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Two bulls in the Bungle Bungles fighting over a brood of bovine females, at the start of our two-day camping tour in Purnululu National Park.
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We finally made it to Purnululu National Park in Western Australia (close to the NT border), 250km south of Kununurra, along a very bumpy 55km bogged dirt road – not recommended on a full stomach. Purnululu is home to the Bungle Bungle ranges, famous for the "beehive domes" (above) – the striped orange and black rocks caused by alternate layers of sandstone containing iron oxide (the orange colour) and cyanobacteria (the black colour), one of the oldest lifeforms on earth. These sandstone mounds are around 20 million years old – crikey!
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Air-guitar riff in the Bungle Bungles.
I liked visiting Purnululu NP as it's full of fascinating geological structures and stunning scenery, without the crowds that you get at places such as Uluru. You drive for five hours to get there, and there's really nothing else all around. If you want to stay overnight, you have to bring your own gear and camp. The risky dirt road that leads into the park also turns most self-drive holidayers off – you really need a 4WD to get through it, and you need to be able to know how to handle one, too. Our minibus didn't escape unscathed, as our trailer detached and its towbar ended up punching a hole into the back of the bus. You get the feeling that Purnululu is still in its infancy as a tourist destination; another decade and there'll be hotels all around. |
Inside spooky Echidna Chasm, Bungle Bungles.
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Our guide, Barry, walking towards Cathedral Gorge, Bungle Bungles.
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Kungkalahayi lookout, the Bungle Bungles.
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Sunset at Kungkalahayi lookout, the Bungle Bungles.
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A star trail photo in Purnululu NP that didn't quite work – it's over-exposed and looks as if it's almost daylight. Also, clouds moved in and formed a haze, and I pointed the lens too far away from the south pole, making the streaks almost vertical. Still, when I ramped up the colours and contrast it made for an eerie picture.
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Kris treated us to a helicopter flight over the Bungle Bungles – exhilarating! Though the shudder of the helicopter didn't make for very clear photos – I got only a few good ones at the end of the flight.
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Bungle Bungles by air.
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Beehive domes from the air.
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Boab tree. I like these trees – not least because they're so photogenic. This species is only found in the Kimberley region (northwest) of Australia, thriving in very arid areas.
Two other species of the genus Adansonia can be found in South Africa and Madagascar. There are two theories about how boab trees arrived in Australia. One says the seeds have floated here from Africa and spread from the coast. The other theory suggests boabs might have survived from the time when Africa and Australia were both still part of one continent, the ancient Gondwana, 65 million years ago. Some boabs in Australia are more than 1000 years old, but they're difficult to date as the trunk doesn't produce rings. Indigenous people traditionally eat the roots, fruit and seeds of the boab. Word of warning: do not eat a jar of pickled chilli boab root in one sitting, as I did, unless you have direct access to a toilet. |
Cable Beach, Broome.
So we finally made it to Broome, the last stop for Kris on our Aussie Interior trip. Although it seems slightly eco-unfriendly to be able to drive vehicles onto the beach, we loved scooting along, and it made it possible to escape the crowds. Broome is famous for its powerful tides. There are three types of tides in the Broome area: king, spring and neap. There is no scientific definition for king tides, they refer to unusually high tides, usually occurring once in winter and once in summer. Broome's king tides occur in March/April every year, rising up to 10m. The nearby town of Derby in the Kimberley has tides that reach up to 11.8m – the second biggest in the world (after the 15m tides in Nova Scotia). Spring tides are high tides that occur every 14 days at the new and full moons. Neap tides are the smaller tides that occur every 14 days at the half moon. Anyway, even over the six days I spent in Broome, I saw the strength of these tides in action. The first few days we were in town, Kris and I could drive onto the beach pretty easily with 100m between the dunes and the water (see above). On the last two days I was in Broome, however, I rode down to the beach at the same time, only to find that I couldn't go any further – there was only about 10m of dry sand before I hit the water! These huge tides are also the catalyst for the "Staircase to the moon" phenomenon (see photo below). And, at low tides, prehistoric dinosaur footprints dating back 130 million years can be seen in the rockbed at Gantheaume Point (we weren't there for the right tides, though). |
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Reflections on Cable Beach.
Cable Beach got its name when, in 1889, a telegraph cable was laid from Broome’s west side to Singapore, connecting Australia to the rest of the world. Interestingly, when Broome was a booming pearl hub 60 years ago, many rich master pearler families got their laundry sent to Singapore to be professionally cleaned, as it was quicker and cheaper than having it done in Perth or Darwin. Today, Cable Beach attracts 230,000 tourists a year, including 40,000 from overseas. |
Who dat?
