Frontier Spirits
Driving
through the Kimberley, in the remote, rugged northwest of Australia.
A sickening sensation tugged at the pit of my stomach
as our truck plunged over the lip of a dry riverbed, jarred along
its stony bottom, and lurched up the other side. It was the fiftieth
creek we had crossed in the last three hours. My heart was in my mouth,
and my sore butt definitely wished it could be somewhere else.
So distracting was my suffering, I barely noticed the large Toyota
Land Cruiser barrelling around the next bend, bearing down upon us
for a head on collision. Luckily, our driver was paying more attention.
He swerved off the track at the last second, narrowly avoiding the
Toyota, and plunging us into the thick undergrowth. A sharp metallic
crack rang through the cab as we ran head on into a number of large
boulders. We skidded to a dusty halt and clambered out to inspect
the damage. The car bore a jagged scar on its underbelly and a large
dent in the foot rail. “Not too bad,” we thought, nodding
our approval and continuing on our way. This kind of thing happens
all the time in the Kimberley.
It has been said that the Kimberley is Australia’s
last frontier, and with good reason. It is a 350,000 sq km wilderness
in the far northwest of the country, buttressed on one side by the
Great Sandy Desert, and on the other by an uninhabited coastline.
It is home to just 25,000 people, making it one of the least densely
populated places on earth. After 200 years of colonization, European
civilization has barely made its mark.
The principal reason for this is the weather – a Jekyll and
Hyde monsoon climate that varies from baking aridity in the winter
months, to “knock ‘em down” storms and widespread
flood in the summer. In the Wet, easily forded rivers become mile-wide
torrents, temperatures soar to a stifling 40 degrees and all but air
traffic comes to a standstill. Yet, this is precisely what draws most
visitors - the glorious isolation, the rugged beauty of a wilderness
that will never be tamed.
I
had longed to cross Australia’s last frontier from the moment
I had set foot on the continent. It took a lot of planning, but one
June day, accompanied by a group of friends and a brand new four wheel
drive vehicle, my odyssey began. We started in Broome, a bohemian
little town on the West Kimberley coast that is renowned for its long
white sand beaches. It proved a delightful place to visit, but the
real adventure began 287 km farther west, when our steel radials first
bit into the dirt of the Gibb River Road – the track that crosses
the heart of the Kimberley. We would not see the asphalt again for
over 10 days.
The Kimberley’s isolation has made it one of the great bastions
of modern aboriginal culture - a people with a deep and intimate connection
to the land. If you travel with a knowledgeable aboriginal guide,
you will hear countless stories of The Dreaming – the aboriginal
creation myth. These colourful tales of supernatural animals and ancient
ancestors who created the earth pervade every corner of the landscape,
breathing mystery and spirituality into every rock and tree.
Perhaps the most dramatic story is that of Wunggud, The Earth Snake.
Wunggud was an enormous serpent that swam in from the ocean at the
beginning of the Dreaming. She burrowed deep into the earth with her
powerful body, tearing rifts and tunnels in the solid bedrock that
collapsed to form deep valleys and gorges. Water flowed in from the
ocean in her wake, creating the mighty rivers that crisscross the
plains of the Kimberley today.
This story seemed perfectly plausible at our first stop along the
Gibb River Road. Here, the mighty Lennard River had sliced open and
punched holes through the limestone foundation of the Napier Range
with awesome power. Spectacular rock formations, such as the sheer
walls of Windjana Gorge and the dark caverns of Tunnel Creek, dominated
the landscape.
Tunnel Creek was a 750m underground river that had bored its way through
a mountainside. In the Wet it can flood at any minute, but in the
dry you can walk along its sandy riverbanks, wading intermittently
through the cold, still water. The tunnel’s high walls were
rough, but with a rounded shape. It wasn’t hard to imagine the
body of the great Earth Snake slithering through, her scales rasping
along the rocky walls.
Deep within the tunnel, it was black as pitch and more than a little
spooky. A lone shaft of light pierced the gloom from a hole in the
roof. Dozens of bats wheeled through the air, fluttering close to
our heads. Our pulses quickened even further when we saw the unmistakable
red glint of a crocodile’s eyes in a far corner. Was that the
man-eating kind, or just a harmless little nipper?
