Kimberley 1

Our tour of the Kimberley started in Kununurra and will eventually take us to Broome mostly along the Great Northern Hwy. We won’t be “doing” the Gibb River Road as a whole, just travelling along a small section of it. The Kimberley is a vast area of Australia and we have travelled lots of kms over excuses for roads variously called highways, roads or tracks.

18/6 – Keep River National Park

While in Kununurra we drove back east over the WA/NT border to spend a day in Keep River National Park where we went on a much longer walk than we intended due to poor signage or making a mistake but there were no complaints as we identified 52 different kinds of birds, 4 of them new for me.

20/6 – Parry Lagoons

While in Kununurra we took a trip out to Parry Lagoons where we saw 3 brolgas even before we got out of the car! This was a magic place, overwhelmingly beautiful, peaceful though not quiet.

Here are my notes. WARNING – they are very birdy!

What a magic place we have visited today! We parked the car and right in front of us were some brolgas feeding under a tree.

We turned our heads and saw Jabirus. It took a while to walk to the bird hide, not because it was a long way, but because there was so much to see. It was such fun to watch the Pelicans feeding in their large groups, swimming in unison, then heads down and tails up, again in unison.

2 Jabirus arguing. The one which won flew off with the fish hanging out each side of its bill.

A Glossy Ibis flew by. Was it really? I haven’t seen one before. But yes. I was right. I saw it again later on.

Lots of Straw-necked Ibis, Purple Swamphens and Green Pygmy Geese. A little Restless Flycatcher in the tree near the lagoon. Lots of Willie Wagtails and the beautiful Rainbow Bee-eaters having their fill of insects.

Beautiful White Rajah Shelducks and a multitude of Magpie Geese. Cormorants hanging in trees looked like bats.

There were Black Cormorants, Pied Cormorants and Darters. We watched a darter catch a fish; so snakelike their necks.

One bird was different. We saw just the one. It was a Red-kneed Dotterel.

So many Egrets, Great and Intermediate. So graceful in flight.

Some ducks even swam and looked for food underneath the grating of the bird hide.

The whiskered Terns flew without tiring over the lagoon looking for food. Australasian Grebes and Black and Hardhead Ducks swam peacefully on the lagoon.

The Cormorants on the bank moved generously out of the way as a 3.5m Estuarine Crocodile swam slowly to take its position on the bank to sun itself.

Just then a tour bus arrived so we retreated outside the bird hide for a while, saw a goanna near our car and spent more time watching the juvenile Nankeen Night Heron feeding at the edge of the lagoon.

Later, after a feast of birds, we drove into Wyndham where we went to the lookout to see the view of the 5 rivers wending their way into the Cambridge Gulf.

On the way home we took a trip on one of those excuses for a road and visited the prison boab tree. It is alive and hollow. They say about 1500 years old and was used as an overnight prison cell for police travelling with prisoners. I stepped 17m around the base of the trunk but was a bit out from the edge so maybe it is 15m in circumference.

21/6 – Purnululu National Park

Today’s was a massive drive, not in kilometres but in time. We had driven from Kununurra to Warmun and then out to the track into Purnululu. The 52km from the highway into Purnululu Visitor centre is a 4WD track, an exciting drive of corrugations (That’s not the exciting bit!), rocky track, water crossings and absolutely stunning country. We were later than we wanted to be and in retrospect it would have been fantastic to camp overnight, experiencing the sunset and sunrise of a very beautiful place. Having been here in 2007 and already seen the Beehive Domes and Cathedral Gorge, we had planned to visit Echidna Chasm and the Mini Palms Gorge. The roads within the park are as bad as the one coming in so the 20 km to get to Echidna Chasm took another hour, meaning that the Mini Palms Gorge was out of the question. Time was short as we wanted to get through the worst of the 4WD track out before dark. Enough about the time we didn’t have due to lack of foresight and on to the beauty of the trip we did have.

The country is wild and vast. There is so much of it and it is forever changing. There are acres of spinifex, beautiful sandy creek beds, ranges of sandstone, more acres of trees – palms, red gums, boabs and plenty I don’t know – even more acres of paddocks of rocky ground, red dirt and amongst it all someone has found and allowed us to visit this amazing chasm.

We walked along a dry rocky creek bed lined with palm trees into a chasm with 200m high walls where the palms suddenly got very tall. The walls of the chasm are made of a conglomerate rock. It looks like a whole lot of little round rocks cemented together. I’m sure a geologist would explain it better. And the colour is red, pink, orange, brown, ever changing with the way the sun shines on it … beautiful. The walls of the chasm narrowed as we walked into it. It began to get a bit scary. One of the signs warned against climbing any of the walls or remaining underneath the sheer walls of the chasm! What did that mean? Memories of the collapse of London Bridge on Victoria’s southern coastline (I jumped up and down on it proclaiming its permanency.) came flooding back and all of a sudden I was no longer feeling comfortable or safe. I took lots of photos and didn’t linger too long in this majestic, skinny chasm.

Outside again and we climbed to the lookout at the top of the Osmand Ranges. Yet again I had an overwhelming feeling of awe and wonder at the majesty of our earth and the forces of nature which shape such places.

It was getting late so we jumped in the car and drove back along the excuse for a road to take a look at the surrounds from the Kungkalanayi Lookout which affords a 360^o degree panoramic view of the Purnululu National Park. This is where those who are camping the night will bring their evening cockatails to enjoy the sunset. We’ve seen it in other places, the magical and visible change of colour of the rocks in the ranges. Sunset happens quickly in the north. It’s as though someone has a fast motion dimmer switch on the earth and rather than linger through the half light it just goes out. Darkness.

Half of our drive back through the park necessarily was done in the dark but we had the creek crossings done before it turned black and fortunately we came accross the bulldust at a very slow speed. You can’t see the rocks underneath the soft sand and have to be particularly watchful.

Another spectacular day.

Blessings to you all and I will post my notes from Halls Creek and Fitzroy Crossing very soon.