Coast to coast

The Kimberley region, of which Broome is the main hub, has two seasons – wet and dry, with very little temperature difference between the two. We arrived towards the end of “the wet”. With temperatures around 38 Celsius and 100% humidity, we wisely checked into a backpacker's hostel with air-conditioning! In fact we ended up sleeping in hostels for much of our trip across the top end. To be honest, we had expected the hostels to be pretty steggy, but as it turned out they were generally clean and comfortable. And we weren't actually the oldest people there as I had feared!

As appealing as Broome's beaches were, it is still box jellyfish season up here, so swimming is inadvisable.

As most of the attractions in the top end are still inaccessible for the wet season, we decided to make short work of it and get across east coast to spend more time there. Indeed the only road open in the top end was the main sealed road between east and west coasts. So in Broome we restocked the van in preparation for the epic 3500km journey ahead.

Our first day on the road was our longest – a 1050km sprint from Broome to Kununurra near the Western Australia/Northern Territory border. We recuperated the next day by exploring Mirima National Park. The undulating sandstone formations, which formed through uplift over the last 25 million years, are also known as “the mini Bungle Bungles” - they made a good consolation prize for not being able to see the real Bungle Bungles, due to the long wet season.

As we drove across WA and NT, the roads were lined with fine examples of boab trees.

With their bulging trunks and stubby branches the boabs are an icon of the untamed north-west corner of Australia.

Our next stop was 500km further on in the shabby crossroads town of Katherine, NT. Here we went on a cruise up the spectacular Katherine Gorge.

The humidity had seriously dropped off, as we were well inland, so our morning on the water was most pleasant.

The cruise broke for lunch and a swim in a tranquil waterfall plunge pool. The top end being crocodile country, we hadn't swum in anything other than hostel pools for some time. Although the plunge pool was safe for swimming, according to our guides, Andy did actually spot a pair of eyes watching us from the shallows at one end of the pool. When we got out for a better look, it turned out to be a wee baby croc of about 75cm, which had probably plunged over the waterfall from the marshland above!

The road then turned south for 700km between Katherine and Tenant Creek. Somewhere between the two the country dried out, becoming a sparse scrub-land. Tenant Creek is considered to lie in the dry “centre” rather than the seasonally wet “top end”. Temperatures were low enough here at night that we reverted to camping in Edna. The highlight of our 12 hours in Tenant Creek was most definitely the nightly show put on in our campground by “Jimmy Hooker the bush-tucker man”. For the princely sum of $3 each, we were treated to poetry and bush-tucker prepared by Jimmy: one of those indestructible old-timers who has worked this impossible terrain as miner, farm-hand and miscellaneous for more than half a century. That night the bush-tucker special was witchetty grub cooked on hot coals – the consensus was that it tasted like fried egg!

Heading 700km east from Tenant Creek, we arrived in Mount Isa, Queensland. I have approximately nothing to say about this charmless industrial town. We over-nighted there before driving 500km north to peaceful Normanton. After a night there, we headed 650km east to the Atherton Tablelands, where out transcontinental dash came to an end just 50km from the east coast in delightfully cool tropical rainforest. The photo shows the “curtain fig” - one of the more spectacular examples of the omnipresent strangler figs in the rainforest.

Our first full day in the rainforest was my birthday, which we celebrated in the picture-postcard town of Yungaburra. We stayed in the camp-ground of a beautiful hostel, where we had a good old Aussie barbie with good old Aussie plonk. We even saw a platypus in the local creek – our first sighting of a monotreme! Echidnas and platypuses are the only species left on Earth of that weird egg-laying branch of mammalian evolution that is the monotreme.

We went for what we thought was going to be a hike at nearby Granite Gorge. In fact it could be better described as a scramble through a vast field of granite boulders -fun but hard work!

Among the boulders we came across some cute rock wallabies.

From the tablelands, we headed north to the Daintree National Park. Here we took a short cruise on the croc-infested Daintree River.

We spotted this 2.5 metre female saltwater croc hanging around at the bank. As our guide pointed out, she's a real tiddler – the big males around here get to 5 metres in length.

As we continued towards Cape Tribulation, we stopped to walk numerous boardwalks through the thick rainforest. The signs asked you to stay on the path to protect the forest. They really needn't have asked – everywhere you looked there were spiders as big as your hand and equally horrifying insects adorned every nook – there was no chance that I would be stepping off that path!

Where the rainforest meets estuaries and the sea, it becomes thick mangrove swamp. The mangroves trap sediment in their convoluted root systems, gradually advancing the shoreline, with the rainforest ever-encroaching at the mangroves' rear.

