Kununurra

We are now in Kununurra.  Boab trees abound here. My physical shape has been said to have reminded my colleagues of the boab tree, and with a small head and broadening girth, reluctantly, and embarrassingly, I have to agree.

We feel that finally we have arrived, with the first two weeks being just part of the journey. Of course, for some the journey is as important as the destination, and while we did take a moment here and there to dip into the passing landscape, we did seem a little more intent on just getting here.

I may have mentioned that we needed to make a side trip to Darwin for some family business. Part of this arrangement was to get a package of papers that we needed to sign and then dispatch to Brisbane… (it really is a long story, and one day, if you have an hour to spare, buy me a coffee and I will share it.) Getting a package from Canberra to anywhere slightly off the beaten track is something of a challenge. It turns out that we drive faster than Australia Post, and express delivery is unknown in rural Australia. So the only way was to get express post to Darwin which, as a capital city, has the benefit of express over (three) night delivery, and for us to forgo a night in Katherine and drive from Daly Waters to Darwin. We parked the motorhome in Katherine, unhitched the car and belted on in the little Suzuki, taking advantage of the 130 km/h speed limits on the highway. I posted a little video of Jen’s bold manoeuvre overtaking a road train. I was astonished she did this, as Jen has been known to sit nervously behind a tractor doing 5 km/h for ages to avoid the risk of overtaking, even in the absence of oncoming traffic.

Our friend John, with whom we are journeying, has friends and contacts the breadth of Northern Australia and the Northwest and was able to give us the name of a friend who would collect our parcel. She kindly delivered it to a solicitor, another contact from John’s mysterious past in the North. It was marvellous to meet kind and helpful people when we had been feeling a bit stressed and at our wits’ end.

Another dimension to this saga, was the discovery that, unknown to us, a bank had possession of the title deed to our house – and we needed this document to assist Steven purchase a home in Melbourne. If dealing with Australia Post adds grey hair, dealing with banks definitely causes baldness. I had spent hours catching what I could of internet and phone connections to listen to the most awful “hold” music for the opportunity to speak with someone who seemed incapable of understanding, advising or assisting me in any way. The worst experience was sitting in a suburban Darwin shopping centre car park on a hot afternoon, on hold to two different numbers in the hope that one might come good. My stress was intensified by the need to drain, and I really did not want to leave the phones. Eventually I got a response and was promised that if I got an impossible document to them, they might be able to give me our deed in about 6-8 weeks!

Now, by a stroke of fortune, Jess, our daughter, had kept an email from someone she had dealt with a year ago, and this gave us a real person’s name and an email address. Well, to cut to the chase, he was immensely helpful, phoned me straight away, fixed the problem and in 12 hours the needed document was in the hands of the necessary lawyers in Brisbane. Thus ending nearly three weeks of uncertainty and frustration. We are left to reflect on the question why it is that banks staff the “help centres” with people incapable of helping. Anyway, we can now move on, and we have. To Kununurra.

To catch up with our friends, we had to skip staying at Timber Creek, at the halfway mark from Katherine to Lake Argyle, and drive right through to the Lake.

This is the Victoria Highway, a well-made road, built to cope with the many road trains that connect East with West. The landscape undulates gently, and before long the rolling plains give way to some striking mountains, a preview of the rugged, red mountains of the Kimberley. At one point we shared the UHF with a mustering exercise with a ground crew and a chopper trying to get a herd into some yards. There must have been a defiant part of the mob who wanted to escape along a creek where rounding them up must have been hard, because it elicited some colourful language from the stockmen. Through the crackle of the radio we imagined the snort of the horses, braying of cattle, and the roar of the bikes, but in reality it was pretty tame and the only sound other than the voices of the stockmen, was the chop-chop-chop of the helicopter when the pilot was on voice. We also got a wee thrill when we saw a cloud of dust and the herd as it trotted along a track adjacent to the highway.

Finally we got to the border crossing, and it is a bit like entering a foreign country. We sat in a vehicular queue and waited in turn to be interrogated by the police who looked at ID and checked our pass to enter. Fortunately we had gone to the trouble of filling in all the documentation and downloading the app that proved our right to enter the great state of Western Australia. We did that because it seemed to be one of the requirements, spelt out clearly in the form. The poor copper was glad to see our passes as the people ahead of us had not done the right thing. Next was the quarantine check, and luckily this was a cursory exercise. We confessed to a jar of honey which was snatched from Jenny’s reluctant hands and put on a shelf, no doubt to be later shared among the border officials. We had picked the last of our chilies just before we left, and at Katherine I had chopped them up and put them in the freezer. I forgot to declare them, and they did not check, so we have been still enjoying our home produce.

We spent four wonderful days at Lake Argyle. It was terrific to wind down and do not much at all, especially after being exercised by banks and the post office. Each day was sunny and warm with temperatures ranging between a low of 20 and  up to 29 most days. I gather the wet summer season with its humidity and higher temperatures is a bit more challenging. There is a pretty good bar and food, with Silver Cobbler (aka catfish) being the local delicacy. Recommended.

On our last evening we did a sunset cruise on the lake. I guess we just pottered about the northern end of the lake as it is so vast, it would take days to explore it properly. The shoreline apparently abounded in freshwater crocs, but for some reason I always seemed to be unsighted, so I take the words of my friends on this.

At one point we moored for a half hour so we could have a swim in the lake, hoping to avoid an encounter with the alleged 30,000 crocodiles that call the lake “home.” I dived in, and was astonished to discover later that the water height lifted by almost a metre and caused a minor tidal wave at the dam wall. Was someone being cruel? I Almost forgot about the eclipse which was quite stunning over the hills and lake. They say if you look very hard you can see the mann in the moon.

On Saturday we decamped and took the short one-hour drive to Kununurra where we joined a growing family of grey nomads and travellers who are exploring this part of the world. So, this is the start of seven days here which will see us having a cruise up the Ord River, overnighting at Emma Gorge/El Questro, but also hopefully, continuing to practice at relaxing.

I guess we will have something to write about next week after our Kimberley adventures.

Sorry this episode is a bit long!