Red Centre

If you look into the abyss... | Barquing

Bruce Chatwin described Alice Springs as “A grid of scorching streets where men in long white socks are forever getting in and out of Land Cruisers.” I can only assume he was never here during the winter, where the scorching sun is tempered by a bitter wind, and any long white socks are doubtless hidden beneath long blue jeans.
I arrive by train from Darwin, an overnight journey made more palatable than my trip to Perth thanks to the company I encountered during the route. By the evening, the lounge car of the train had filled with cheerful people passing beer cans around.
My hostel is named Alice Lodge and is situated on the “other” side of the Todd River to the town. The river, subtitled on every map “usually dry”, divides the town between the central area which houses all the shops and bars, and a small strip of residential streets. The guide books and maps all agree that the river – which is home to an eccentric annual regatta each year which was once called off due to there being too much water – should not be crossed after dark by any means other than taxi which means that the hostel I picked is probably the worst place to stay. It’s also rather cold, being based on an open plan design with all the facilities facing into a central courtyard. A good idea during the warm months no doubt, but it makes showering a little … uh … unpleasant in the winter.

I had booked a three day tour taking in the big three Red Centre attractions of Uluru, The Olgas and Kings Canyon. Those I had met on the train were all doing the same tour but each of us had picked a different tour company. I had opted to remain with Adventure Tours who organized the West Coast route, and I found too late that in doing so I was paying around one hundred dollars more than all the other options which I previously did not realize were available.
A pleasant surprise which made up in some way for this discovery, stepped onto the bus shortly after I had staggered on board.
“What are you doing here?” asked Auralie.
Auralie had booked the tour from Darwin to Alice Springs and the trip that I had booked appeared to coincide with her last three days.
This sort of thing, we were both assured, happens all the time.

For this stretch of the trip, our tour guide was Erica, but she seemed to be watched rather carefully by Angela from “the company” who said that she was merely hitching along for the ride, being bored by the “office”. No one looked particularly convinced.
The group was a big one this time, and most seem to have been with Auralie from Darwin and through Kakadu. It was a little uncomfortable trying to fit into an already established group, particularly one this size, but I was happy either way. If nothing else, it proved how pleasant and comparatively “unspoiled” the West Coast section of the trip was.

Our first stop was at a camel farm, where the option as available to ride a camel up and down a paddock. Given that we would be bush camping for the next two nights, the prospect of making my clothes stink of camel on the first day was not an appealing one, so I settled for a cup of coffee instead.

That afternoon we reached The Olgas for a hike around The Valley of the Winds, which sounds like something straight out of Tolkein, but thankfully there was a pleasing shortage of ailing elves and stocky hobbits to distract from the impressive scenery with interminable epic songs about pot noodles or whatever it is they sing about.
The proper name for the location is Kata Tjuta, which translates roughly as “Many Heads”, and is particularly appropriate given that the large bulbous domes resemble (if you look at it just so, and squint slightly) a gaggle of giant skin-heads buried up to their necks in the desert sand. The stone here is made of conglomerate rock, natural concrete unlike the solid sandstone of more famous Uluru, and the location is said to be the more sacred of the two sites, although the exact details regarding the reasons for this are kept strictly under wraps.

That evening, we arrived at the “sunset viewing area” for Uluru which if swarming with tour busses and their contents. To say the place is crowded is an understatement, the other (rival?) tour-guides arrange folding seats for their groups and dish up bottles of champagne and snacks. Some seem even to have dressed for the occasion as though the evening’s performance were being put on by a famous opera company.
Although being a crowd ourselves, we set off for a brief hike (armed with booze and snacks of our own of course) which gave us an uninterrupted view of the famous rock without the need to jostle past a hundred old ladies with disposable cameras.
It was a glorious sight as well. The image of the immense rock at sunset is so iconic now that it is almost a cliché, but standing there watching it as its colours shifted in the diminishing light was one of those got-to-be-there experiences that I am more than happy to have made the effort to indulge in.

That night, the temperature dropped to zero and we huddled around the campfire, regarding the swags we are to spend the night in with suspicion. I was not taking risks with the cold this time round and had cunningly hired a second sleeping bag from the tour company. It worked wonderfully, and curled up in the swag with the crackle of the fire a safe distance away, I was soon comfortably and snugly asleep.

The next day saw an early start so that we could reach the base of Uluru before the sun did. There were three options for us to choose from: the first was to just to watch the sun rise over the stone from a similar car-park-and-crowd viewing area to the one we found the previous night, the second option was to walk the distance around the base of the rock and the third as to climb it.
The third option was the tricky one, because all the literature about the rock firmly requests that no-one climbs it because it is disrespectful. After all, Uluru is a site of spiritual importance to the Anangu people and it struck me as common courtesy to do as they wished and to keep off it.
However, to add confusion, it was not illegal to climb the rock and a marked path exists to the top and wardens monitor the entrance and let people go up if they wish.
Most of us opt for the base walk, but (typically) a handful insist on climbing the rock for various reasons (I don’t care what anyone says, “because it’s there” is a rubbish excuse.) none of which convinced me. Uluru is the view and climbing it struck me as preposterous because you were standing on the object of most interest in the landscape and looking out over a landscape without it. I have always reasoned that the only valid excuse to climb something is to see what it looks like from the top, and I had seen enough endless flat desert landscape to not feel the urge to clamber up the pathway to see the same sort of landscape from a higher elevation.
Besides which, the base walk was stunning. A fact helped by the timing, as the morning sun ratcheted up the sky, the rock – now so close to us – seemed to catch fire. The morning colours were – if anything – more impressive and vibrant than the evening light could muster and simply staring at the surface of the stone as it glowed and shifted before you was enough to convince you how it could be regarded as a spiritual place.

Our next campsite was near Kings Canyon, which we would walk around the following morning. Again, the temperature was extremely low and as before I was missing my AWOL winter clothing, which I had neatly tucked into a cardboard box and sent ahead to Darwin from Perth so that I could comply with the “strict weight limit” enforced on the West Coast trip, the package never arrived at its intended destination and there I was, over a month later shivering in the middle of the desert.

Again we gathered around the fire and some attempt at atmosphere was attempted with a convoluted game, which seemed to be a drinking game without the alcohol. Once done, Andy, the young English guy who had suggested it, asked if anyone knew any others. I tentatively suggested Teeth – a very silly game in which the aim is not to show your teeth (by covering them with your lips while you talk) and getting other people to laugh so that they end up showing theirs. I said it was silly. Stop looking at me like that.
It’s not really a very sophisticated game, in fact while it can start off as the funniest thing you have ever seen, it usually descends into rather repetitive boredom when those left find themselves becoming (rather embarrassingly) quite skilled at it, which is sort of beside the point. Still, the circumstances around the camp fire proved almost ideal and I was a little surprised (perhaps a little concerned?) to see the thing go down a storm.

The final day of the tour took us into and around Kings Canyon, named not after a king, but after a Mr. King, and clearly a very lucky Mr. King to have such a spectacular canyon named after him. We are assured also that it is a canyon in the correct sense of the word.
“Unlike the Grand Canyon,” Erica notes proudly, “Which isn’t really a canyon at all – it’s a gorge.”
Semantics aside, this canyon is an impressive one as well as being a proper one. The faces are sheer, curving down forming smooth overhangs where the rocks have simply slid apart and down into the valley beneath. The effect of walking around the edge of it is enough for anyone to succumb to vertigo. The most recent erosion of this type occurred only seventy years ago, and the rock face which was exposed still appears white in comparison to the dark reds and browns surrounding it.
“The rock is heavy in iron ore,” Erica explains, “And this oxidizes over time when it’s exposed to the atmosphere, so the reason Australia looks so red all the time is because… well… it’s rusty.”

We head back towards Alice Springs in the afternoon and arrive back by six. Before pulling up to the first hostel to deposit the first guest, Erica admits that we have been her very first tour group and that Angela was in fact assessing her closely.
“Still a few creases to be ironed out,” Angela observes brusquely, “But she’s getting there.”
Erica earns a round of applause for her efforts, although no-one bought Angela’s original story, no-one had a clue that Erica was so new at the whole tour guide thing.

