Having recovered from the Broome speedway and one of the greatest injustices in the football season we spent yesterday recovering and shopping.

If you think that a caravanning holiday excludes shopping you will be sadly mistaken. I am not talking about the necessities of life but the items you should have had if you had planned better.

We went to another park concert where Emmie is staying and listened to some great Australian country music sung by Terry Bennet, a local fellow who had a great wit and wrote some hilarious scores, none of which was more amusing than “ Backing the Van”.  Reversing a caravan is without doubt the single most likely cause of MSI ( marital stress index) than any other, such as not removing your shoes when you enter the van, failing to act as the Dump Master or finding other more desirable things to do when your partner needs you elsewhere. The words of his song certainly struck a note with most of the audience particularly when he referred to that “know all” smart a…. fellow caravanner who appears at a time of stress and who seeks to humiliate you with his parking skills whenever given the chance! 

At least everyone was laughing.

On Tuesday morning I visited BOAB Health Services to meet with General Manager, Matt Burrows and Bernadette O’Brien, Podiatry Team Leader with whom the Rotary Club of Hawthorn worked on Podiatry  and Diabetes projects.  This project was deemed a success as it addressed chronic problems related to podiatry and diabetic conditions among the indigenous patients but sadly it is an going challenge.

They asked me to extend their appreciation once again to Hawthorn Rotarians  Ian Bentley, Dr Tilak Dissanayke, Denbigh Richards and all Hawthorn Rotarians who made the projects a success.

It was great catch up with BOAB Health while in Broome.

An observation I have made is that there is a slight change in the demographic of caravanners compared to a few years ago. There are more families travelling with their children attending to school work along the way. Very different to many but good luck to them if it can be achieved.

There are now young and old working remotely and as I sat outside my van I note that there were many returning from the coffee vendor bar with their latte’s or whatever using a particular individual style. Some holding the cup using the finger (top) and thumb (bottom) to avoid burning themselves, others preferring the single cup grasp position  whilst walking back to their caravan. Their  communication window to the world is firmly in their back pocket, which presumably provides their link to work as they progress slowly to their office on Site No  99?

The gait of homo sapiens has changed from when we first walked on two legs to neanderthal times to  mankind to day but will the coffee run cause yet another change in the gait? Wow, has Covid changed our lives.

Driver Noel and Co – Driver Marjorie are not so lucky as our skills are not appreciated mainly due to age discrimination, which seems a form of elder abuse at times. But we are resourceful if nothing else and headed off to the Broome Turf Club for Ladies’ Day, fashions on the field and a bit of good old fashioned punting, champagne all those trappings appreciated by our racing aficionados Rush, O”Donoghue, Bisset and Faulkner and no doubt many more.

The dark brown sand which is watered and raked between events to hardly resembles turf!The Bookies trembled as we entered the betting ring resplendent in the fashions acquired for the event.

We were not entering the fashion stakes but preferred to concentrate on paying for our holiday!

Marjorie started in style backing three of the  first  four winners, a very promising start but then greed took over and is so often the punters lament, we succumbed to the attractive odds offered by the bookies. Finished the day up, but still need to pay for the holiday.

Pizzas on the beach looking at yet another magnificent sunset ended a day of fun and great memories even though So Sway in the last could have financed a classy restaurant dinner if it had won. Tonight was to be the Matilda’s night of the stars. I had booked  for Broome’s  Astronomy Experience and that was so good under clear outback skies with an array of excellent telescopes and a commentary by Greg Quick , a contemporary of the well known British Astro Physicist Brian Cox.

Before the sun goes down the site is being set up for the Astronomy show. It was indeed a spectacular star show.

I must say the town of Broome has so much to offer other than a fabulous beach and spectacular sunsets.

On Thursday we decided to catch up with some shopping and visit the town to take in the local points of interest. While having a cup of coffee in a shopping plaza we witnessed some of the original Australians in full flight with a very heated debate between two groups. The language was threatening ( not to us) vile and very loud. The locals just passed by as if nothing had happened but to an outsider like myself and a few others it was a shock.

Broome’s history reveals it is and has been for a long time, very multi cultural with fisherman from the Malacca Strait visiting to trade with the locals items in exchange for Mother of Pearl possibly for centuries. The pearling industry has certainly left its mark and there are many interracial people in the region.

From my observations many of the original older  Australians are  trying desperately to maintain their culture and folklore but the young, unlike the generations before them, are embracing new technology and leaving the traditional values behind them. There is an enormous gulf emerging between the two groups no doubt influenced by some of the worst social influences introduced by those responsible for colonisation.

Earlier in the year the region was hit hard by floods but reparation in some communities has been resisted because it will, in their words, result in too many bad influences impacting on local communities as the regions become more accessible to the wider population. The issues are so complex, no doubt largely due to the historical isolation of the original Australians who did not have the opportunity to trade in a much more expansive world and acquire knowledge from other ethnic groups like  the Europeans had through mainly trade contacts with the middle east  cultures and eventually China.

Later in the morning we went to see the camp drafting competition where drovers from the various stations pit their skills against one another in a competition where they “cut out “ a steer from a group of ten and move it through a course to a yard. This is really big up here and the drovers show incredible skill in the competition which makes us look forward to the Broom Rodeo but more of that later.

The next day we had a relaxing morning before travelling about 50 klm north of Broome to visit James Price Point and other parts of the coastline.

It has achieved some public recognition because of the opposition to establishing a LNG Gas Terminal at the location by Woodside, Shell, BP and BHP. The plans have been modified to now a floating  LNG facility which hopefully minimises the potential ecological harm to this special region.