Windjana
Gorge was no less unsettling. Jagged black walls, 300 ft high, towered
over a series of shallow pools – the remnants of the Lennard
River. Each pool was crammed with crocodiles. Rough scaly bodies splashed
in the water and the hissing and snapping of fighting males reverberated
throughout the gorge. The water looked cool and refreshing in the
heat of the day, but no one was game for a swim.
We were just settling down to dinner that night, at the Windjana Gorge
campsite, when we became aware of something moving around us. Twigs
cracked, something moved beneath the tall grass. Suddenly, a succession
of loud metallic pings resounded from every vehicle in the campsite,
as if someone were pelting them with golf balls.
Before we knew it, we were blanketed in a swarm of giant crickets,
as large as a man’s finger. Thousands of them hopped through
a campsite, bombarding us from every direction like a barrage of microscopic
artillery. They ricocheted off our skulls, ensnared themselves in
our hair and crawled up the backs of our shirts. We were no match
for such a biblical swarm, so we grabbed our dinners and fled to the
safety of our tents.
Once the drama was over, sleep found us quickly. We lay beside the
campfire with heavy eyelids, watching the orange embers slowly fade
to black. A gentle symphony of night sounds filtered through the undergrowth
- the baritone of croaking frogs, the high chirping of crickets, the
rhythmic flutter of bats wings overhead.
I rolled onto my back and gazed up at The Milky Way. It was brighter
than I had ever seen it before, stretching from one horizon to the
other like a film of diamond dust spread over black velvet. My eyes
flowed drowsily over the endless expanse of stars, filling my dreams
as I drifted off to sleep.
Where The Earth Snake came to rest, pools of water
formed between her coils: sacred waterholes that the aboriginals know
as Wunggud places. They are the jewels of the Kimberley; where crystalline
shards of water explode over blood red cliffs and still pools reflect
the cobalt sky like a mirror. The aboriginals believe that many great
powers dwell in the waters. People come to Wunggud places to be cured
of sickness; pregnant women come so that the spirit of their unborn
child may enter their body through the water.
In
time, we too came to revere these places. On the dry dusty trail beyond
Windjana Gorge there were no hotels, no campgrounds, and, most importantly,
no showers. After a long hot day of driving, the virgin waters of
Bell Gorge, Manning Gorge, Galvan Gorge, or any of the other little
oases that lined the road, became our daily salvation from the searing
heat of The Dry.
Barely would the car come to a halt before we were tearing off our
clothes and leaping into the cooling waters. They soothed our bodies
and revitalized our minds in a way that really did seem magical. Whole
days slipped idly by as we lazed in the shade of pandanus trees, showered
in crystal cascades and sought refuge from the searing heat beneath
the glassy waters.
Up until this point, the going had been pretty easy on the Gibb River
Road. Its surface was newly graded and in tip-top shape. Our needle
hovered at a steady 60 kph, and the odometer ticked over with unexpected
speed. The endless expanses of Kimberley country – rocky yellow
plains, dry stunted forest and cloudless blue skies – swam past
us in a blur.
This smooth sailing became a dim memory as we made a turn southward
toward Purnululu National Park (also known as the Bungle Bungle Mountains),
the last stop on our journey. After a brief stretch of asphalt, the
roadway became a mess of corrugations (regular ridges that form on
the surface of the road, like the ripples left on a beach by the outgoing
tide). The car shook violently for several agonizing hours, as if
someone were pounding on the roof with a pneumatic drill. So intense
were the vibrations, I half expected to see parts of the car’s
bodywork go flying off into the bush.
As we drew closer to the park, things got even stickier. A season
of flood and rain had cleaved deep gullies and washouts into the gravel
track. It looked as if the road had been subjected to an aerial bombardment.
On several occasions, the track was so mangled that we were out of
the car on our hands and knees, surveying every possible angle and
wondering how on earth we were going to make it through. Our speed
stagnated to a paltry 20 kph and we spent the rest of the afternoon
bouncing around the inside of the cabin like the beads in a pair of
maracas. Night fell, and we were still far from our destination.
