Our Monday morning roll out began with a trip to the visitor's center in Derby to get the latest road condition updates, a quick fuel up, and then a stop at the Gibb River Road road conditions sign for a "before" photo.
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| With a boab in Derby |
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| Kate, Gaia, and Tessie: Girls Trip! |
If Broome is the Gateway to the Kimberley, Derby and the GRR are the heart of it. I mentioned in my last post that the Kimberley is home to lots of unique species of plants and animals, but the boab is probably my favorite of them. The above photo will not be the last giant, ancient tree that you'll have to look at, dear readers. But it was early in my love affair with the things.
Boabs are only found in this part of Australia, not even extending much beyond the WA border with the Northern Territory. Their close cousins, the baobabs, are only found in some bits of mainland Africa and the island of Madagascar. Their name, boab, is actually a perversion of baobab (Australian linguistic laziness strikes again!). Anyway, these sometimes gorgeous, sometimes hideous, bulbous, ancient trees are scattered across the landscape, sometimes standing alone, or sometimes in copses with many trees of different ages. Don't worry, y'all: I have photos.
While we're on the subject of my tree obsession, another candidate: the kapok tree. They look like a child's drawing of a tree with bright yellow flowers... where the artist forgot to add leaves. They're basically just sticks in the ground with vibrant yellow flowers. Later in the trip we learned the flowers are actually edible and make a nice addition to salads!
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| Kapok flower, fallen from the tree |
Anyway. Traveling. The first bits of the Gibb were, to our surprise, paved! I had assumed the whole track was just corrugated dirt, but most of the first day's drive was paved (NB: Aussies call paved roads bitumen. Americans call them asphalt. I do not, frankly, know if this is because of a difference in materials used. I just remember it took me a long time of living here to know what people were talking about when roads were discussed). Our first stop along the way was to Windjana Gorge campground. The Park Ranger was an absolute gem and he suggested we camp not in the "quiet camp" section, as we planned, but to head into the "generator use" section instead. Camp rules dictate that generators be turned off by 8pm anyway, but the thought of generator noise scares people off so that the quiet camp area ends up being really crowded a lot of the time! It was amazing advice that we followed for the trip's duration and it never failed. Way more elbow room, still quiet: amazing.
So we got settled into our campsite and headed straight out for a hike into the gorge before sunset.
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Mildly alarming start to a hike
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| Oceane entering the gorge trailhead |
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| My first freshwater croc |
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| Windjana Gorge from Sunset Beach |
Windjana is such a spectacular start to the Gibb. Beautiful, rust-colored cliffs; cool critters (we saw rock wallabies while we were hiking but I'm too slow with the camera... lazy, floating crocs are more my speed); and your campsite is right there. It was magic. It was also the first place we saw notices about cane toads on the journey.
Right at the trailhead we saw a "cane toad disposal" box. They're a poisonous invasive species without any natural predators here, and they spread fast. One biologist we met on the road told me that a female cane toad can lay 30,000 eggs twice per year! So they're a real issue.
We didn't see any in the afternoon, but when Andrew went to the toilet later in the evening, there was one inside. So he, good citizen that he is, took it upon himself to remove the toad and carry it to the disposal box about 500m away. But he didn't have a bag or gloves or any kind of protective gear (remember, they're poisonous), so he improvised:
Next morning we were up and out to check out another National Park nearby, Tunnel Creek. It's a whole network of caves in the hills, with a beautiful little creek that cuts right through the whole thing. The hike/swim takes you through the main cave, but there were lots of little offshoots with bats squeaking about.
The crocs at Tunnel Creek are all meant to be freshies, so 80% of their diet is insects. The remaining 20% is small amphibians, reptiles, and fish. At this point in our journey, however, we were not yet privy to this knowledge of their dietary habits. As far as I was concerned, all I could see was teeth! So when Jess and I fell behind the group and had to do a waist-deep walk across the creek with a croc floating directly in the ONLY route, we were a little... apprehensive. We both had head lamps on, so we just kept them sighted on the critter the whole time and hoped that everything we'd heard about freshies not being aggressive was true. When we walked into the water, she submerged and thank GOODNESS our torches were bright enough to keep her in our sights... we were nervous! But she just scooted out of our way and let us proceed.
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| Jess |
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| Rock art on the wall outside Tunnel Creek |
We headed back to the campground in time for another sunset and happy hour in Windjana Gorge.
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| What a view! |
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| A bower bird nest in Windjana Gorge
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While Gaia was making a super yummy stir fry noodle dinner for us, a cheeky, shabby looking kangaroo was investigating our campsite.