We met again that evening for end-of-tour drinks. The bar is a tacky joint and organizes ropey looking activities to summon the guests up on the dance floor, which I conspicuously avoid. Still, the food was cheap, so it could have been worse. I got back to the hostel at a decent time and enjoyed the lie in the following morning immensely.

The next day, I walked around Alice Springs looking for warm clothes. It was a day of holiday, bizarrely to celebrate the queen’s birthday, and so most of the shops seemed to be shut.
Instead, I bumped into Auralie again and we found a café. In it, were two of the Canadian girls from the Uluru trip. We did not really speak much to them during the trip, (in fact, I cannot even remember their names) but in a town full of strangers we greeted each other like old friends. That I still cannot remember their names (of course we were all pretending to know each other, so I could hardly ask at the time) probably underlines just how phony some of this traveling camaraderie actually is. Or maybe that’s my cynical side coming out again. Oops.

Next stop Adelaide by train, then Melbourne, then… well then I’ll be up to date.

No, seriously.

A bit of Culture...

Othello clambers onto the bed behind his wife and wraps his legs around her. Desdemona looks faintly startled and blinks rapidly.
"My lord?" she says in a quavering voice.
Her lord grabs a pillow – pink with a lacy frill around its circumference and plants it in her face.
Desdemona’s arms and legs flail crazily while Othello looks increasingly anguished and emits increasingly anguished noises, his eyes bulging with psychosis.
Someone bangs on the door and the scene takes on the qualities of a farce.
"I’ll be with you in a minute!" Othello improvises, while his wife, still flailing, still not quite dead yet – a quartet of limbs wagging and waving like an infant trying to master breast stroke.
"Hang on!" teeth bared, Othello renews his pressure on the cushion. Abruptly, Desdomona’s movements cease. There is a brief, startled pause.
"My wife! My wife! What wife? I have no wife!" Othello cries.
His wife adjusts herself on the bed and lies still again.
The audience look at their feet. Someone coughs.
"I’m not familiar with this play." Donald says, sat beside me. "It’s a tragedy, right?"
I nod.
"I think so." I say.
We are in the open air theatre situated behind Darwin’s museum, and have left the promise of the beach markets in order to indulge in a little culture. The production boasts the claim to fame of casting the first Aborginal actor to play Othello. Such a shame that the actor they cast cannot remember his lines and is something of a ham. The first half was redeemed by the actor playing Iago, clearly relishing the role and having the time of his life, but the second act, with the villain largely off stage as his plans come to fruition is a rambling mess. We persevere, the audience alternately amused and embarrassed, we wait for Othello to kill himself so that we can all go home.
"Oooooooh!" he yells, throwing himself around the stage while his fellow cast members step nimbly out of his path. "Aaaaaargh!"
He pulls at his hair.
Cassio, now on crutches after a bizarre looking fight scene which took place earlier at the rear of the stage, follows his progress like a spectator at a tennis match.
Eventually, Othello jumps on the bed and stabs himself. The audience breathe a collective sigh of relief and make a hasty exit to see if the market is still open.

Rude Awakening

Darwin is Australia’s northernmost town and has been rebuilt at least twice, following bombing raids by the Japanese during World War II and the equally devastating Cyclone Tracy in 1974. The guidebook promises a place which could be mistaken for Indonesia’s Southermost City, but the guidebook is waxing lyrical. Darwin is very much an Australian city: a concrete, none too inspiring central business district surrounded by scrub land. It is not the most picaresque of locations, although the tropical climate cannot but help lend it a sunny, laid back atmosphere, but once you step off the noisy main drag of Mitchell Street, it is also hard not to be taken with the tranquility of the place.
Mitchell Street, however, the location of my hostel for the night, is anything but tranquil. As darkness falls – beautifully in the thick, tropical sky – the street transforms into a party zone. The bars are all themed, two English, two Irish, one – named Rourke’s Drift – should be Welsh, but typically is a standard Enlish joint instead. Other bars are themed by colour (blue), wildlife (ducks, seriously) and general volume (loud). My hostel has a bar of its own. Its theme is gloom.
I stagger through it to reach my room, the place is a converted motel and room seven faces onto the car-park, unlit and unattractive. I push the door open and the thick fug resulting from a head-on battle between body odour and cheap aerosol deodorant seeps out lazily and dispiritingly.
The light is off. I turn it on. The room – six bunks in varying states of undress lurk around the walls. The floor is hidden beneath ruptured rucksacks and discarded pizza boxes.
Two English guys look up at me, blinking in the light.
"Sorry." I say, but realise that they were not sleeping, but watching a DVD on their lap-top, propped on the fridge which has been dragged away from the wall into the middle of the floor.
The English guys ignore me and return their attention to the movie – an American comedy which does not seem to be making either of them laugh.
I pick my way to the top bunk near the back of the room and fit the sheet on as best I can. I take a shower (not a pleasant experience) and change into clean clothes before tiptoeing out of the room again.
"You want me to turn the light off?" I ask.
No response. I turn it off anyway.

I meet Judith and Auralie outside, they are staying at the hostel across the road and have horror stories of their own to relate.
"The toilets," Auralie says "Are really dirty."
"Really gross." Judith agrees.
We meet others from the tour at a Thai restaurant in town. Today is Judith’s birthday proper and we celebrate accordingly, the food is excellent.
"I’m having a third birthday when I get home next week," she says.
When I return to the hostel for the night, one of the English guys is missing: the one who had been sprawled on the top bunk by the door. I do not hear him come back that night, but at four in the morning, I am woken from my sleep by a noise that you really do not want to hear in a crowded dormitory.
Someone sounds drunk and ill. Not a pleasant combination. This sound – a collection of weak groans and squeaks – is followed by a heaving sound which in turn is followed by the distinct noise of someone throwing up from a top bunk onto a tiled floor somewhere below. It is the sort of wet splat which sounds as though it has achieved a certain, proud distance.
My first thought is panic – where are my bags? My clothes? Were they in range? Were they hit? No, no. They should be safe: they’re by my bed and I’m as far away from the afflicted patient as possible. My sense of compassion approximately nil.
The patient vomits again, punctuating the heaves with little whimpers of self-pity.
The room is quiet. It is the sort of quiet which can only be made by a group of people who have been rudely awakened byt would rather pretend otherwise if it means they can avoid dealing with vomit-boy in the corner. We hold our collective breaths for which ever reason you can mention.
Eventually his friend stirs to action and helps him clear up. When the lights have gone off again, the air in the room is so thick that it takes a good half hour before the stench of vomit reaches my bunk.
The next morning, I change rooms.
The day after that, I change hostels.

Lake Argyle to Darwin

Spider City | Barquing

Lake Argyle, depending on whom you ask, holds twelve to eighteen times the amount of water as Sydney Harbour – a unit of measurement frequently used in this part of the world. It is the largest body of fresh water in the continent and required to the largest non-nuclear explosion in Australia to come into existence, flattening a mountain and producing a deviously engineered dam.
The lake is home to some 25,000 freshwater crocodiles and, of course, we go for a swim in it anyway.
Freshwater crocodiles, it should be understood, are nothing like as dangerous as their salt-water cousins, being considerably smaller and equipped with smaller jaws and gullets. One might nip you if you kicked it, but generally they keep themselves pretty much to themselves.
Having said all of that, taking a dip in crocodile infested waters, freshwater or not, is still a little intimidating, and the first ones off the boat and into the water are not of our tour group, but a mother with her six year old daughter. Whether or not this proved to us that the water was safe for the rest of us, or whether or not we thought that the kid would be more likely to be a target for the toothy reptiles is beside the point, either way, we all follow their example and take the plunge.

It is Judith’s birthday, and come the evening, Jez pulls out all the stops by baking a birthday cake in the embers of the barbecue. Party hats are produced – I remain unsure if they are included amongst the standard tour equipment or not – and a rather unsteady rendition of Happy Birthday is sung in three separate languages. To cap everything off, we witness a rather extraordinary shooting star, leisurely in pace and accompanied by a burning red tail.
It is our final night on the trip, and thankfully the temperature is warmer than the previous night. I pick a spot under a huge boab tree and snuggle up in the swag for a blissful, uninterrupted nights sleep.

