December 9, 2008
We resume this distinguished journal in the town of Exmouth near the tip of a peninsula in Western Australia, sticking out into the tropical waters of the Indian Ocean. The nearest city with over fifty thousand people is Perth, some 1200 km to the south. In the other direction, there are NO cities with over fifty thousand people on the north coast of Australia anywhere. There are very few people that live in the distant reaches of this far flung continent.
The land is generally inhabited and used, but sparsely. Huge iron and aluminum (and probably other minerals), mines can be found in the stretches of emptiness. Much of the land is given over to huge cattle stations where real modern-day cowboys still go on regular round-ups. We actually had to stop several times on the road to Exmouth yesterday to wait for dim-witted cattle to clear the highway while Tammy blared Turbo Charlie’s (our tourbus) horn at them.
Anyways, back to the present. We had the special luxury today of NOT having to pack up our stuff in the morning today since we were spending two nights in a row at the same place in Exmouth. Yay!
We still had some driving to do today, though. We would be spending the day enjoying some of available activities in Cape Range National Park, outside of Exmouth. The first stop was a bush walk along Yardie Creek where Tammie showed us several forms of bush tucker (food that you could find growing in the wilderness) and bush medicine. We had some bush plums (actually a kind of fig). We saw some rock wallabies hopping around some rocks in a gorge, and saw big sting rays gliding slowly in the creek water far below us.
After Yardie Creek we got to spend the rest of the day at THE BEACH! And what a beach! We were at Turquoise Bay, where the water was turquoise... and blue, and green, and all sorts of shades in between. It was easily one of the most beautiful beaches I’ve seen.
We were far from the city and there weren’t too many people here. There was great snorkeling off shore (more of the Ningaloo Reef), but I had forgot to put in my contact lenses and my visibility was limited, so I took a couple of tries at it (the water magnifies the scenery to some degree, but my eyes are so terrible that it’s not enough), but spent most of the rest of the time soaking up the sun. The sand was white, powdery (and stuck everywhere, of course). I didn’t really have a beach towel, so I just laid on the sand. Back to basics, for me!
That night, we cooked up some BBQ at the campground in Exmouth. Barry and I drank the rest of our Emu Bitter beers. He was staying behind to do some scuba diving in Exmouth, which is said to be among the best in the world. Edouard was staying behind, too. He was returning back to Coral Bay to do the manta ray diving. Emails, phone numbers, and Facebook names were exchanged and plans were made to meet up again in Sydney.
December 10, 2008
Early start today. We had a LOT of driving. For most of the trip so far, we had been vaguely following the Indian Ocean coast northwards. Today we would head away from the coast farther into the interior of the continent, into a region of the Outback known as “The Pilbara” towards Karijini National Park.
We picked up a second guide, too: Sasha. It was his first time as a tour guide through Karijini NP and up to Broome, and he was along to learn the ropes from Tammy.
The vegetation was sparse. The soil was a rich red colour. This region was iron mining country. The ground was literally made from rusty sand. Tammy told us that drinking and cleaning water out here was limited and the dust stuck to EVERYTHING. It was her advice that we picked out one set of clothes to wear for the next three days. That one set of clothes would probably never recover, so don’t pick anything nice. I designated my crappy old Billabong board shorts and t-shirt to be the sacrificial clothing. I called them my “Karijini Dirties”.
After many hours of driving, we reached the town of Tom Price, a hub town for the mining industry. It was our last chance to buy beer, snacks, and any other necessary items for three days. After a picnic lunch and our shopping expedition, we pulled out of town, and drove the rest of the way to Karijini National Park.
The earth was red, but the vegetation was green. I remarked that the earth was decorated in Christmas colours. I felt festive.
There is a chain of mountains running through Karijini NP, the Hamersley Range. The chief attraction to the park, however, other than the stunning landscape, vegetation, and scenery, was the gorges. There were numerous gorges cut in the sand- and ironstone rock over the millenia etching their way across the landscape of the park. Lots of waterfalls, lots of rock pools, lots of jumping! I was going to love this place.
The first gorge was Hamersley Gorge. We went for a little swim and did some little jumping here. There was a cute little waterfall at one end of a rockpool. For a while near the end, I sat in the water slowly collecting and piling the rust-red pebbles and laying them in patterns on my feet. My movements were slow and deliberate and after a while, it seems the local fish accommodated themselves to my presence and stared swimming in orbits around me. After a while, I counted them: one, two, three, four, FIVE FISH! MUAHAHA! I think lightning flashed around me.
Our campsite was branded as an “eco-retreat”, whatever that means. We would be camped there for a total of three nights. We would be sleeping in “swags”, just as I had back in Australia’s Red Centre back in June. Swags, if you don’t remember, are human-sized canvas sacks with thin mattresses sewn into the bottom. You can roll them up and close them with snaps and straps. With a sleeping bag inside, you had the perfect mobile bed for the Outback.
That night, I made the realization that I didn’t have a sleeping bag for me. Well, I knew I didn’t have a sleeping bag, but since when I booked my tour on the phone I had assumed they would ask me if I needed one or not, where I would have said, “Yes”. They didn’t ask, so I sort of assumed things would work out and promptly forgot about it.