Driving at night was an unsettling experience. Twisted branches, bleached
a ghostly white in the halogen flare of our spotlights, loomed at
us from the roadside. Dozens of tiny pairs of eyes glinted at the
edge of our vision. The dust that kicked up from our tires surrounded
us in a luminous vortex that only heightened our sense of disorientation.
The darkness had swallowed us whole, and we blundered through its
murky innards, unsure of what lay ahead. At this point, a wrong turn
would be a serious problem.
The relief was palpable an hour later, when we first saw the friendly
sight of cars and tents at the Bungle Bungles’ campsite. Too
exhausted to set up camp, we simply rolled out our sleeping mats on
the rocky ground and fell immediately into a hard won slumber.
I awoke suddenly next morning to the piercing howl of a dingo. The
sun had not yet risen and the air was cool and heavy. A fine white
mist shrouded the meadows, as if an ancient spirit were clinging to
the pale trunks of the trees. The pre-dawn sky - pallid and ghostly
blue - coated the land with its melancholy hues.
The whole world seemed to come to a standstill as the sun quietly
approached the horizon; but when the first rays of light struck the
land, everything burst into its full glory. Long dark shadows sprang
from the base of every tree, slithering over the ground like a plague
of black serpents. The white trunks of ghost gums blazed orange and
yellow, as if spontaneously aflame. The red hills were as warm and
fluid as molten lava, and the tall termite mounds that studded the
plains glistened like nuggets of gold.
After a good night’s sleep we were all feeling sufficiently
recovered undertake the overnight hike through Picaninny Gorge, into
the heart of the park.
Exploring the park was an endlessly surprising and bizarre experience.
Striped orange domes of sandstone grew up from the dry earth, like
a metropolis of giant beehives. One would be as perfectly smooth and
rounded as a giant stone egg; its neighbour would be peppered with
holes. Exposed outcrops and slender pinnacles were warped and twisted
until they resembled animals or deformed human faces.
The dry riverbeds were riddled with a maze of shallow channels and
deep gullies; it was a natural labyrinth that at times had us wondering
if we would ever find a way out. The whole place had a schizophrenic
edge, as if a deranged sculptor had been set loose with a hammer and
chisel. I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was walking through
the set of an old Star Trek episode.
The
morning cool soon faded and the sun beat down with exceptional ferocity.
The white sand beneath us blazed like a strip of burning magnesium.
Every rock sizzled like a hotplate, every footfall kicked up clouds
of choking dust. The parched spinifex grass that covered the floor
scraped and jabbed at our legs like a forest of surgical needles.
This was by far the harshest place we had yet visited. Suddenly a
short six-mile hike started to look quite unpleasant.
Fortunately, we soon found ourselves staring into the narrow entrance
to Picanninny Gorge - a dark alley, flanked by twin skyscrapers of
red rock. We continued into the blessed shade and spent the rest of
the afternoon exploring its interior.
The air inside the gorge was cool and heavy. It soared 600 ft above
us, filling our vision in all directions. Its surface was rough and
irregular, scarred by the millennia long battle between water and
earth that resulted in its creation. Dwarfish palms and emaciated
gum trees clung to the vertical walls, taking advantage of even the
tiniest of ledges.
As
we went deeper, the vegetation grew steadily thicker. Soon we were
pushing our way through thickets of eucalyptus, towered over by tall
Livistonia palms. Their fronds gently caressed the red sandstone walls
that were encroaching upon us with ever-greater speed. I felt like
we had discovered a secret garden.
Our final night in the Kimberley was spent in the gorge; we just tossed
our sleeping bags on the sandy riverbed right where we were. I had
been asleep for a few hours when I was woken by a feint scratching
in the sand beneath me. Lifting up my sleeping bag, I was startled
to see dozens of tiny green heads poking up from the sand –
frogs that had been passing the dry season in the damp subsoil of
the riverbed. Their eyes momentarily flicked left and right, before
they hopped off into the bush in search of their nightly meal.
It was the perfect metaphor for the Kimberley as a whole. At first
it can seem inhospitable, a parched and unforgiving wilderness. But
always, just below the surface, there is an inextinguishable life
force that will constantly surprise and delight you. The aboriginals
call this force Yorro Yorro: a constantly recurring process of creation
and rebirth. Each day it revitalizes and renews the Kimberley. It
will do the very same thing to you.