The following morning, Jez and Ben wave us off from Kununurra airport, the final leg of our trip to Darwin is by air, a thirty-seater plane departing from a tiny little airport.
Size aside, Kununurra airport is very professional. It has two gates (one for departures and one for arrivals) and – as far as I could see – only two members of staff. Where they found these two guys, I have no idea, but they seemed to perform every single task themselves. They checked our luggage in, frowning as the scales tipped perilously over the weight limit ("They’ve all got international flights tomorrow," Jez said automatically, knowing that the extra bother would be too much for them), they also slipped on hi-viz vests and drove the luggage to the waiting plane. They manned the bar at the airport and acted as security. I was almost disappointed to see that they were not flying the plane as well.

In the Bungles with George and ... oh, hang on...

Bungle Bungles 1 | Barquing

As with a number of place names in Australia, the Bungle Bungles do not quite mean what they are meant to mean. In fact, no one is entirely sure where the name Bungle Bungles comes from (and no, it probably has nothing to do with Rainbow) but the suspicion remains that it is derived from a misspelling of ‘bundle bundle’, which is a variety of grass.
The local name for the park is Purnululu, which sounds better, but has a meaning even more prosaic, it translates, rather disappointingly, as ‘sandstone’. An accurate name certainly, but about as mystical as calling, say, Jerusalem’s Temple Mount, 134B Calgary Street.

The Bungle Bungles are a range of 360-million-year-old sandstone structures which have eroded in a certain manner to resemble huge, pleasingly stripy domes. The park which houses them covers some three thousand square kilometers and is also home to newly discovered plant varieties and 130 species of bird.
Given that the world at large remained unaware of their presence for so long (they were ‘discovered’ in the 1980s) they probably count as one of the country’s best kept secrets. Or at least they would had they not been granted World Heritage Status in 2003.
Our tour of the area begins with a leisurely hike through Picaninny Gorge (or Cathederal Gorge), which skirts around the bases of the domes and leads to a vast open cavern in the rock. Hemispherical in shape, it boasts sheer faces of what look like recently broken rock.
The violence of the place floors Donald completely.
"I’ve never seen anything like it." He marvels, "you can almost imagine the sounds that must have reverberated through this place: shearing, tearing rock."
He breaks off and we stare up at the ceiling. The structure suddenly seems rather delicate and unstable, as though the ceiling might come crashing down upon us at any moment.
"Let’s get out of here," I suggest nervously.

On our way back to the bus, we encounter a park ranger with a problem. Reportedly, a seven-year old kid was seen carving his initials in one of the domes, an act of vandalism which strikes us as unthinkable. Satisfied that the sprog is not hiding in our luggage, the ranger stalks off into the park to – presumably apprehend the culprit and bestow some suitable punishment.
"Stoning?" someone suggests.
"No," someone else replies, "Tie him up in the cavern for the night and let him listen to the rocks shifting above him. He won’t be back in a hurry."

That afternoon, we take two more walks. The first is to Enchida Chasm, a claustrophobic trek through a narrow crack in the hillside. It is particularly impressive, and the way the light creeps through the gaps is startlingly effective, but the walk proves a trial for some of the group who find the whole walls-closing-in sensation is not the sort of thing they do for fun.
On our way, we run into a film crew for the Western Australia Tourist Board. They are filming stock footage of the area and need an ‘actor’ to walk across the foreground for one of the shots.
We volunteer Jan, our own tutonic German. He is approved by the director because he has a light coloured shirt which stands out against the rich, dark reds and greens of the valley. As we leave him to it, we see that his is made to change his shirt anyway, with the director standing behind him, looking mightily pleased with herself as he strips.

Our final walk of the day is termed ‘Mini Palms’ for reasons which are never entirely clear. It involves a tough trudge up a dry river bed, lined with large, thick blocks of gravel which make walking particularly tiring. The views at the end are certainly worth the effort, however.
On the way back to the campsite, we stop off at the visitor’s center, which is notable primarily because it displays a prominent poster detailing the frequently asked questions which the desk clerk – a dead eyed lady with frown-lines so deep you could loose small change in them – did not want to hear again under any circumstance.
The questions range from the informative, "Do you sell chocolate?" (No) or "Do you sell stamps?" (No) to the pedantic: "Do you have to drive to work every day?" (No) and conclude with "What will happen if I ask any of these questions?" which has the ominous answer, "I advise you not to find out."
I read through the list twice before asking if they sell any camera film. There is a long, dangerous pause.
"No." she says coldly.
I thank her anyway – I really do not know why I do that – and I flee back to the safety of the bus.

I wake at about three o’clock in the morning, desperate for the toilet, but realise that this would involve clambering out of my swag, and worse still, that it seems to be the coldest night of the trip so far. I lie huddled in my sleeping bag, trying to get myself back into a position comfortable enough to fall asleep in, but it does not happen.
The canvas of the swag is slightly damp on the outside, and cold with it. Its weight seems to press against my sleeping bag, trying to dispel all the warmth and comfort that the bag offers.
I lie dissatisfied, willing myself to just sleep and forget it, but with no such luck at all. Then scrabble around the swag trying to locate my torch. The darkness of the night is absolute, the moon barely a fingernail in the sky. My sight is useless for such a task, and thanks to the bitter chill in the air, my sense of touch seems also to be deserting me.
Bugger. I think.
I consider my options. I could, I think, stagger out blindly and try and find the toilet shack – a small tin hut located on the other side of the camp-site. Alternatively, I could stumble a little closer: there are bushes all around me and I could just feel my way to one and …
No, I think. There are other swags spread out randomly around the campsite. I might step on someone. Worse, I might urinate on them.
Bugger. I think again, and once more rummage around my swag for the torch. The torch is small, and has clearly found its way into some nook or cranny of the canvas bag, somewhere between the mattress and a thick seam perhaps, or maybe it has been kicked down the swag towards my feet?
My hands touch something plastic, then close gratifyingly around the frayed elastic head band.
The light comes on like a rude burst of sunlight, disturbing the perfect blackness. Hastily, I smother it against my chest and dig out my sandals from beneath the swag where they have been acting as a pillow. I extricate myself from the bag, wincing at the cold – it is sharp and deeply unpleasant, but I grab my jacket and – led by my bladder of all things, make my way to the toilet shack, the torchlight picking out the other swags, lumps of canvas like body bags, strewn around the truck and the guttering campfire of the previous night.
On my return (having washed my hands gingerly in freezing cold water – always nice), I leave my jacket on before easing myself back into the sleeping bag. A mistake of course, as come two hours later when we are woken for the morning – a long drive ahead necessitates a pre-sunrise set-off – I have nothing else to put on, and find myself shivering around the campfire hugging a plastic coffee mug, cursing myself for not bringing my four-season sleeping bag and wondering what the symptoms of hypothermia are.

Mel 'n' Kimberley

Primary Colours 2 Barquing

Having already experienced the gorges and water holes of Karajini, the Kimberly proves to be a different beast all together. Yes, there are gorges; yes, there are water holes, but the landscape is subtly different, more open, the gorges broader – and, this might be the most important aspect of all – the water holes are a little warmer, being exposed more to the sun.

Bell Gorge is a case in point. To reach it, there is a simple walk, first across the river at the top of the falls, and then down into the gorge itself. The water holes is large and the water warm. We luxuriate in it for longer than perhaps we should given how long the afternoon’s drive is to be.

We stop in the middle of nowhere – proper bush camping with no facilities to speak of. Jez kicks up the camp stove and takes control of the meal, clearly a perfectionist with a camp-fire, the difference between the cooking on this part of the trip when compared with the first part is very noticeable. Tonight we are served lamb curry with rice and the cooler full for beer lurking in the back of the trick proves to be a welcome discovery.

I sleep much better this evening, the temperature is still warm, and the mosquitos still active, but I pass out gratefully with the swag pulled tight around me.

