Thoughts, Rants and Subliminal Suggestions

Darwin and 10 days of camping

Camping in the Kimberley is now done, hence the really long break between posts. Since I am about to go get dinner (It's 5:15 pm here) this post won't be that long so a really good update will come when I get home and don't have to pay for internet. However, I have highlights from camping

Sleeping outside with clear nights EVERY night. I now can recognize the southern cross and scorpio and what's really cool is that the Milky Way is visible EVERY night

We started in Windjana Gorge after driving from Broome with our cool guides, Mic, Joel, Karl and Tom-Tom. We went to Tunnel Creek and walked through the cave and back out again. It was really cool to do and very wet since we had to do a lot of stream crossing. The blind catfish were awesome! We also saw a HUGE goanna outside the cave entrance. We hiked into Windjana Gorge in the evening and were able to see the eyeshine of several hundred freshwater crocs in the river. That was totally awesome. You can tell a freshwater croc from a saltwater croc at night by the color of the eyeshine. Red is fresh, green is salt. Therefore, red means go ahead, green means stop right there and run for your life.....

After Windjana we stayed at Silent Grove but went hiking into Bell Creek which was a pretty decent hike but with a wonderful waterfall and swimming area at the end. I jumped off of a 10 m cliff into the water. It was so much fun!!! We also stopped at several other gorges, all with beautiful water that was clean enough to drink!!!! I thought that was pretty awesome

Our guides are awesome. They are total chefs at a campfire. The first night we had grilled barramundi for dinner. The fish was superb!!!!

We also drove up to Kalumburu, which is an aboriginal community that you can only enter with permission. The community was so excited we were coming that they spent 3 days cleaning up town and then held a Corrobori for us so we could see some of their ceremonial dances. That was totally cool. We also met one of the elders, Basil and he told us a story about one of the paintings he had made. The next day Clarry, an aboriginal tour guide, showed us around Kalumburu and taught us about the rock art in the area and how to make spears and then throw them. I got to throw a spear and did a pretty good job at that!! We also stopped at the Mission in town and visited their museum of Aboriginal history. That was pretty good. When we first arrived we spent about 1 hour playing footie with the aboriginal kids. They are tough!!! One 5 year old was tackled when he caught the ball but came up all smiles. They were also fascinated with our digital cameras and wanted to take pictures of each other. One sad part is that they've been heavily influenced by black rap culture from America so they make all of the hand signals that rappers make in music videos. We hope to send them positive images from the states so they don't think americans are only like rappers.

After Kalumburu we went to the Mitchell Plateau. There was a really nice hike in to a beautiful gorge and HUGE waterfalls. We were able to swim at the top of the falls but not at the bottom due to the saltwater crocs. A bunch of people opted to chopper out to get a birds-eye view of the area. I took the option as well and it was gorgeous. I can't wait to see my pictures.

The next stop was El Questro Station, which was luxury camping compared to what we've been dealing with. Hot showers. mmmmmmm. We hiked into El Questro gorge which was another cool hike but really hard. Halfway through we had to portage across a pool of water to continue hiking. The swimming at the end was awesome.


....to be continued, dinner time :-)

posted by Amy M @ 3:42 AM