We had our first taste of real life on the road when we overnighted at one of the free rest stops between Katherine and Kununurra. We were fortunate enough to have arrived early and were able to bag a nice shady spot, so far so good. Here, there was a genuine sense of community as many of the older people gathered in the communal area, had a beer and a laugh like they'd known each other for years (maybe they had). We cooked dinner and sat back to enjoy sunset. As night took over, it dawned on us that this might not be the best place for us to have stopped, nearly all the other campers had huge caravans or big-rigs, they went to the loo in the comfort of their home, took a nice hot shower or watched a generator powered TV with cable channels. We didn't have these luxuries, we had the use of a non flushing drop loo that went straight into a hole in the ground. As it was pitch black, we had to take a torch, we really wished we hadn't shone the beam at the loo to see what we were doing.
We spent our evening with a couple of glasses of wine and stargazing. In the silence of the bush, it wasn't a bad way to spend our time.
We left early the next morning for Kununurra, the sun was already hot as we arrived at the border to Western Australia, we passed through a quarantine check and the van was inspected for fresh fruit and vegetables. We had been tipped off about this in Katherine and had spent a night frantically turning all out lovely fresh veggies into ratatouille.
Kununurra is the gateway to The Kimberley, a wild and vast area of Oz, much of which can only be enjoyed by 4WD or from the air.
After a quick restock of supplies, we headed back out to Ivanhoe crossing around 10km away. The weir can be driven across in a 4x4 in the dry season but when we arrived, car access was definitely not an option. The water pounded over the edge of the weir, frothing it up as it merged with the lower stretch of the river.
On the far bank, perched on a dead tree two enormous pelicans bathed in the sun. They preened themselves to perfection which, once arrived at, they closed their eyes and napped.
Eagles circled lazily above and some kind of water-bird dived into the bubbling water to catch a meal. On the bank I tried to do the same. The spot is famous for its good barramundi fishing, but today all I caught was a tan.
The camping site we were staying at felt very different to the ones we've previously stayed at, there were a large number of permanent residents, who generally showed a disregard for everyone else, their dogs were off the leads and wandering through people's pitches and into the kitchen, their kids ran around screaming to each other at a distance of 5 paces. The other campers were largely much younger than us and showed a lack of basic etiquette about keeping the kitchen and shower areas clean and our washing up would have come out of the sink dirtier than when it went in.
Youngsters these days!
A 5 minute walk away from our campsite we had Mirama national park, it's small but has a couple of lookouts to climb to. The first, reached by walking miles and miles through 3 metres high grass, only occasionally seeing a rock massif or a tree and getting to it became a little monotonous. The view from the lookout was average, we could see just a small amount through a gap in the rocks. The second lookout however was spectacular, atop and surrounded by the sandstone cliffs which look like layer upon layer of red pancakes. At the top we could see for miles in all directions. The bush is every bit as wild and rugged as we imagined, it is beautiful in a way, but the scale and emptiness of it, even this tiny fraction of outback keeps the aesthetics at bay and danger at the forefront of our minds.
Were headed on to Broome on the western coast.