Ahead of us, the river bubbles and rushes and gloops.
"Is this the gorge?" The speaker does not sound convinced.
Jez shakes his head.
"The gorge is on the other side." He says, gesturing to the rocky hillside beyond the far bank of the river, "The water is a little high, so we’re going to have to swim across it."
He looks to us all and grins.
"Did anyone bring anything that they didn’t want to get wet?" he asks.
There’s a rumble of talk amongst the crowd, hands raise: first one, then three, then more.
Jez whips out a roll of bin bags.
"Tie them tight." He advises.
We strip to our swimming costumes and bundle everything else into the plastic bags, tying them and inflating them enough to float of sorts.
The water is cool and the current reasonably strong. We set off gingerly, bags held high for fear of damaging the cameras and clothing that they contain. The first half of the river is easy to navigate without the water becoming too deep (although Donald, typically, steps straight into a hole and drops his bag almost immediately). But the second half of the river proves impossible to negotiate without total immersion.
None the less, it is remarkable – with hindsight – how determined we were as a group to keep our bags as far away from the water as possible.
Jez leads the way, and is first to vanish beneath the surface, one arm still held high, plastic bag hanging in his fist. I struggle a bit more – holding the bag up with one hand and attempting to kick my feet (still wearing sandals) and swim of sorts, I end up going under regardless, the bag splashing down beside me, inflating against the water and floating primly beside me as it should do.
See? It seemed to be saying, I float perfectly well thank you very much. What were you during primary school physics?
Feeling slightly foolish, I clamber out at the other end, dripping, and open the bag tentatively.
Inside, my camera and my clothing wink back at me, as dry as they had been before the crossing.
We head off along the rocky path, signposted with ribbons tied to various trees and posts along the route. The path proves to be quite a long one, with many ups and downs throughout the rocky, unforgiving landscape.
"It’s round the next corner," Jez proclaims, not for the first time.
Ben chuckles to himself, also not for the first time.
Eventually, the path descends to Manning Gorge, and we are not alone. Another tour group are already there, and have already taken the plunge, we watch the tiny figures moving though the water in stop-start jerky motions.
Judith frowns.
"Isn’t that…?" she asks.
One of the figures is oddly familiar. It’s Rob, who joined the earlier trip in Exmouth.
"Rob!" Judith yells.
The figure beneath us, grinds to a halt. Treading water and looking about him in confusion. Then he spots us and waves.
He bellows out a greeting, his words lost in the echoing space of the gorge.
"What did he say?" I ask - the words seemed lost in the acoustics of the gorge.
"He said: ‘what are you doing up there’." Judith says.
The water is warm and very pleasant, but by this point in the trip, we seem perfectly happy to take a dip no matter where our tour guide might point us too. The water hole is long, and proves to be a fairly tough swim to reach the lower water falls, behind which we find another pool, filled by a larger, steeper series of terraces, fresh water thundering off each. It is a beautiful spot, despite even the gathering crowd of tourists idling luxuriously within.
Rob and his wife Solveig are here, and although we only left them in Broome a matter of days ago, we all greet each other as though it had been a lot longer.
We compare destinations and tour groups and Rob glances behind him, should those he is traveling with overhear him.
"Ours is a different group, this time." Rob says, "Older, certainly. We’re the young ones in the bus this time."

We spend longer than perhaps we should at Manning falls, which means that the afternoon drive, already lengthy, finds us traveling still past the sunset.
Ben clambers into the back with a proposal.
"We could continue to our campsite at El Questro Station," he says, "Or we could stop earlier and bush camp – no facilities. Does anyone have any strong preference either way?"
We exchange glances, then look to the cab at the figure of Jez, hunched over the wheel. He’s clearly exhausted.
"Bush camp it is then." Says Ben. He seems rather pleased.
The truck veers off the road onto a narrow path leading between the trees. To say that the path is uneven is an understatement, the truck pitches and rolls and we grab the seats in front of us for support. When the truck stops, we clamber out into darkness. Somewhere in the distance, there is the sound of water running, rushing.
"That." Jez says, "Is Bindoola falls. We’ll take a dip there in the morning."
Until then, we set up camp – the location is unlike anywhere else we have camped so far. Layers of flat rocky slabs form wide steps leading down to the water, between the rocks and in the cracks which have split them over the years, spiky grass shoots up in tufts.
We pick patches of rock long enough to roll our swags out on and tentatively explore the area with torches, wary for potential drops and chasms which might be hidden in the darkness.
That evening, Auralie tries to rally the group – considerably quieter than those on the previous tour – to some sort of after-dinner entertainment, if nothing else, something to do to keep us from turning in as early as we have been so far.
Unfortunately, while most can think of dozens of appropriate songs for the occasion, few can remember any lyrics of note, and it is left to Donald to step up and sing – a Scotish ballad, naturally – and recite a poem.
"I’m such a ham." He says ruefully in response to the applause he receives for his efforts.
The night sky is glorious.
Lying in a swag, staring up at it, becoming lost in its depths and detail is a remarkable way to fall asleep. I count seven shooting stars, streaking across the heavens before the display blurs in my vision and finally, I close my eyes. It seems selfish to keep wishing upon them when they seem so abundant.

I awake to a red-yellow morning sky, equal and opposite to the evening’s display in its majesty.
We pack up the camp and head down to Bindoola falls for an early morning dip.
"And they say this place has no facilities," someone murmurs.
Once more, the scenery is remarkable, but becomes even more daunting when considering how it might change during the wet season. The falls themselves are reasonably impressive at this time of year, but with torrents of water roaring through them, they would no doubt be astonishing. A shame, perhaps, that they would be almost completely inaccessible during this time – or maybe it is reassuring that such a sight should be easier imagined than witnessed. This landscape is sparsely populated after all, and it seems rather sensible that there should be distinct visiting hours between which tourists are not welcome, and where nature once again takes over the reigns.
A short morning drive takes us to what should have been our destination the previous evening. El Questro Station is a cattle station by default and a tourist resort – in the words of its brochure, a "private wildlife park" – in all other respects. It covers over a million acres, which is the sort of statistic which can only really be expressed in italics.
When compared to our campsite the previous night, it is comfortable, organized and has all the facilities you might wish for. It is also rather bland, as only a campsite full of vast camper vans can be.
It does posses, however, its own private thermal spring, and the Zebedee Springs (time for bed, we think as we doze off in its waters) is impressive in that it seems to be barely altered from what nature intended. The water here is not piped into some concrete bath, instead the public trek up the hillside, strip off beneath the palm trees and duck into the small, mossy pools, leaning against rocks and tree roots.
Being part of a massive resort complex, of course, there are drawbacks. Namely the fact that the public are required to vacate the premises by mid-day, because customers paying top dollar rates (Think $1200 a night) get the opportunity to spend the afternoons and evenings in the springs. Remnants of candles on some of the rocks give some idea of how magical the place could be in the evening.
A facility at which the public are welcome at all hours is the resort bar, where we inevitably wind up after hours. Like many out the way bars in Australia, this one is essentially an off-license with seats: offering cans of everything and nothing on tap. Even the spirits, pre-mixed with coke or ginger ale, come with a ring-pull rather than a glass.

The evening is hosted by Buddy, an aboriginal bushman with a taste for lewd jokes and demonstrations of skill with lassos and cattle whips.
To conclude his act, he inserts a lit taper between the backside cheeks of his volunteer. Once he has taken the time to light a cigarette off it ("Don’t be tempted to relax," he says), he extinguishes it with a lazy flick of his whip.
"The world would have been a better place had Adam and Eve been Aboriginal." He says, "They wouldn’t have eaten the apple, they’d have eaten the snake."

The morning begins with a trip to Emma Gorge, a pleasant walk through a rocky gorge, palm trees extended wide-fingered into the sky around us. It leads to a glorious high waterfall – plunging off the high rock overhangs above. The water here is bitterly cold, the gorge so deep that the sun rarely creeps so far down, but it is no worse than the places we enjoyed in Karijini, and it is only with minimal encouragement that we strip down and step in. We are becoming good at this: whereas near the beginning of the trip, the first plunge into cold water took much persuasion, nervous footwork and wincing as we lowered ourselves into the icy pools one shivering extremity at a time, now we take one step, maybe two, then plunge in head first. Our caution about such matters, it appears, was left somewhere down the road.
Once used to the temperature, lying across the surface in a star-float and gazing up at the circular aperture high above, the water running – a clear day rainfall – down from all sides, is wonderful – so wonderful in fact, that simply lapping up the scenery, with the falling drops of water sparkling in the sun high above us, could probably make you forget just how cold the water is. I swim back to the edge before hypothermia kicks in.
Our next stop is the Bungle Bungle National Park, which is another lengthy drive away. The longest part of which is a fifty kilometer stretch which takes us some two hours to navigate along the twisty, bumpy unsealed road.
We are in time to witness the sun-setting against the Osmond Range, a typical Australian sunset – a striptease of light against the red stone.
Jez produces champagne, which we drink from plastic mugs, and toast the departed day.

