of 1000 islands, well to the north of Broome, to go by fast boat through the horizontal waterfalls, formed when the rushing tide forces its way between outcrops of rock.

Broome from the aircraft.

 

 

 

 

We took off from Broome airport and took 1.5 hours to reach the floating tour base, where seaplanes land, boats take off and passengers are not only watered and fed, but on some tours, can also stay the night.



One of the boats that take passengers
through the waterfalls.

The flight took us over the Dampier Peninsula, where we hope to wander and camp in the coming week, and once we’d landed we were issued with a different kind of lifejacket and boarded a fast boat. The skipper assured us the waterfalls were ‘pumping’ as the tide was coming in. In this area, the difference between low tide and high tide can be 8 or 9 metres so there’s an incredible force of water.

We zoomed through the turbulent water of the first gap, which is about 20 metres wide, but the second gap, only 10 metres wide, was deemed too dangerous, as there was a drop of about 3 metres. The skipper assured us we’d try again later when the tide had settled down a bit.



Here we go through the first gap!

So back to the base, where crispy-skin barramundi had been cooked by one of the young crew, and along with salads and bread rolls, it made a wonderful lunch, with everyone encouraged to go back for more fish.



Then we watched one of the crew hand-feed some tawny nurse sharks that can swim around the floating base. Those who wanted to get closer went into an enclosed pool separated by mesh and using snorkels and goggles could see them as they snapped for portions of fish.

The floating base.

After that we went back in the boat and this time managed to get through the second waterfall, which had settled down a bit but was still very turbulent. The skipper then took us around some of the gorges and backwaters, including what they call Cyclone Creek, where all the sections of the base are towed in the wet season, well-protected from cyclones by high cliffs and deep water.

When operations start again around April, a crew returns to take it all out into open water, where the seaplanes can land and take off.

It was a most interesting day, ending with an hour-long flight back to Broome on a more direct route.



The heavily-weathered gravestone of one
of the Japanese divers.

We’ve watched people come and go from the caravan park and are starting to feel like elder statesmen. We’ve eaten out a few times, once at Matso’s Brewery, a great old building that had been one of Broome’s stores and was moved next to one of the old pearling master’s houses. As well as proper beer, Matso’s also makes an alcoholic ginger beer and a desert lime cider. We just love the ginger beer.



Matso’s is named for the Matsumoto family who operated a store in the building. We found the burial place of some Matsumotos in the Japanese cemetery we visited on Sunday after yet another breakfast at the markets.

There are 900+ Japanese buried there, the vast majority of them divers who died as a result of the bends, cyclones and other disasters when working the pearlshell industry. There is also a Chinese cemetery and a small area marked Malay and Muslim.

We’ve explored the port area where the service vessels for offshore rigs load lots of gear and today plan to have lunch at a restaurant there. There is what I call an open-air picture theatre here (locally called a picture garden and deemed to be the oldest continuously operating in the world) so we plan to go to a film there on Tuesday night, sitting in the canvas deck chairs I remember from my youth in North Queensland.