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Sunset over Roebuck Bay. Great photo Kris – I should get shoe sponsorship.
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And this would be an ad for anti-hair loss treatment.
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Fossil watch ad... if I were a celeb.
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Cable Beach camel ride.
The second camel ride on our trip – we were obviously really loving it. The funniest part of the Cable Beach camel rides was they start from the nudie section of the beach, but they don't tell you that when you book the rides. So often young kids on camelback get a surprise when they see for the first time wrinkled hippies in their birthday suits. |
Kris on his camel.
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The Lonely Planet detailed a camel ride tour operator fiasco that occurred several years ago: There were originally four or five camel ride companies with their own licences costing about $500 each per year, then, one year, one tour company out-foxed all the rest by offering the council $100,000 for all of the licences, effectively putting the other companies out of business – including the very first company that had started up the industry on Cable Beach. There was an uproar and the duped businesses threatened to sue the council, but I think the entire incident was resolved as all four companies were back in business when we were there.
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Japanese Cemetery, Cable Beach.
As many people know, the reason for my visit to Cable Beach was to do research into the Japanese pearl diving community that existed there pre-, during and post-WWII. Although initially there didn't seem to be much of a traditional multicultural community in Broome, I realised that's because all the tourist places are run by out-of-towners – lots of backpackers go there to work for a few months, and there are many semi-retired nomads who spend 6 months of summer in the southern states, and 6 months in Broome. When I interviewed part-Japanese/part-Chinese/part-Indigenous resident Pearl (yes, I kid you not), I realised in her part of town there are quite a few families with Asian and Indigenous ancestry. But many more have moved away to Darwin, Queensland and Perth. Unfortunately the town of Broome itself doesn't have many Asian architectural features – apart from streets such as John Chi Lane and Shiba Lane – as a fire destroyed many of the buildings in the 70s, not to mention the town was bombed by the Japanese in 1943. Very low tides at the Broome jetty still reveal remains of Dutch sea planes bombed by the Japanese, and the wrecks of the flying boats can be seen on the muddy floor of Roebuck Bay. |
The red iron-rich sands of Roebuck Bay.
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Me at Roebuck Bay, right before I spooked myself when I waited in the dark for more than an hour by myself to watch the Staircase to the Moon (below).
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Staircase to the Moon.
Although Kris had already left, I had timed my trip so I would get to see the Staircase to the Moon. I had seen photos of this phenomenon in advance, and wondered whether it would really be worth seeing. Well, it was. Photos don't really capture the beauty of it, but there's something really eerie and amazing about watching the moon slowly rise over water, turning from deep red to bright orange to white. The Staircase can be seen roughly three nights each month in winter, and is caused by extremely low tides and the full moon rising after dark, so that it reflects onto the muddy flats, forming "steps". As you can imagine, it's become quite the tourist trap, with exclusive restaurants offering three-course meals with a view of the moonrise, turning off all the lights while someone plays the panpipes or there's someone on the didg in the background. Ha! There's also markets by Town Beach when the moon rises in this way. |
Cable Beach, Broome.
I wasn't sure if I would like Broome as I'd heard it was quite touristy ("The most written-about small town in Australia," as someone at the Broome Museum told me), but I did really enjoy it and wish I'd spent more time there. Cable Beach is amazing, and there are some great restaurants in town, and heaps to see and do – albeit everything is pretty expensive. Next time, I'd like to stay at a nearby town that isn't so touristy but still has amazing beaches... I'm sure they exist! But, in some ways, Broome really is just a small town still. When I was leaving in a cab on my way to the airport, the driver asked me if I'd been at such-and-such pub (couldn't catch the name) the previous night. Me: "Which pub? Was there a band playing there or something?" Cab driver: "No. It's basically a tittie night. There's a competition for the girl with the best breasts. The winner gets $500." Me: "No, I wasn't there, sorry." Him: "Nah, you don't look the type." Didn't look the cup size is more like it! But, yeah, a whole 500 smackoes. A backpacker could last almost a month on that staying in a 8-bed mixed dorm surviving on watered-down beer and two-minute noodles. Yeah, Broome. Small town. (Here's a blog by a girl who somehow visited the pub on its topless night: http://sitelines.humanities.curtin.edu.au/vol2no1/Kaleveld_Dreams.html) |
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