Tour Two

Windjana Gorge Barquing

Broome is a small town which marks the mid-point of our trip: in two days time, we will exchange our bus for a four-wheel drive truck, Cleggy for a new tour guide and most of the group, with the exception of four of us, will also be substituted for fresh blood. Until then, we have been told, Broome is ours to do as we will with.

But Broome, a small place built on the back of its pearl fishing industry, is not perhaps the most exciting place to become stranded for more than two days. The weather here is properly tropical, and the mere act of blinking is enough to bring about a sweat. Thus, doing nothing at all becomes the activity of choice, and this is a good thing as, well, there's not really a great deal of things to actually do here.

There is Cable Beach - I concede - a broad expanse of pale sand, leading onto the green tropical ocean, but it is scattered with so many warning signs, boasting the dangers of box jellyfish, crocodiles, sharks and the like, that it looses its appeal. As for sunning yourself on the beach? Twenty minutes will probably reduce to you to ashes, so lets move on to the town.

The town itself is a short bus-ride away from our hostel - the buses driven by enthusiastic drivers who sing out the approaching locations as though they were worthy of paying attention to. The impression is that everyone here is a tour guide, resting or otherwise - and it is hard not to wonder if they are desperate to find a new tour route, preferably somewhere else.Broome's town centre is a wide street lined with identical, low buildings, each painted white, apparently based on the original pearling shacks which were once built in the area. It looks a little like one of those outlet villages which sit outside towns selling over-stocked produce of designer clothes brands. However apart from a street selling (it appears) nothing but pearls, it would be hard to mistake Broome for a shopping destination of any sort.

But for our purposes, it proves to be a pleasant diversion. We need an excuse to do nothing - to simply lounge around in the shaded courtyard of the hostel, to update our journals, to do our laundry, to read a few more chapters of the paperbacks which have remained untouched since Perth.

One by one, the original group begins to disperse. They leave by plane from the tiny airfield in the middle of town, the aircraft flying low over the main street in a bid to escape.

Before long, only four of us remain.

Our new tour guide is Jez - or Jess or something along those lines, and Cleggy, it appears was not being entirely honest with us with his description the night before.

"He said you were a girl." Auralie says with admirable bluntness.

Jez nods, then shakes his head.

"Cleggy huh?" he says. "Wild man."

We throw our bags onto the truck - a more compact and comfortable looking contraption than the bus which served as our home for the past nine days - then wait around for half-an-hour for another member of the group. One phone call later however and we are on our way.

"No show." Jez says, "All the more room for you guys."

In all, there are only eleven of us in the group - and with the bus seating twenty-one, the sense of extra space is certainly welcome.

We have a second guide for this part of the trip too - not officially, as such, but Ben, who has only just finished leading a tour along the same route from Perth to Broome that we have been on, is hitching a ride to learn the route up to Darwin.

Ben is also a veteran guide of the Tucan South America route and just happened to have been in Lima around the same time as I was in 1993.

"That's strange," I say, "Cleggy was working for the Bridge of Orchy Hotel when we did the West Highland Way last year."

Ben nods, disinterested as though these little coincidences which prove that the world is a small place are growing a little tiring.

"Cleggy, huh?" he says instead. "Wild man."

Our route takes us first to the Boab Prison Tree, a hollow boab tree which was once used to imprison Aborigonal prisoners as they were taken to Derby. The tree and the hole remain, but are fenced off with a large imposing sign warning the curious not to approach.

It is disrespectful, the sign says, the tree has become an important symbol of Aborginal history. As an afterthought, the sign continues with more simple scare tactics: "Also," it says, "Snakes inhabit the tree."

The Gibb River Road connects the cattle stations of Derby to Kununurra some 665 killometres away. It is unsealed and only suitable for four-wheel drive vehicles, peppered with steep dips into the remnants of streams, rivers and brooks. During the wet season, much of the route is utterly impassable - the notion that the road is built to be washed out for six months of the year is a strange concept indeed.

We stop at Tunnel Creek, a long cavern which cuts through the mountain range near Windjana gorge. The tunnel is dark and wet, torches are required to cut through the gloom, what's more, wading is also needed - waist deep at some points.

We stop for the evening in the shadow of the imposing Windjana Gorge itself - a ninety metre high fossilized coral reef, rising out of the flat bushland in a sheer perpendicular face. The remains of prehistoric fish can still be seen burnt into the rock. Around it, freshwater crocodiles lurk in the water - they look impressive despite their small size and it is reassuring that they are comparatively harmless when compared to their salt-water cousins.

A low, even cloud layer maintains the day's heat long into the night. We sweat and stew in our sleeping bags, unwilling to risk sleeping on top of the bags thanks to the constant whirl and whine of the local mosquito population which would be considerably less irritating if they went about the business of sucking blood without making such a racket about it.

Sleep is fitful, but the display of the sunset lighting up the rocks of Windjana Gorge, in typical shifting-colour Australian style, is worth the discomfort.

We're all going on a summer holiday

Given my annoyance at missing the world cup, I decided to go and find something to cheer me up. It's easy to pick out the negative things about living on the other side of the planet, so I thought I'd equalise things out a bit and tell you something about the good things about living in New Zealand, and as it turns out isn't actually about New Zealand.
Off to the travel agents we pop, now where can we go that's in our budget, maybe a nice day trip to the suburbs of Auckland? Perhaps a weekend away to Wellington, even maybe a trip up to north to the Bay of Islands?
The window is full of tropical destinations, Tonga, Samoa, Fiji, Cook Islands, Tahiti and other paradises. Ahh we can but dream, these places are reserved for the rich and famous, get away destinations where the cameras can't follow, the kind of luxury only real A listers can afford and only on a very very special occasions or so you would think. And perhaps if you were living in Britain this would be the reality, afterall it costs thousands to go to Tahiti. Well it doesn't if you live 3 hours on the plane away from it. Oh yes, just booked our flights to Tahiti for Jules's Birthday(Nov 1st) for a staggering $400, which works out about 133 pounds, or something stupid like that.
I used to brag at Uni that I could travel to America for less than it costs me to get back home to Shetland, and now it goes and turns out I can go to Tahiti for half the price..grrr.
All we have to do now is find a camping alternative to spending 1000 pound a night on the luxury hotels!

Spare a Thought

So, the World cup is upon us and no doubt the picking up the newspaper is annoying enough with every column inch full of football related gumph, has Davis B got a new hair cut, is Wayne R's fractured bone fit enough for him to dance in nightclubs and so on and so on and so on. I'm sure the football hating few are grumbling and complaining that there's no real news about and for the next month or so every programme on the tele will be a football match, and how eastenders has been re-scheduled to accomodate the soccer. Well they've just announced the schedule for the Wrold Cup games in New Zealand, and slightly unfortunately for those without sattelite, the rights have been awarded to SKY, with only the opening game, semi final and final being shown on terestrial TV. "Just go to pub" I hear you shout, well, that's all and well, but unfortunately this falls down on two fronts 1) there happens to be only 5 pubs in Auckland prepared to show the World Cup games(none close to us) and 2) they've gone and decided to put the games on in the middle of the night! kick off times of tantilisingly, 2.00, 4.00 and 6.00.
I here you say "well no one forced you to go to New Zealand" and of course you'd be right, but if any football hating people fancy doing a transfer foer the next month or so I'll certainly put in the request to the manger(flights have to be included). Just imagine a whole month without the world cup!

