We stayed the night in Halls Creek, a pleasant town with some nice scenery on the banks of the Fitzroy River. When I mentioned to a fellow traveller in Derby that we were headed for Halls Creek, she said that on no account should we consider stopping there, but instead hightail it for Kununurra. It was interesting arriving in a town where the vast majority of the people are indigenous. Most of the aboriginal population seem to spend their time sitting around street corners, or in the parks and garden, doing nothing. My ignorance, if not my prejudice, was stimulated when we started to wander around the town. The Visitors information centre was manned by two ladies, one Chinese, and the other a Kiwi. The bakery was staffed by a crew of Chinese, except the lass on the coffee machine who was Scandanavian. The waitress at the cafe was Peruvian, and we had a jolly chat about her suburb in Lima, Miraflores, which I had visited. The barman was Thai. At the hotel, the receptionist was a white ozzie (I don't know how she got in - probably a mistake), and my coffee was delivered by a girl from Latvia. Does this all mean something ? probably not ! We had a lovely walk at the Geike gorge, the last certified 'saltie' free watercourse. I took a scenic flight over the Wolfe Creek meteor crater, which together with Meteor Crater in Arizona is the best preserved crater in the world. We flew down in an ancient Cessna 207, which I observed had a take off performance comparable to that of an airbus A380. The crater itself was formed when a meteorite weighing 50,000 tonnes impacted the desert, a mere 300,000 years ago.
After Halls creek, we set out for Kununurra, which proved to be a delightful 'company town' set up for the Ord River Scheme, but still flourishing today. Tourism is big business here, and we snaffled one of the last rooms available in the town. Lake Argyle, formed when the Ord river was dammed, once in 1962, and then again in 1969, has a maximum surface are of 2072 square kilometres, and to my eye, is less of a lake, and more of a sea. Unfortunately, the irrigation plans of the 60's to farm enough rice to feed all of China, have not been realised, as pests and heat accounted for all the crops. The original settlers of this part of the world were the Durack family. Their historic homestead would have been inundated by the new dam, so the authorities commendably disassembled the entire building, stone by stone, and re assembled it on a nearby hill. The hedge around the homestead is home to a bower bird, who busies himself collecting and arranging his treasures. He only likes pure white objects, plastic spoons are a favourite, and the lady on the desk told us that when her back was turned, he collected all of the polystyrene cups from the kitchen, and transported them to his lair. After viewing the magnificent lake and surrounding engineering works, we wandered across a bridge which spanned the spillway creek. The creek was in full flood (despite it being the dry) and it is no exaggeration to say that one could have white water rafted on it ...except... Cecile called up from the other end of the bridge, where I had been observing a large goanna swimming. She had found some crocs ! Now I have read that 'freshies' are not dangerous, but let me tell you that close up a 3 metre 'freshie' is deserving of respect - well my respect anyway. Just 2 kilometres beyond the township of Kununurra is the Mirima National Park, a sort of mini Bungle Bungle, full of glorious rock formations and interesting flora. True to form, we got lost on a bushwalk in the park and emerged from our adventure scratched all over by the spinifex.
Just a couple of other events worth mentioning. We almost had our first serious traffic incident whilst on the way to the Ord River. We came around a gentle bend with me at the tiller. We were travelling at 110 kms, and were suddenly confronted by a slow moving vehicle in the opposite lane, being passed by a car, now in my lane, despite not having any vision around the corner, and having a double white line. As I went for the anchor, instead of falling back behind the slow moving vehicle, or accelerating to pass him before I arrived, the driver of the overtaking car elected to exit the road all together, and speeded along the dirt adjoining the road. I therefore suddenly found myself passed on both the left and the right at the same time. Interesting. I read somewhere that the Northern Territory Government had trialled car mounted cockpit voice recorders imported from the aviation industry, to try to account for the level of carnage on their roads. Apparantly the most common final words are " Hold my beer and watch this !" Speaking of cars, I just changed the tyres again only 26,000 kms after the last new set I bought in Launceston. I was down to racing slicks, and this after rarely leaving the highway. We have driven 67508 kms, and the consumption is heading north again as we speed in the Territory, it is now averaging 6.2 l/100kms.
By the way, I see that Tony Abbott has achieved a miracle worthy of Mary Mackillop - he has made Malcolm Turnbull look like an honorable man.