This part of the coastline is unique with its vivid red cliffs and also has the footprints of dinosaurs in the rocks dating back over 60 million years. Unfortunately the tidal pattern denied us the opportunity to see them It is a part of the Dampier Peninsula that should not be missed if you are planning a trip. Attractive beaches do not always provide safe swimming  

 The red dust / sand is everywhere including in the car.

Travelling out there required reducing tyre pressure and driving carefully over protruding rocks and corrugations for about 30 klms, but it was worth it. Everything is big out here, big horizons, big bold colours and a big ocean. There is free camping for caravans on the beach and if I had known earlier we would have included this in our itinerary.

This was to be our last night in Broome so Co Driver Marjorie, Emmie and myself made our way along a very dusty road to a big event on the Broome social calendar,  The Broome Rodeo.

Wow! This was cosmopolitan Broome at its best. The audience was a great cross section of the groups in Broome and there was a great atmosphere. The cowboys really put on a show with buck jumping, bare back riding and bull riding which really tested their physical strength and the audience just loved it. Mind you I am not so sure their enthusiasm was shared with the stock who were wild.

But this is real Kimberley culture and the event provides opportunities for people to come hundreds of klms from the stations and remote communities to join in what is a major social event.

It was great to see so many different family groups mixing together and really enjoying the rodeo and the music to follow.. There would have been a few headaches the next day but not caused by falling off bulls and horses!

Today we are heading to El Questro for a few days where we can relax knowing the Demons have secured a place in the top four in the AFL.

We were really sorry to leave Broome

Sunday morning we rose early and completed all the obligatory checks of equipment including checking tyre pressures and wheel nut tension.  We departed right on 7.30 a.m.  with our two caravan convoy travelling first to  Warmun where we filled up at $2.70 Litre. If we thought that was bad we paid $2.90 litre another 100klm further on.

When one considers we are using up to 60 litres for every 350 klms depending on terrain and headwinds, economic driving is the order of the day which can challenge those who seek to finish the journey in the shortest time. This was a long journey of nearly 600 klm as we passed Fitzroy Crossing and Halls Creek before eventually setting up at a free camp in Mary Pool on the Mary River just off the Victoria Highway.

As many of our readers will be aware. parking a caravan can significantly raise the MSI but on this occasion both Driver and Co-Driver maintained an impressive level of emotional equilibrium as we negotiated a not so level site and had to use equipment to ensure the van was level.

It was an idyllic location set among paper bark gums and we had a stunning skyscape to enjoy.

This was only the second night we free camped but if we thought we would have this site to ourselves we had another thought coming along with at least 30 other caravanners. Having travelled so far on that day we only had another 470 klms to El Questro.

The Kimberley scenery from Fitzroy Crossing is spectacular and every time we pass through this land we always discover something new in the geological structures.

I have often heard this described as the land that time forgot and it is a very apt description as one tries to imagine how it was formed over hundreds of million years ago.

Some of the spectacular geology we see on the journey between Fitzroy Crossing and El Questro

We eventually arrived in El Questro late in the afternoon and relaxed with a well deserved cold drink. Well deserved it was, as there was some difficulty in parking our Gladiator Van on a not so level and small site, but with patience and under the eyes of our fellow caravanners who were anticipating Van Parking Rage we managed reasonably well.

Although we had been to El Questro on a previous occasion when we camped in a tent,  it seems to be even better today.There are so many places to see but I placed Emma Gorge as the top the priority having visited it some ten years ago.Unfortunately Co - Driver Marjorie could not undertake the 1 hour walk in because of the difficult terrain with the walk being rated high on the degree of difficulty.

Emmie and I made the journey which may not have challenged her as much as her octogenarian travelling companion.Emma Gorge is, in my opinion one of the  best gorges I have visited.In 30 C temperatures the journey in is challenging but once you arrive and see the impressive 60 metre waterfall before you  and enjoy diving in to the cold water under the cascading waterfall  it is an experience you can never forget.

Oh my goodness, I feel so old when I try to enter the water  walking over the rocks with significantly less flexibility and balance of years gone by.I am so grateful I can still make it into places like this.

Emma Gorge – The beautiful and not so beautiful

We returned to the campsite early afternoon and decided to head down to the the swimming hole on a stream running off from the Pentecost River at the rear of the caravan park.

It was warm and another swim was anticipated but Co Driver Marjorie soon lost her enthusiasm when arriving to be greeted by the local Snake Catchers with the news they had seen a brown snake but were unable to capture it!

Just part of life in the Kimberley apparently.

  The snake catchers at work. But no snake to be found.

The spirit of adventure continues however as the temperature started to drop toward evening we decided to test our four wheel drive ability on a course graded for experienced four wheel drivers.

There was no time like the present to gain that experience so the Isuzu was put through its paces with first gear in 4WD mode. I wished that I had attended the training when we purchased the vehicle but this was cancelled because of Covid Co- Driver  Marjorie was banished to the back seat as Navigator Emmie and Driver Noel negotiated several river crossings achieved thanks to recently purchased snorkel.

The ascent could be described as a little “hairy” thanks to the very steep grade, sharp rocks and shifting sand on occasions not to mention the muffled sounds from the gagged person in the back.  We kept our nerve and made it to the top after meeting another vehicle which was descending but had to give way to us.

We were very relieved to make it to the summit of Saddleback Ridge and what a view to behold as we gazed out over El Questro’s 700,000 acres.

 Leaving Saddleback Ridge at sunset

 As I have said everything is big up here. 

With 360 degree views bathed in light from a setting sun all the Kimberley  colours  were at their best.

On return we set the low gear descent control which saved the brakes. Excessive braking can cause real problems when the brakes are hot and traversing river crossings. The descent was made as the sun set and with just enough light we were able to navigate the two river crossings across a rocky river floor while  the water was at the bottom of the door.

No crocs were seen on this journey All was well and we made it home safely.

Until the next update best wishes from Noel and Marjorie.