Swag

Primary Colours 1 | Barquing

With an early start, and four more passengers on the bus, we leave Exmouth and head towards the Karajini National Park, where we are to spend three days exploring the red rock gorges and taking dips in the water holes which form in their bases.
The scenery is, to a fault, stunning. To the eye, the landscape is deceptive, it has the appearance of flat, continuous and familiar bush land, with more greenery than we have been used to so far – the hills here look almost softened by the foliage growing upon them.
But the gorges are spectacular, great cracks in the scenery – scars on the landscape. Narrow in breadth, sheer faces dropping downwards, the sun creeping down their length, making the parallel layers of angry red stone glow.
“God’s country.” Cleggy observes. “This is the oldest landscape in Australia, maybe the world.”
A veteran of the Alice Springs to Adelaide treks, he is more at home in the more arid parts of the country, and Karijini is clearly one of the jewels in Western Australia’s crown.
The water holes within the gorges range from bitterly cold to sun-kissed warm. They are deep and fresh, the water clear and clean. Around them, the rock faces stretch up to the sky, calloused red palms, cupping the pools of water.
Aboriginal legend says that the water holes were carved by great serpents who still reside there.
“Metaphorical serpents, right?” I ask, “Legends right?”
We have already taken eager dips in a handful of pools before learning of this story, and the idea that we might have been sharing the tranquil oases with snakes is a little unsettling.
Cleggy shrugs.
“Well sort of,” he concedes, “But most of these stories are based on observed facts, so yes there would be snakes taking dips in here.”
The final pool we visit is the coldest one, but the small, trickling waterfalls lining its far edge are warm, filtering sun-warmed water from higher up the valley.
We plunge in, wide-eyed and gasping, erroneously pretending to those hesitating on the rocky banks that the water is nothing like as cold as it looks. Clambering up the slippery stones around the waterfall, we realise finally that we are not alone.
Lying curled beneath the outcrop is a small red and brown snake, head resting on a stone lazily.
“That,” Cleggy says, with a nervous laugh, “Is a Pilbara death adder.”
We huddle beneath one of the waterfalls, eyeing it.
“Is it dangerous?”
Cleggy nodds.
“One of the top three dangerous snakes in the area.” He says with a grin. “If he nips you, we wouldn’t be able to get out of the valley in time. But he’s not going to bite you if you don’t go near him. He’s far too comfortable. He probably doesn’t even know we’re here.”
None the less, one by one we slip back into the pool and head back to the shore. Cleggy is the last to return.
“The only difference between cowardice and bravery,” he says, “Is the outcome. Showering with a Pilbara death adder is pretty brave.”
We look at each other, none looking particularly convinced – each half expecting Cleggy to produce the creature, finally proved to be made out of plastic, from his pocket - We pick our way back up the layered, ancient landscape to the bus.

We sleep not in tents but in swag bags, canvas sacks with mattresses sewn in. Room for a sleeping bag and an inhabitant but little else.
The nights are cold, stark contrast to the heat of the day, we pull on as many layers of clothes as we can and huddle deep into the swags, pulling the covers up over our heads should dingos interrupt us during the night.
I sleep comfortably, the stars of the southern hemisphere, a glorious nightlight, undisturbed by light pollution. The outback sky is a vast canvas, the stars rich with depth, contours and distance, the southern constellations unfamiliar, the northern ones in unfamiliar places (Orion on his side, the plough upside down).
Cleggy points out an Aboriginal constellation, made not of stars but of the black space between them: a huge, clear emu stretching from the Southern Cross down. Compared with the abstract nature of the constellations we are used to, the clarity of the shape is extraordinary.
We only spend one night in a genuine bush camp, with no facilities at all. The other campsites are quite comfortable, with toilet blocks and on one occasion a shower. Admittedly, one of the toilet blocks, a long-drop brush toilet located in an echoey tin shack, was the home of a sleeping red back spider hanging behind the toilet seat, but it did not move and we did not disturb it. The words courageous and stupid are probably irrelevant when comfortable defecation is at stake.

Our final night’s camping is at Eighty Mile Beach, now fully in the tropics, the heat is becoming more oppressive and uncomfortable, the air thicker. This is the beach which we were not recommended to swim from, and we venture down to it in the dark armed with a tarpaulin to sit on and torches to spot any wildlife. The following day, we meet another tour bus and discover that Cleggy has challenged them to a game of Frisbee on the beach before we set off.
The game is hectic and exhausting. It’s fun but we loose by a substantial amount.
Cleggy is unfazed.
“Great game.” He beams. The other tour-bus zooms out of the campsite, the driver flicking a “looser” sign at us: thumb and index finger outstretched. Unfortunately, he uses his left hand rather than his right and so the “L” is the wrong way round. This makes us feel a lot better for purely pedantic reasons.
We present Cleggy with a bottle of Jack Daniels as a thank you gift. He hefts it in his palm and that seismic grin cracks his face again.
“You guys rock.” He says.

Interlude

Self Portrait | Barquing

More snorkeling was to be had the following day, this time up the coast at Exmouth. While a smaller group shelled out for another full day’s activity, chasing and swimming with whale sharks and also by remarkable good fortune, sighting a twenty-five metre blue whale (my envy of which, as I flipped through their photographs, was only partially balanced by the comparative health of my wallet in comparison to theirs), the rest of us ventured out to the idyllic sounding Turquoise Bay, where more – lower key – snorkeling was on offer along the reef. A moderate rip tide required navigating through, but it was not dangerous with a little common sense, and the now expectant wonders of the reef beyond was ample reward for the efforts expended.
The day was a relaxing and undemanding one, spent on the beach and in the warm, still water.
“Like a day off,” Donald commented astutely.

