Culture and colour

Talk about an overload of fabulous scenery! I am exhausted from looking and shooting! Of course I should not be tired at all because I am sitting in air conditioned comfort as someone else does the driving! I just get so excited when I see the different landscapes and the different wild flowers that are here in the Kimberley Region of Western Australia that I want to preserve everything I see. Of course I cannot but that does not stop me from trying!

After our breakfast at Halls Creek, in the Kimberley Hotel, we were taken out to see the “Old Wall of China” which is an agate outcrop that does look very much like a wall that has been built from white bricks. Unlike most of the group, I clambered down into the gully to get a different viewpoint. One of the other women tried to follow me down and slipped over on the rocks – they were covered with small lengths of dry grass which rolled under her feet making the surface feel like it was covered with slippery ice. She did not hurt herself, fortunately, but it shook her up a bit.

A small waterhole was around the corner from the Agate wall so I just had to take half a dozen shots of that too!At each of the places we have stopped the rock formations are different, the colours are similar – rich nuggety red from all the iron in the ground – but the contours are so different.

The service stations in Halls Creek had run out of diesel fuel so Firie (my son and our coach driver) was delighted to see the fuel road train pulled into one of the service stations as we drove back into Halls Creek. Without fuel we would not have been able to do the distance we have covered today, from Halls Creek to Fitzroy Crossing. While the coach was being filled we passengers explored the town. It is only small but interesting and at the Information Centre there was a statue that commemorated one of the early characters of the gold rush days, Russian Jack. He brought a sick “mate” in a bush made wheel barrow from the gold fields to the closest medical help at Halls Creeks, a distance of 300 kilometers.

I am sure you will laugh when you see the sign I found outside the butcher's shop. I could not help myself, I just HAD to take a photo of it! This is typical of the humour of the people here.

When we clambered back into the coach we were told that we were returning to both the Old Wall of China and to the Kimberley Hotel. When Maria had slipped on the rock when out at the Old China Wall, she had lost her gold watch. Fortunately that beauty spot was not far out of town and it took us hardly any time to return to it – and Fran with her eagle eyes managed to find the missing watch almost immediately she reached the spot Maria had slipped. We must have walked right over the top of it without seeing it when we climbed back out of the creek bed – and so must other sight-seers. Then we went back to the hotel where one of the hotel staff had found money lying on the grass in front of one of the rooms - $100 no less! How honest is that? So a sheepish Peter went up to the Reception and was given the money back in an envelope.

We then had a fairly long drive to our next stop, a private school for indigenous children. The young principal had been at the school for quite a few years and in that time had married (a white girl) and had recently increased his family to three children, two boys and a girl.

The principal – Nick Try – was our host for an hour and told us of the way the community worked together and grew together, we were shown through the “Laarri” art gallery where there were lots of bright acrylic on canvas dot paintings. I wonder why this style of art has been adopted? I am sure the aborigines believe it to have been handed down through generations – but it hasn't, it is a fairly recent style from around the 1950s. Anyway, it is now a style that is recognised as being “typical”of the Australian Aborigines.

From this school we then drove for two hours with the coach DVD playing part two of the story of the Durracks, “Kings in Grass Castles” as we scooted past never changing countryside. The movie finished just as we arrived at Fitzroy Crossing but although we passed the hotel we were to stay in, we drove another few kilometers to where we were to board a couple of punts so we could enjoy an hour sailing down the Geike Gorge. The sky was strangely cloudy but that meant that it wasn't unpleasantly hot, however the light was not really all that brilliant on the unusual colours of the cliff faces.

Our punt guide was hoping to point out the abundant wildlife but the wildlife was in rather short supply. We did manage to see two fresh water crocodiles from rather a long way away. This sighting caused quite a lot of excitement! We had been warned about crocs in all the waterways of the north and this was the first time we had actually seen one!

The trip along the Geikie Gorge was slow and leisurely and the scenery gorgeous. The white area of the limestone cliffs is where the flood waters after the summer “wet season” scour the iron staining away. Floods here are a regular occurance. Where the high water swirls and tumbles the limestone has been cut into fantastic shapes and the calm waters reflect and enhance the formations.

So! Another amazing day in this part of Australia. Every day has been perfect.

AJ