Now I was here and had no sleeping bag. Tammy was super busy and obviously stressy, so I decided not to bug her too much. It wasn’t too cold here (yet!), I could sleep in my swag without my sleeping bag, right? We had the option of sleeping in our swags in a big permanent tent, or on the ground under the stars. Since I didn’t have the sleeping bag to keep me warm, I bunkered down in the tent in my swag. If I got too cold, I would put on my hoodie. Suddenly, some of my tourmates (I think it was Jonathan and Ellen), brought me a sleeping bag! Tammy had extras. They cost AU$50, which is a bit much for the thin bags, but I was happy to take it.
Later, talking to Tammy, it turned out, due to a booking error and some miscalculations, I was able to get my sleeping back for free! Thank for Western Xposure! I hope to be able to put it to good use in New Zealand!
Snore!
December 11, 2008
Today would be a very very good day for a little rock crawler, cliff jumper, gadabout like me, oh yes.
After breaky, we went on a little drive to Weano Gorge. The vegetation at the surface was scraggly and sparse. At the bottom, there was a stream of water feeding a lush eden. It was a beautiful place.
We hiked along the bottom for a while before reaching a point where the shear rock walls narrowed to a path about one meter wide with the stream continuing as a trickle inside. Shoes off! We kept going through. We reached a point where a handrail and rope aided us down a waterfall before we found a rock pool. We got to walk a little farther before reaching a point where the gorge got so steep that Tammy said we would require abseiling equipment before getting out without calling the Search and Rescue people.
The water in the rock pool was cool and refreshing. We took some attempts at climbing the rock walls (with just hands and feet), but I wasn’t very good at it and didn’t get very high before pushing off and making a big splash in the water. There was a place where you could easily climb up to about eight meters and get a good jump into the water. Eight meters doesn’t sound like very high, but it does when you’re standing there at the top looking down. It took me a few three-counts before I decided to jump.
SO FUN. I’ve officially decided that jumping off stuff into stuff is very fun stuff and I need to do it more. This was pure play. Life is good.
After retracing our steps to exit the canyon we drove to another one, Hancock Gorge. This one was a bit harder to get into. We had to climb down some steep steps, down a ladder, and through the gorge a while before reaching a part where the rock walls descended straight into the water. Tammy gave us two choices here. We could try and climb along the sides and get through to the other side (about fifty meters). There were enough places to step on and hold on that even an inexperienced rock climber could go the whole distance if they kept their wits about them. The problem was, Tammy said that you had to do it without shoes since you needed the tactile feedback of your bare feet on the rock if you wanted to make it safely. There were too many places where the foot holds were only a few centimeters across. This wouldn’t have been a problem except for the fact that the rock had been baking in the sun for hours and was unpleasant to stand on with your bare feet for even a few seconds.
Everyone chose the second choice: give your packed lunch, books, and cameras to Sasha who would carry it across in his backpack. Then you would swim down the gorge while pushing your water bottle ahead of you (or just let it go and let the current carry it downstream).
After running the gauntlet, we ended up in a magical place: Kermit’s Pool. Another rockpool with some jumping (only about three meters), a little waterfall, and lots of places to lay out and relax. Not many other people came through here (it was hard to reach after all), and we were nearly alone for a few hours. We ate our packed sandwiches for lunch and relaxed for hours. Some people read books, swam, jumped, chatted, or slept. I jumped a few times, swam a bit, crawled into a rock crevasse pretending to be a lizard (or a naughty child, as Kerstin said). At first, the sun was still nearly overhead and baking the rocks directly. But since the gorge walls were so steep, it wasn’t very long before the shadows overtook the rocks. Rock surfaces that were too hot to stand on an hour ago were now sweetly warm and perfect to lie on and take naps.
I think Kermit’s Pool was probably my favourite place in Karijini National Park.
The way back was much easier since the sun no longer baked the rocks. We were able to walk (or at least scramble along the rock face) the whole way.
That night, armed with my sleeping bag and swag, I slept on the ground under the stars. It got cool at night, but not nearly as bad as it was when I was sleeping in swags back in July.
Camping here was amazing, though. The moon was full and lit up the entire landscape with an ethereal silvery glow. It was possible to walk around without a flashlight, using only the light of the moon. It’s astonishing to see how much light the moon really sheds when there are NO other light sources to interfere with it.
December 12, 2008
There was an optional gorge this morning: Joffre Gorge. It was in walking range of our campsite, but we had wake up very early to get there. Tammy warned us that it was a demanding climb to get down, but we would be rewarded with the opportunity to do very very high cliff jumps into the water. Sweet. I was ALL IN. Jumping off of shit into other shit was fun, after all! Only about five people from the tour ended up going the whole way. The other half continued sleeping in their swags.
Steep climb down, yeah, used to this now. There was a place where there would be waterfall if there was more water, but this morning it was bone dry. We continued in the other direction. To reach the end, we would have to swim through about two hundred meters of water. We were warned that the water would be VERY COLD, but it wasn’t so bad after all.
