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.