Bungle Bungles

Although the Bungle Bungles have been around for thousands of millions of years, only a very small number of people knew about them until the 1980s. At that time the Western Australian Tourist Bureau sent a photographer to the Kimberleys to take a few photos for their brochures. He had a friend who was a helicopter pilot in Kununurra, and he had noticed an unusual rock formation in his flights, and took him there. He took some aerial photos of those iconic beehive shaped rocks, sent them back to Perth, and they were featured on the wall of the tourist bureau office.

Interest was immediate, but these rocks were over 100 Kms from the nearest town, and over 50 Kms from the nearest road. In fact they were situated right in the middle of a cattle station of thousands of hectares. But there were people determined to go and see them for themselves, so a 4 WD enthusiast attempted a wild ride over very rough ground which took over 5 hours to traverse that 100 Kms. He got there, took photos, and published the story in a 4 WD magazine. The next year many more people wanted to do the same, and the following year even more. This was not good news for the owner of the cattle station who wasn't happy to have all these people traipsing through his land. Eventually an uneasy truce was reached, and a better 4 WD track was built from the highway.

When I say a better track, it really is not great. It involves crossing several creeks, which even in the dry are not easy. They have names like "Tyre Slasher", for obvious reasons, and "Apollo Killer" because several Apollo motorhomes had attempted to cross it too fast and had broken their chassis clean through. When we first arrived at the caravan park, the first person we met was a lady waiting for the tow truck to come and pick up their 4 WD car and caravan. They had attempted the road the day before and had lost their power steering. We, of course, did not even consider attempting this road with our van, and booked into a tour on a 4 WD bus, built more like a tank.

We have noticed in this region there are a great number of 4 WD vehicles, and the rougher the roads, the better they like it. I think it's a macho thing, trying to prove themselves. Souvenir shops sell stickers with things like "I survived the Gibb River Road" or "I survived the Tanami Track." When a road is paved, they lose interest immediately. That's only for sissies.

Back to the Bungle Bungles. They are a very beautiful and majestic range of rocks that run for about 80 kms. The dome like rocks are at the south end, and there are hundreds of them, tier above tier. They are also striped in red and black layers, due to the rocks making them up. The red layer is iron rich rock, while the grey blue layer is this colour due to the presence of certain bacteria that live in the porous rocks. Whatever the cause, they look amazing.

As well as seeing the rocks, there were various walks around them, leading to some amazing gorges between some of them. Cathedral Gorge has tall towering walls, opening into a large vestibule where a waterfall runs in the wet, and there is a small lake and stream flowing out. At the other end is Echidna Chasm, which also has towering walls but gets gradually narrower and narrower.

The tour was from 7 am to 6 pm, and there was dinner after. So we had to stay in the caravan park, which was just one kilometer off the highway, the night before and the night after. It was a great park, with a large open tent for dinner, and a big open fire to gather around in the evenings.

The other unusual thing about this park is that there are cattle wandering through it. After all, the whole thing is still sitting squat in the middle of a cattle station. Now over our trip we have seen caravan parks with resident ducks and chickens, and even one with resident bunnies. At Litchfield we also had resident wallabies. But this is the first time I have seen Brahman cattle just wandering through the camp site.

GeorgeY's bit

in this entry we see rocks, camp with bulls, and meet Bill.

In Kununnura we checked into a very nice tourist park, a nice place with pool and spa and the rest, but there is more. From the reception they organized not only our accommodation but also our next trip to the Bungle Bungles, and that included a safari tour and camping with cattle. It is owned by an entrepreneur guy who also runs the Bungle Bungle safaris, and the cattle station from which we depart, and an abattoir on the cattle station. Amazing businessman, able to cut deals through red tape and aboriginal land rights and all, with clever ways to work around the obstacles.

After a long drive on the sealed road, followed by an unsealed section, we ended up at camp. As it got colder at night, I sat next to the massive camp fire pit and relaxed till I heard "George….George Youssef". In the most amazing timing, Bill and Janice White were there, one night before us, and were leaving the next day. We sat and talked until late and will catch up when back in Melbourne.

One thing about the Bungles is the camera does not do near enough justice, and that is why people put up with the long and hard drive to get there. In short it is spectacular.