My problem, however, was my wishy-washy swimming skills. I can do fine in short distances, but two hundred meters is much to far for me to go in one attempt. I’m too weak. I had to stop and rest by clinging to the walls on the side many times. It’s a good thing that there were lots of places to stop. I don’t think I’m strong enough to swim that whole distance and probably would have drowned if I was forced to. Although I was one of the first people in the water (ever so enthusiastic!), I was the last to come out.
No cameras came for the ride, of course, sigh. Not worth the risk.
On the other side, we got to lay on some rocks in the sun for a while before examining the cliff diving possibilities. Oh, my god. There was a place where you could jump twenty meters into the water. No way I could that one. No one else did it, either. There were a few other places you could jump from lower though. There was one from about ten meters, and another from about twelve. A couple guys did the twelve meter one. Me and a couple other guys did the ten meter one. It wasn’t easy. I was very intimidated by the height. I actually walked to the edge, looked over, took some deep breaths, did some three counts, and chickened out. I didn’t go until I saw everyone else go. Wuss. If any of the girls from the tour were watching though (instead of back at the camp sleeping or sunning on the rocks out of sight), then I probably would have put on a better show...
On the way back to camp, we had to do that two hundred meter swim again. It was even harder the second time.
At camp, we had a proper brunch, we boasted of our jumping prowess to the slackers and headed off to Dale’s Gorge, where we would spend the whole afternoon. This gorge was HUGE and filled with a lush garden of trees, shrubs, flowers, boulders, pools, insects, and amazing scenery.
The weather in the bottom of the gorges is warm and pleasant. The heat and the sun at the top of the gorges was scorchy and oppressive. The sun beat down mercilessly. The air was generally dry and there were little, if any, clouds in the sky. Yes, it can rain here in torrents, but the wet season was still a few weeks away... To escape the heat, it was simple... enter the gorges and play in the water!
We spent several hours enjoying the scenery and serenity at Fern Pool (also called Jubura by the local Aboriginal people, who consider it to be a sacred place), truly a place that staggered me by its beauty.
There were a bunch of drunken local miners who were performing all sorts of horseplay in the water and making a lot of noise, disturbing the tranquility of the place. Why do people have to be so brash and insensitive in places where you it just feels wrong to? I’ve seen both local people and tourist people, Westerners and Easterners alike in lots of places just acting like jackasses and ruining the experience for other people. Every culture has its idiots. Ugh.
We walked through the gorge for a long time before reaching another pool at the other end, Circular Pool. This was our last chance for swimming for the day. We didn’t spend as long here as we did at any of the other pools, but we still got some good jumping in here. There was a place on a rock ledge where warm water dripped steadily from above. It was definitely warmer water that the water in the pool. It was really nice to stand under!
That night, back at the camp, it was the last night together for many of the people on the tour. Only five people were heading north the rest of the way to Broome. The other half would catch a southbound tour bus in the morning for a two day haul back to Perth. Ugh... that’s a LONG way... I was glad I was going all the way up to Broome... In Karijini, we were probably about three-quarters of the way there by now.
We played an amusing game in the campsite, called “Box Munching”. Tammy put an empty cereal box on ground. The lid was taken from the box. The goal was to pick up the box with your mouth without any part of your body touching the ground except for your two feet. After each round of play, part of the box would be ripped away, making it shorter and more difficult to pick up. Many interesting positions and body contortions were attempted. Surprisingly, I was very good at Box Munching, and I was able to pick it up from the flat ground when only about two millimeters of box remained above the bottom flat panel. I did not get removed from the game for touching the ground. We did not finish the game, however. Since as much of the box as possible was removed, we would have to continue by playing on a staircase and putting the box on a lower step. The campsite had no steps, so the game resulted in a draw!
December 13, 2008
I had slept under the stars again. It was hard to sleep in. The sun started to rise around five AM and shortly after the flies started to buzz around your head. You could get a small reprieve by pulling the flap of the swag over your head, but soon it would be hot and a few flies always managed to get inside anyways to interrupt your snooze.
The flies in Karijini were insidious. The flies were ubiquitious. The flies were a pestilence. They were everywhere at any time during daylight. They’d crawl on your face looking for stray bits of sweat and salt. They’d crawl on your lips. On the inside surface of your glasses. You could swat them away, but they’d return within half a minute. There’d be at least a dozen on the picnic table as you had your breakfast. There was a reprieve while in the gorges, thankfully. This was our last morning in Karijini and even though I was sad to leave such an amazing place, I would not miss the flies.
There was one more gorge: Kalamina Gorge. The climb down this one was easy. We had a quick morning dip to freshen up before heading out of Karijini National Park. After a couple hours of driving, we reached a roadhouse on the main north-south highway between Port Hedland (to the north of Karijini on the coast, but still south of Broome) and Perth. We met the other tour bus and said our big goodbyes. I would miss Dave, Inna and Julia. We made promises to meet up again soon!
With the tour group split in twain, we continued north to Broome...
To be continued...
--
Rob Szumlakowski
Taupo, New Zealand
No comments:
Post a Comment