The coach journey from Darwin to Broome has been an experience, to say the least. There seems to have been an almost total lack of communication between the driver (I'm sorry, I mean the Captain) and Greyhound themselves - elsewhere in the world he would've been able to keep in constant touch with the company over a radio in the cab, but I guess the wide expanses of nothing making up Australia makes radio reception impossible. Instead, we have had to rely on information given to the driver en-route by locals as to the state of the roads ahead. Every time we stopped at a roadhouse, he would encourage us to take our time having a spot of lunch or a "smoke-o" while he shot off to speak to somebody in the know or possibly make a phone call. We would all be left standing around with our fingers crossed, hoping that the next leg of the journey didn't turn out to be underwater. If at any point the weather had turned bad again, there's a pretty good chance the driver would've simply turned the coach around and headed back to Darwin - assuming, of course, that we hadn't all staged a sit-down strike in front of the wheels which I think was on the cards on at least two occasions. We had, of course, all had to sign the usual waiver forms back in Darwin saying that we accepted the risk of being stranded by floods, but in reality I think there were some people on board who had seen the worst of the weather over the last few weeks and probably would've nailed the driver to the door of the roadhouse by his testicles if there had been even the slightest hint of having to turn back. And who exactly would've been able to stop them? I hope Greyhound pays danger money.

I've been wondering about this for a while actually. How exactly do you maintain any semblance of law and order in a country the size of Australia where each town is hundreds of kilometres from the next and only contains two hundred people and a couple of police officers? Any serious crime of any kind and surely the local police must be totally overwhelmed - and by the time reinforcements have taken all night to arrive from the next town it's all over and the criminals have fled the country! Riots have been known to flare up in Australian towns over things as trivial as somebody letting their dog walk across a neighbour's garden - in 2005, back in Boulia, a major riot ended in a standoff outside the local police station in which a mob threatened to kill two local policemen. What made this case even more bizarre was that one of the women taking part in the riot was a local councillor and that, since no legislation existed at the time to cover such a thing, nobody was able to remove her from office even after she had been convinced. It was left entirely up to the electorate to decide whether or not they wanted a rioter to remain in power after the next election. I'll say it again - only in Australia.

We stopped at Katherine on the way to the border, which was certainly an interesting place to experience by the light of day. The transit center in Katherine is a petrol station and a guy with a microphone. I'm not saying Katharine is a small town, but the "Welcome to Katherine" and "Good-bye. Please Come Again" signs are pasted back to back onto the same pole. I hesitate to describe it as a one horse town, but if you did take a horse there then there wouldn't be any room left to swing the cat. I could do this all day.

And yet, Katherine does have an internet Cafe from where I was able to send some e-mails home. The Internet, for some reason, took off big in Australia almost from the moment somebody came up with the name. No matter how small the town is, there will always be public access to the Net for next to nothing. In some places where there are no viable shops in which to install a computer, the local school allows access to the Internet to the public in out of school hours. This, I'm guessing, is another indication of just how important backpackers are to the Australian Tourism industry - wherever you are, probably even at the bottom of the Great Barrier Reef, you'll be able to get internet access somehow. You may, in some places, be connected via a 14K modem which takes three weeks to send a single e-mail, but at least you have contact with the outside world.

I'm now crossing into Western Australia, which can best be described as a huge expanse of wilderness scattered with National Parks. In fact, although we haven't had time to stop and have a good look, we passed today through Purnululu National Park which is home to the famous Bungle Bungles - which are nothing to do with the Geoffrey-Geoffreys and the Zippy-Zippys. Only really truly appreciated from the air, the Bungle Bungles are a range of mountains formed as hundreds of imposing irregularly shaped red striped mounds sticking hundreds of metres into the air. Every nook and cranny in the rocks is filled with lakes, woodland and abundant wildlife - and the Bungle Bungles are certainly one of the most imposing geological features of Western Australia, attracting energetic hikers probably with no idea what they're letting themselves in for. I have no doubt that clawing my way through the Bungle Bungles and constantly coming across hidden lakes, caves and gorges could make me want to set up camp and never leave, so perhaps it's best that my limited time in Western Australia forces me to pass straight through. On another occasion, I'll almost certainly be coming back and spending some time exploring this region of the country in more depth.

About Simon and Burfords Travels:

Simon Burford is a UK based travel writer. He will be re-publishing his travel blogs, chapters from his books and other miscellaneous rantings on these pages over the coming weeks and months, and the entry on this page may not necessarily reflect todays date.