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| stir fry by campfire |
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| Skippy |
Next morning we had a pretty short drive day but wanted to fit in visits to two different gorges. First up was Lennard Gorge, which was a hike along a pretty little creek that ended with a gorgeous view of a waterfall. Or it was supposed to end with the view. Because Gaia and I are Gaia and I, the hike instead ended only after we'd clambered down the rocky, nature-made steps to the waterfall pool and swum in it.
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| With a kapok tree... see how it's just flowers on stick branches? |
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| View from the bottom |
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| Gaia en route on the "off-road" path |
It was such a beautiful walk and an even more beautiful waterfall at the end of it and we had it all to ourselves! The water was fresh and cool, the sun was shining, and the company couldn't be beat. Magic.
Bell Gorge, the next stop of the day, took us down a little hike through some denser tree cover along another creek. The view opens out at the end of the trail to a huge rock flat where the creek combines with another. The two combined creeks tumble along to a beautiful waterfall, but if you hike across the creek to the far side of the rock flat, up a big hill, and then climb down into the gorge, you can swim in it! So duh, that's what we did.
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| Oceane and Gaia at the bottom of the falls |
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| Bell Gorge falls from the top |
We spent the afternoon swimming around in the falls, exploring deeper into the gorge, and then finally decided we should start the trek out before it got properly dark. We still had to set up camp in Silent Grove, so we got moving.
The camp site was situated between boab and eucalyptus trees which promised a raucous morning of cockatoo commotion, but it was pretty cool to feel so very much in Australia with a simple look at my surrounding plant life. Sometimes I kinda forget, you know? And then a flock of cockatoos will fly overhead and I think "damn, I'm living in a place where these are the natives!" and just feel so very lucky.
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| Silent Grove campground |
Thursday morning we had a long drive to get to our next campground so we did our best to get up and out early. We had to drive to Mornington Station, a privately held former cattle station that is now a massive hub of environmental sustainability research in the Kimberley. The station is now dedicated to raising funds for the Australian Wildlife Conservancy through camping, tours, and research undertaken right on the property. It's also a remarkably pretty stretch of drive to get there!
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| Andrew in Bluebush |
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| Oceane and Gaia |
Next morning our plan was to go soak up some time in Dimond Gorge. I woke up quite early, quite by accident, so I woke Gaia up and talked her into going for a dawn hike to watch the sun rise over the ranges. She doesn't like to miss out on adventures for silly things like sleep anyway, and let me tell you. It was so. Worth. It.
We got back to camp right around the time that everyone else was rolling out of bed, so we still got to have leisurely breakfast before heading out to Dimond Gorge!
It's possible to hire out canoes from the camp that are set up and ready to go at the waterside once you've driven the 20km or so from camp to the gorge itself. The distance is misleading, though, because it took nearly an hour and a half to traverse those k's. We hired one canoe for three people and broke up into two groups to go out. Lots of fun, terrible canoe skills (at least in my boat with Gaia and Oceane), and a chance to take cat naps in the sun while waiting for the others. The adventure portion of the day's plan didn't begin til we were trying to leave, though.
There used to be a law on the books in Western Australia that all cars need to have little devices called immobilizers installed. They're little computer chips that prevent the engine from starting if the chip isn't in close enough proximity to the ignition when the key is turned. It's meant to be a security feature. All of that sets the scene nicely, I think, for the fiasco that happened as we tried to leave Dimond Gorge.
Jess, you see, doesn't have a spare car key. So when her key broke as she turned it in the ignition to leave the gorge about 30 mins before sunset, we thought we could be in some trouble. Not to worry, though: Jess hopped out, grabbed a pair of pliers from her toolkit in the back and used those to turn the key. The engine kept turning over and over but just wouldn't kick on. Which is when we remembered the immobilizer. It must've fallen out of the key when it broke. So all 6 of us were crawling around on hands and knees, in a dusty prickle patch where the car was parked, looking for a tiny electronic chip about half the size of my pinky fingernail. With 30 mins to sunset. 20kms from a wilderness camp situated 90kms from the turnoff onto one of the most rugged dirt roads in Australia, and another 250kms from that turnoff to the nearest town with an auto electrician who could program a new immobilizer. When Mia spotted it after 15 minutes of desperate searching, we tried to stay calm. When Jess, hands shaking, managed to get the key back together enough to turn it in the ignition, we all held our breath. When the car roared to life, tears were shed. What a SNAFU!
By the time we drove back to camp and showered, we couldn't manage to cook anything more than instant noodles for dinner. But man oh man did they ever taste good! A biologist working at the sanctuary did an evening presentation on the kinds of environmental controls they're putting in place to help with invasive species that have decimated native wildlife (like feral cats and cows, cane toads, and others), which was fascinating, but all of us headed to bed straight after. It was a long day.
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