We were cold last night!…. Thank you fellow Tasmanians for that groan of sympathy.
Here we are in Derby, on the coast about 200k north of Broome, so how did we get cold? Well we attended a community ‘Long table dinner’ on the mud flats at the Dinner Tree; a huge boab where the old time drovers used to rest for dinner before the 5km cattle drive up to the port. We did think to wear long trousers, shoes and socks, but a jacket – of course not; we put them away about 3 weeks ago. As for the people from Darwin in shorts, thongs and t shirts!
It was a very good night; good meal, good entertainment and a huge bonfire, but still we had to head home about 9pm to thaw out.
Last week we left you as we were heading in to Halls Creek. Oh dear, another testament to the failure of Europeans to come to grips with the isolation and weather of northern Australia.
Quickly on to Fitzroy Crossing and a boat trip up Geike Gorge. Gorged out we might have been; but this gorge is carved out of a Devonian (200m years ago?) reef so presented a picture of weather and water carved limestone. You start to realize how ‘small’ Sydney Harbour must be – we keep getting interesting comparisons. For example the water flow through Geike Gorge last wet would have filled it in 12 hours! In the attached picture you will note a distinct change in colour of the cliffs. Up until about 10m above the current river level the cliffs are basically white. This is the average river height during the wet. The recent wet was around 1m above that!
At least Fitzroy Crossing offered some of the trappings of civilisation, including a good tourist information centre (the IC at Halls Creek was a shambles). As a result we have made our booking for the ‘Horizontal Falls’ trip on Tuesday 2 August (first available date) and also back tracked about 100km to see the Mimbi Caves.
We were the only visitors to the caves that Thursday, and got the full treatment from our aboriginal guide, Ronnie. Terrific morning! They are located in the same Devonian reef and is an important aboriginal site – so we found not only interesting geology, but also saw rock paintings and were told stories of the aboriginal heritage. We also enjoyed a couple of songs from Ronnie over our morning tea of tea and damper.
Arrived in Derby (population 5000) on Friday, and here we are resting until Tuesday. Not a real lot to the town; I am thinking the 5000 consists 1500 tourists; 3000 aboriginals and 500 other. Biggest tidal range of any Australian port (11.8m). Our list of little repair items grows, but they won’t get looked at here – “Oh, you can probably get that done in Broome” is the catch cry.
Only one planned item next week – The theater production ‘Jandamarra’ in some nearby gorge! Google him if you can not wait until next week! Week after is the Horizontal Falls ex Derby. So we will be hanging around here for another 10 days or so.
A number of vans have names on them – many associated with Spending the Kids Inheritance. But we really liked one we have seen here; ‘What Inheritance?’. With apologies to Nathan, Ryan, David, Alison & Simon!