Flip, flap, fly

Sunset at Coral Bay | Barquing

Amy has her hand raised.
“Okay.” Says Colin, “Get in slowly and no swimming, got that? You’ll scare them away.”
We nod awkwardly, heads and feet encumbered by snorkels and flippers. Three-by-three, we slide off the back of the boat and into the sea. The shock of the water, suddenly cold despite the fierce sunshine, disorientating me completely.
I set off as I have been told, face first in the sea, breathing erratically through my mouth. The flippers feel ungainly on my feet, I can feel the sea churning behind me. I do not seem to be making much progress.
I bob up, and look around.
Somewhere in the distance to my left, I see Amy’s hand raised above the surface, a swarm of figures following with flapping feet.
Behind me is the boat, all eyes on me swimming in completely the wrong direction. The skipper waves his hand sardonically.
I cough apologetically and adjust my course, plunging my head back into the waves, I set off again. Progress is slow and torturous. Before me the water is pale blue, the sunlight a fractured shaft lightening the colour but not revealing anything other than more water, swirling with algae and plankton. I have never been snorkeling before, and when I told Colin this as he prepared the boat’s manifest, he nodded sagely and marked me down as average.
I forget to breathe through my mouth and choke on the sea water. Salt and silt fill my mouth and the mask clogs against my nose. I break the surface and cough myself clear. Somewhere, a million miles away to my eyes, Amy’s hand hangs high above the water.
That’s some serious stamina, I think blearily.
“How are you doing?” Cleggy asks, surfacing beside me, not unwhale-like. I had not even heard him approach.
“Okay.” I lie. “Went in the wrong direction.”
He nods.
“You’re not kicking properly.” He says, “You’re using your legs like you would swimming without fins, you don’t have to move your knees, alright?”
“Alright.”
“Alrighty.”
He hails the boat, which arcs around leisurely to pick us up.
“And breathe through your mouth,” he adds, “You doing that?”
“Mostly.” I manage.
“And keep your hands in.” he says, “The drag will slow you down, okay? Put them behind your back or something like this.”
He demonstrates awkwardly in the water.
“Got all that?”
I nod, still concentrating on breathing. My mouth feels full of salt water, my throat feels rough, torn. I suddenly worry about dehydrating in the middle of the reef.
“Okay.” He says. “Hang in there.”
The boat picks us up and drops us off again closer to where Amy and the group are swimming, face down in the sea. The image has a certain surreal quality, exacerbated by Amy’s raised arm.
“That woman,” Colin says of her admiringly, “Was as good as born in the sea.”
“Remember,” Cleggy says, “don’t move your knees and keep your arms in.”
Again, we slip off and again, I aim face down and – trying my hardest not to move my knees, flap my feet as much as I can manage.
Ahead of me, I see the yellow flippers of the rest of the group, pumping up cyclones of tiny bubbles towards the surface. I look down, concentrating fiercely and plough on, determined to see what they see. I find a rhythm of sorts, skewed and irregular but better than nothing, it feels comfortable and effective. I start moving faster. This works, I think. I can do this.
And there it is.
A shadow in the blue beneath me. A tight, dark rhombus, undulating and flapping three metres of wing.
I do not really know what I had been expecting of a manta ray. I knew they were large, and I knew they lived in the sea. Filter fish, they feed on the plankton and are largely harmless to humans, their major weapons being their size and their speed.
I think the last time I was aware of them, was – and this is to my shame – from the film Finding Nemo. And now one is beneath me, leisurely moving along the Niagaloo Reef. Occasionally, we see beneath it, a white belly under its black wings, a school of chubby, silver fish swim beneath it, almost in formation.
And then, as though it has become aware of our presence and tired of our scrutiny, it effortlessly gains speed and is gone, a vanishing speck in the turquoise distance.
We snorkel with a second manta ray – this one slower and clearer – and then take a more leisurely swim around the reef itself, the coral gardens abundant with clourful fish and marine life, going about their business and proudly ignoring our intrusion. Now more used to the breathing and propulsion aspects of snorkeling, I find myself becoming more adventurous and increasingly hypnotized by the almost endlessly varied spectacle beneath me. To say it is another world is a cliché, but a true one. It is wonderful and adictive, drifting across the surface, watching the underwater landscape scroll beneath.
Back at the boat, a school of multi-coloured fish thickens the water. I surface through it, the magnification of the water casting them near, then far as I bob above the surface. Delighted, I duck back down, and amble around the boat once more. A richly coloured fish, striped with purples and greens, bobs beneath me, calogen-lips opening and closing, eyes staring listlessly ahead. I watch it fascinated.
It swims left and right, then defecates extravagantly and sprints off into the depths, leaving a paltry trail of wispy grey behind it.
Back on the boat, a Canadian man juggles his infant son and turns to Donald.
“So where’s that accent from?” he asks, “London?”
Donald shakes his head patiently.
“I’m from the Island of Mull,” he says, warding off any ambiguity whatsoever, “Scotland.”
The Canadian nods. His son bounces his head up and down in imitation. The kid’s name is Buzz, and this concerns me for some reason.
“So, what you got up there, then?” The man asks, “A castle?”
Donald regards him levelly.
“No.” he says.
“So what’s the appeal up there then?”
Our final swim of the day, takes us to a portion of the reef where the reef sharks arrive to get their teeth cleaned by the tiny cleaner fish which live there. The reef is deep here, and the shadow of a shark – not a dangerous breed, but with a shape familiar from far too many Hollywood movies – circles distantly beneath. We circle above it, watching it go about its business as it ignores us blithely.
We arrive back at the beach two hours later than scheduled, my back already prickling from the sunburn sustained. We stay on the beach for the sunset, armed with beers and increasingly elaborate fishermens’ tales about the underwater wonders we witnessed. Sharks, turtles, schools of fish which nibbled on our fingers, octopuses and more manta rays. I don’t mention the defecating fish, it seems to spoil the sense of wonderment slightly, and instead just smile appreciatively of the enthusiastic stories which abound.
The sun slides into the sea before us and we talk on through the dark.

Watching the Spectators

Watching the Spectators | Barquing

Piccolo regards us curiously.
“Oh,” says Angela to her, conversationally “You are looking beautiful today.”
Piccolo does not say anything, she swims off along the shore and doubles back, taking us in with her other eye.
“You have to talk to them,” Angela explains to us, “They like to be told they look beautiful, like any woman really.”
Piccolo is sort of beautiful, but the line of tourists standing knee deep in the surf are preoccupied with the fact that they are barely half a metre from a dolphin, not just one in fact, but around ten of them – three generations of battered women who arrive daily at Monkey Mia beach resort to be fed and they could be the ugliest dolphins in the sea, but they would still draw an eager crowd.
Piccolo’s son drifts past, closer to us than his mother.
Angela chuckles.
“She’s not going to like that.” She informs us, “He’s stealing her thunder. Showing off.”
Piccolo nudges him, but he is undeterred, he basks in the flashing and clicking of cameras. The tourists coo and aww at him.
The resort only feeds the dolphins a small amount of their daily food, ensuring that they do not become dependent, and still teach their offspring how to hunt.
Most of the resorts’ dolphins are female – some males do arrive, but few take the time to swim with the tourists. Rules have been established to stop the tourists from actually swimming with the dolphins, as they – that is the dolphins – tended to get cranky, and tourists have been known to be bitten: there are a lot of teeth in there, and while the injury would probably not be too serious, it is a risk that the organizers are not willing to take any more, particularly given that the numbers of dolphins visiting the resort diminished for a while.
“Dolphins might look like they’re always smiling,” Angela warns, “But they don’t have any facial muscles, so it’s very hard to determine exactly what sort of mood they’re in.”
Piccolo’s son is clearly in a showing-off mood. The tourists are lapping it up.
The dolphins are identified by the scars on their fins. Evidence that life as one of the world’s favourite ocean mammals is not quite as picture perfect as some might believe. The females in particular have a very hard time of it, Piccolo herself lost a previous child when it was only three months old. She became despondent, pining for her baby, and in the eyes of the male dolphins became next to useless as a mate. They attacked her, breaking her fin almost entirely.
“When she first came here,” Angela explains, “Her fin was on its side, we thought it would stick like that, but it seems to have straightened itself out again.”
Other dolphins become scarred from less local sources, shark attacks are common, and boat propellers can also be a problem.
A truck pulls up along side the beach and more volunteers clamber out with buckets. Angela ushers us back towards the shore.
“The water is their territory,” she says, “The less you are in it, the closer they’ll come to you.”
The logic is strangely upside down – the further away we get, the closer they come – but it works. The dolphins slip into the shallows, examining us each in turn.
The volunteers join them with buckets of fish, and random tourists are picked out to help feed them. The dolphins, familiar with the routine, wait patiently with jaws open and teeth exposed. Their smiles might be fixed, but their eyes betray their mammalian heritage. Irises dilate, lids half-closed. They click and purr.
“I could be wrong.” Angela says, “But I think that might mean she’s happy.”