Driving the narrow windy road to Cape Tribulation, with the rainforest forming a tight arch over our heads was a real treat. When I was here 10 years ago with Dad and Sarion, this was the end of the sealed road in northern Queensland. Since then, they have built a sealed loop of road round to Cooktown, further north, but they haven't managed to dull the romance of coming to the end of the road in Cape Trib.

On the way back down the coast towards Cairns we stopped at the Rainforest Insect museum to get a closer look at some of those horrifying insects I mentioned.

Some of them actually turned out to be quite cute in their own green and scaly way!

We have now arrived in the civilisation of Cairns and the hospitality of my aunt Jenny and uncle Hugh. It's all south from here on in.

Swimming with the fishes

At Kalbarri, 550km north of Perth we were greeted by a plague of flies brought out of the bush by easterly winds. From the cliff-tops we enjoyed majestic sea-views through fine-mesh head-nets. Thankfully the flies were not biters, but they swarm incessantly (and maddeningly) around one's head. Without the head-nets the blighters would seriously drive you insane in a matter of minutes!

Each morning in Kalbarri, local woman Joyce has made a sport of feeding the huge pelicans that live on the beach, attracting a crowd of tourist onlookers into the bargain. We went along expecting the usual fairly mundane animal-feeding attraction, but what we actually got was half-an-hour of priceless entertainment! It immediately became apparent that Joyce is the kind of fearless, no-nonsense battle-axe that is manufactured only in Australia. Joyce had started off by explaining the finer points of the pelican life-style to the small assembled crowd, when Uncle Percy, the biggest and greediest of the pelicans, decided he couldn't wait for her to finish and swooped in to trough from the bucket of fish in her hand. There followed a titanic battle between woman and beast – evidently seasoned foes – in which the latter most certainly came off worse.

After a quick demo, Joyce asked for volunteers to feed the pelicans (Andy was one of the “lucky” ones picked to shove a slimy fish into a sharp, snapping beak). Hilariously, during the whole thing, Joyce testily fired insults at audience members, generally for their ineptness or squeamishness at feeding the birds. After asking one child his name, Joyce glowered at his mother and decried “why do people give kids such ridiculous names?” - it was pure gold!

In Kalbarri National Park, we visited impressive gorges and this wind-carved natural window above the Murchison River.

Further north, at the base of the Peron Peninsula, we came upon the stromatolites of Hamelin Pool. Biologists among you may recall these beasties from lectures on the origins of life on Earth. The stacks you see in the shallow hypersaline waters of Hamelin Pool are actually colonies of cyanobacteria, which are thought to be similar to some of Earth's earliest life. Life on Earth began around 3.7 billion years ago; incredibly some of these stromatolites have been dated to 3.2 billion years of age.

Although it was fiendishly hot at Hamelin, we found some respite from the heat and flies further up the peninsula, camping on the beach at Denham.

After a day relaxing in Denham, we drove 25km to oddly named Monkey Mia.

In the waters of Shark Bay, off Monkey Mia live several hundred dolphins. Of these, a handful have become friendly with the resort owners, coming close enough to shore to be entertaining for tourists, in return for a daily feeding of fish.

Each morning, the tourists line up along the beach, in a procedure very similar to that described in the last blog for the dolphins at Bunbury. The dolphins come to shore, and the officials (all volunteers for the government's Department of Environment and Conservation, DEC) pick out people from the crowd to wade into the water and hold a fish out for the dolphin to take. As we were there in the quiet season, the crowd was small, so Andy and I each had the honour of feeding a dolphin.

Watching the animals interact with each other and the officials was utterly fascinating, and it was clear that, at least while there was food to be had, the dolphins were curious about us too. They swam in the shallows on their sides so that one eye was out of the water and thus able to ogle the reciprocally ogling humans.

Sunset was very welcome on that stretch of coast, not just for it its aesthetic magnificence – this was the magical time when the goddam flies disappeared!!

While in Monkey Mia, we took a boat-trip out in Shark Bay aboard the Shotover, a former ocean-going racing catamaran.

On the water we spotted dugongs, loggerhead turtles, dolphins, tiger-sharks, sea-snakes, and this massive manta-ray – around 3 metres in width. Back on the beach, we snorkelled with sea-turtles (green turtles, I think).

Six hundred kilometres north, at Coral Bay and Cape Range National Park, we spent several mercifully fly-free days snorkelling Ningaloo coral reef. Garish fish from the size of a thumnail to that of a car-tyre abounded on the equally varied coral. Andy even saw a metre-long reef-shark. Of course, we lack an underwater camera, so we'll have to remember those adventures the old-fashioned way!

From the Cape Range we have hot-footed north (“hot” being the operative word – it's a couple of weeks since there was a day that didn't top 35 celsius!). We are currently at Karratha, the principal town of the Pilbara, a vast red cauldron of metals and minerals that have made Western Australia wealthy. Broome is our next stop, and the point at which we begin to head east across the “top end”.