Through "Nature's Window" and beyond

Through "Nature's Window" | Barquing

Nature’s Window is a rock formation situated in the Murchison River Gorge. The cliff has eroded around a sizable gap, through which the rest of the gorge extends with the sort of serendipity which makes you consider if evolution has a tendency towards showing off.
The tourists like it. We stand around and aim our cameras through the hole muttering things like “beautiful natural aperture” and “frames the landscape majestically” while juggling lenses and dusting off mirrors in our cameras.
In turn, the local fly population like the tourists and conspire to upset every composition by swarming and landing on the unsuspecting photographers and forming unsightly blots in front of the lenses.
Nature’s Window, perhaps, needs a fly-screen.
Our next stop is the more prosaically named Z-Bend Gorge, the moniker for which clearly came from the Volvo school of copyrighting.
The gorge is beautiful, zig-zagging as you would expect, a glittering stream of water at its base, but its pleasures are best appreciated with a little effort. A steep, stone staircase descends between the sheer iron-red rock-faces, switching back on itself as it makes its way to the bottom with a multitude of its own little – lower case, perhaps – z-bends of its own.
The colours here are wonderful. Primary red, green and blue, un-mixed and un altered, each glowing against the other. The photographer’s snap their polarizers on their cameras and go trigger happy.
The path out of the gorge proves more challenging, a different route, it involves a little scrambling and a little steel against the deepening drop. At one point, a standard DIY ladder has been strapped against the stone – it looks like cheating, but once upon it, and feeling it list and sway beneath you, there is a nagging suspicion that climbing the rock face it covers, hand-over-hand would have been safer and easier.
Lunchtime consists of hamburgers, which concerns the vegetarians in the group.
“How strict a vegetarian are you?” Cleggy asks one as he fills the barbeque with oozing meat.
We stop off at shell beach, briefly so that we can reach our destination before the sunset. The beach is covered in shells, not sand, and is sharp underfoot. The waves are gentle, the water almost still. The colours once more are vivid and intense.
We visit the stromatolites off the coast: ancient living organisms lurking beneath the waves like prehistoric mushrooms. They represent some of the oldest life on earth and while they do not exactly do much – summersaults and ball tricks are out of the question – their appearance is alien enough, and their history ancient enough that their presence intrigues.
At one time, their kind covered the earth, but that empire fell long ago and these are some of the few remnants.
Back on the beach, I hold off swimming until we reach the resort of Monkey Mia, and this proves to be something of a mistake. The sun has retreated and the water has cooled considerably. But this stretch of beach is famous for its dolphins and the rumours that they sometimes come near the beach during the evening was enough for most of us to risk the cold and take a jump into the water anyway.
We splashed about a little, but remained alone, the dolphins remaining disappointingly absent.
Even when the growing cold drove us to the beach, a few of us remained, staring out to the sea for a hint of the creatures: our eyes paying tricks on us in the fading light, reflections and shadows on the distant waves looking momentarily like swarms and schools of dolphins playing in the water.
The very thought that they might at some point appear, made turning our backs on the sea very difficult and disappointing, but as the sun set, in a suitably spectacular fashion, melting greedily into the sea as though it were a warm bath, we turned and trudged back up the beach to the resort.
Our timing here was also lacking. Half of the resort had been closed off to accommodate a wedding party, and sadly our bus-load of backpackers was not invited to the ensuing celebrations, nor – critically – were we allowed in the bar, which had been hung before us on our approach like a carrot to a donkey.
The wedding continued into the night, a live band performing cover versions of which our absence from the guest list led us to be uncharitably critical.
“That is so out of tune.” Said someone.
We all agreed. It was a terrible version of Oasis’ Wonderwall.
But from the wedding, someone whooped with delighted recognition, when the opening chords had kicked in. We could hear the dance floor filling up. Through the locked kitchen door, we could see the bride taking centre stage.
“I guess you have to be there.” Someone allowed.

Leaving Perth

More Pinacles | Barquing

The tourist bus stop is a solitary looking bus shelter outside Perth Central Station, hidden behind the roadworks and distinguished from the other bus stops with a small embarrassed looking sign reading ‘Tourist Bus Stop’. I have been told that my tour bus would collect me here at around seven o’clock in the morning and so I get there unnecessarily early to be sure. On arrival, it appears that I am not the only one to be cautious. The pavement surrounding the bus shelter is already filling with backpacks and bags. A small group of people are sitting around them, eyeing each other surreptitiously, trying to identify other members of their tours.
“Hello!” I say with my best attempt at joviality. The syllables come out in a slightly embarrassed squeak which undermines my attempt to be sociable.
I too am eyed suspiciously, but no-one answers and the bus stop lapses back into silence.
A car pulls up and an elderly woman leans out, her wrinkles worn into a frown.
“Is this the stop for Broome?” she asks brusquely.
The people at the bus stop eye her suspiciously too, then look at their feet.
Oh, for heaven’s sake, I think.
“Is that Adventure tours?” I pipe up, “I’m going to Darwin, but we stop in Broome, right?”
Silence.
The woman gets back into the car and drives off, the atmosphere she leaves behind seems curiously tense, as though my answering the question has breached some sort of unspoken protocol. I look at my own feet and metally prepare myself for nineteen days of this sort of behavior.
The next person to turn up, however, proves more proficient in the art of answering greetings, even if they are somewhat more muted by this time. A half-nod of acknowledgement is met with a broad smile.
Donald is pushing seventy, hails from the island of Mull and – thanks to dietary requirements – he has packed his own supply of porridge for the trip.
“Ten portions,” he tells me, “Cut with soya milk. Just add water.”
He grimaces.
“Will probably taste terrible.” He admits.
Donald turns out to be on the same trip as myself, and as the time edges closer to seven, the bus stop gradually fills with more and more bags and their owners, clustering in nervous groups waiting to be shepherded by the growing number of beaming tour guides, marching around the area armed with clipboards, tans and goatees.
Our own tour bus trundles in: a rickety looking machine with a hand-scrawled number plate. A crooked trailer doggedly follows behind, stacked high with canvas sacking, bulging with something-or-other bound beneath.
Our tour guide leaps out from the driver’s seat and beams at us. He greets us collectively with three clichés in quick succession, which for some reason, immediately sets us at ease:
“G’day mate. No worries.”
We sigh. This is what we’re paying for, we think.
The group is gradually building around the bus – none, thankfully from the reticent group I first encountered at the bus stop (most of whom I later notice nervously bundling into a bus marked ‘Skydiving School’).
Our guide introduces himself.
“I’m Cleggy.” He says, still beaming. “Alrighty.” He adds as an afterthought.
We let this information settle in.
“Cleggy?” someone repeats eventually.
“Yep.”
“Where from?”
“Surname.” Cleggy says, “Clegg, with a Y. Like ‘leggy’, Cleggy.”
“No, where are you from?”
A small pause.
“Oh,” he says, “Victoria.”
He grins a Cheshire Cat grin, tombstone teeth cracking open his face. He looks a little like The Dude from The Big Lebowski recast with a young Brian Blessed.
“You guys rock.” He says when we’ve boarded the bus. He consults a clipboard.
“Alrighty.” He says again, frowning, “We’re missing someone.”
I remember the woman who leant out of the car before and mention it, silently amazed with myself – will I ever just shut the hell up? He nods thanks and vanishes out of the bus, returning shortly afterwards with the woman by the hand.
“This is Lee.” He says, ushering her onto the bus and closing the door behind her. Lee – still looking rather morose – finds a seat and digs a pillow out of her bags. I have flashbacks to the train journey from Sydney, but quickly suppress them.
There are ten of us in the group, and four of this number are French. Three English (or rather, two English and one English/Australian mix), one Dutch, one Scott and Lee – who is Australian, round out the mix.
Lee describes herself as an “ex-farmer’s wife” who now lives in Perth. She’s seventy-five and wants to see parts of the country that she has never had a chance to see before.
“And I’ve never been on a camping trip.” She says.
One by one we are invited to the front of the bus to give a similar description of ourselves to the rest of the bus. To the best of my memory, Lee is the only one who punctuates her biography with a blue joke.
“This seat,” Cleggy pats the passenger seat beside him once the last of us has returned to the back of the bus, “Should be used in rotation by you guys.”
His expression goes a little wide eyed at this point.
“To keep me sane,” he explains, “There’s a lot of driving to do and I really appreciate someone to talk to.”
The bus rattles into motion and we rumble out of the city suburbs and into the countryside.
The landscape outside Perth is lush and green, the occasional lift in the altitude giving enough perspective to give some idea of the sheer expanse of scenery to take in. There’s a lot of it, much the same, flat and vast, pockmarked with scrub and tufts of grass.
Lunch is served in a sweetly ramshackle way alongside a beautiful stretch of turquoise sea. Wearing my walking boots rather than my sandals – a concession to the weight limit I assumed was important (but which was never referred to) – I stand just shy of the gentle surf and wish I had packed my belongings a little differently.
The water laps invitingly at my boot’s uppers. The sand shifts beneath their soles.
From the road, Cleggy grinds the engine, a none-too-subtle summons to return to the bus. I trudge back over the sand obediently.
We stop for the night in Kalbarri. It is too dark to make out the bay just yet, but we hear it as we unload the trailer, and can smell the salt in the air. It is still too early in the tour for the group to have any experiences to share with each other, so we tiptoe around each other during dinner and prepare to turn in early.
Cleggy stretches out a map of Western Australia for us to pour over, and indicates the route we are to take.
“The beaches to the North,” he says, punching the strip marked “Eighty Mile Beach” with a thumb, “have stingers, crocodiles and sharks. Also the water is warm – it’s tropical and probably warmer than standing outside the sea. You sweat in it, I don’t recommend swimming there.”
He moves his thumb further up the coast and jabs the caption for the town of Broome.
“Here,” he says, “Cable Beach has all the same problems: crocs, stingers and sharks, but it’s a better place to swim.”
There is a slight hesitation amongst the group.
“Why?” someone asks after a while.
“There’s a hospital.” Cleggy says.