Of grog and gravity

The attractions of Margaret River in WA's south-west corner are twofold: fine surfing beaches and fine vineyards. After a couple of days attacking the former (we have now acquired a second boogie-board!), we set out on our bikes to explore the latter.

We indulged in wine-tastings at several vineyards within cycling distance of our chosen camp-site. However, our bicycles mysteriously became quite unstable after a few tastings, so we headed back to camp to cool off with an ice-cream from the dairy farm next door.

In the neighbouring town of Busselton the main attraction is the 2km long jetty – “the longest in the Southern Hemisphere” was the proud boast in the tourist literature.

Charming Busselton carried a faded yet defiant air. Quite tangible was the sense of civic pride in the town's crumbling jetty, now so dilapidated that it is unable to support the train that was the town's lifeblood for many years – first serving the local timber export industry, then later the tourist trade. Making our way to the end of the jetty on foot nevertheless felt like participating in a great Australian pilgrimage.

At Bunbury we visited a beach where a pod of dolphins habitually comes to the shore, apparently for the sole purpose of interacting with humans. The procedure that has evolved between man and dolphin since the 1960s begins when one or more dolphins approaches the beach. When dolphins are spotted, the humans go and stand shoulder-to-shoulder, knee-deep in the water, in a line parallel with the shore. The dolphins can then approach and interact as they choose, but the humans do not initiate any interaction (all this is policed by volunteers from the nearby Dolphin Discovery Centre). We were told this bizarre ritual happens most days, often more than once. However, in the few hours we were there, only one dolphin approached. All the dolphins are recognisable from their dorsal fin shape, and we were informed this particular animal's name was Tangles (her fin was mangled by a fishing line). She chose not to come close (hence the poor quality photo!), but it was nonetheless exhilarating to share the water with her.

After Bunbury we headed north through the sprawling and soulless resort-towns of Mandurah and Rockingham to mellow Freemantle. The city is home to some of the oldest and most treasured buidings in WA, mostly constructed by convict labour in the mid-1800s. After perusing the engaging Maritime Museum, we took a sedate stroll around the quiet city-centre streets.

Neighbouring Perth on the other hand, was a different kettle of fish entirely. Thanks to WA's resources boom, Perth is no longer the dull cousin of the other state capitals. To take in the sites of the gleaming metropolis, we embarked on a walking tour around the compact city centre.

On the banks of the Swan River stands the copper and glass Swan Bell Tower. The tower stands at the city's heart proclaiming Perth's ultra-modern, cosmopolitan flavour in a voice that harks back to a distant European past – the bells that chime in the tower are from London's St-Martin-in-the-Fields and date back to the 14th century.

If the hustle-and-bustle ever becomes too much for the residents of Perth, they can escape to serene King's Park atop a hill adjacent to the city centre. Our climb up Jacobs Ladder – a seemingly endless flight of stairs up the steep hill – was rewarded with spectacular views of the city, as well as delightfully manicured gardens encompassing arboreal marvels like this fig tree.

And if that wasn't enough time-out for the Perthians, pristine (and almost empty!) City Beach is just a few kilometres away.

Having had a pleasant dinner with Jonathan (who you may recall from the “Christmas down under” post), we headed north out of Perth. At Yanchep National Park we had a close encounter of the furry kind with some koalas. Koalas are native only to the eastern states of Australia, so these here in WA were captive.

Our next stop along the north-bound highway was the Gravity Discovery Centre, home of the leaning tower of Gingin (Gingin is the nearest town). The centre is located on the site of AIGO (Australian International Gravitational Observatory), which is part of an international effort to detect the flexing of space-time caused by gravitational waves. It is thought that gravity, like light, travels in waves, which warp the fabric of the universe as they pass. At AIGO scientists hope to detect gravity waves through the alteration of interference patterns between two 60 metre long laser beams that would announce the passing of a gravitational wave.

Among the entertaining exhibits-cum-experiments was the opportunity to recreate Gallileo's famous experiment by dropping different weights (in this case water balloons) off the leaning tower, to demonstrate that all objects fall with the same speed due to gravity.

After our geek-fest at the leaning tower, we headed out to the Pinnacles Desert near Cervantes. Nobody knows for sure how this array of natural tombstone-like rocks came to be scattered in the sand behind the coastal dunes, but the geologists do know that they are relatively young at around 500,000 years old. The experts' best guess as to their origins is that the limestone bedrock became hardened around tree-roots, and that hardened rock is now all that remains after the surrounding softer rock eroded away.

From here we continue north up the coral coast toward the Kimberley.