AlternateRoute

The night was slightly more peaceful than the previous night but not by much. The architecture of the motel had a heavy Japanese influence insofar as having walls made of paper. This enabled us to hear the TV in the next room as well as all other noises made during the night. The room next door was seemingly occupied by a one lunged, smoking asthmatic with Tuberculosis. Once I had got used to that, someone let off some fireworks at midnight. The fireworks might have been even bigger since they were let off on the forecourt of a petrol station between the bowsers and the bulk LPG tank.
We left Timber Creek and pulled over almost immediately to see the beautiful morning reflections on the mirror like waters of the Victoria River. From here it was a long drive to the Keep River National Park where we took a 30 km detour to walk 1.5 km down the Keep River Gorge to an old cave shelter. The locals used to use it during the wet season and thousands of years of past meals were contained in a midden on the floor. The cave is looking a bit worse for wear and a large section of the roof had caved in. I didn’t see any feet poking outfrom the rocks, so I guess no-one was there at the time.
We continued our ‘mad dogs and Englishmen’ activity in the 30C+ heat to return to the air-conditioned comfort of the beast. Once back on the highway, the Western Australian border loomed quickly. In return for surrendering our remaining fruit and vegetables, the quarantine officer made our day 90 minutes longer as we were now on Western Standard Time.
Another detour saw us driving 35 km off the highway to the dam on the Ord River which forms Lake Argyle. When full this dam is over 50 km long and holds 12 million megalitres. The dam is primarily for irrigation and was completed in the 1960s before  a lot was known about the relationship between irrigation and salinity. Water an tropical warmth are just two of the ingredients for farming tropical fruit, the other is good soil. I am not sure if good soil is in abundance here. Although there is a lot of food produced here, it is still thousands of kilometres from major markets. I don’t know that you would call the scheme a raging success, although I am prepared to be told otherwise.
We had prepared to stay in Kununurra, but all of the caravan parks were full. Besides Kununurra didn’t strike us as being the nicest town around (even though it was the only town around). With a couple of hours of light left we opted to get closer to Pernululu and drove another 100 km to Doon Doon Roadhouse and caravan park (no bar, no motel).
This might turnout to be a peaceful place to stay, once the local kids and their dogs finish their competition to see who can make the most noise.
“There’s nowt so queer as folk” as they say in Yorkshire (or some other place where they talk strangely). The lady in the campervan behind us has just finished cleaning every interior surface of the van, twice, while wearing rubber gloves and has now started to do the ironing. She’s clearly having a great holiday (in an obsessive compulsive kind of way).
Beside us are some Europeans of indeterminable accents. They arrived after us and are sharing the power pole. Their van and ours are parallel with the noses in a line. He has parked only two metres away. When he first pulled up I suggested that if his cord was long enough, he could park on the other side of the grass verge. Now I know Europeans have a different sense of personal space to Australians and figured this was more polite than saying “Mate, this country is 4000 km wide, do you have to camp in my back pocket?”. However since he was only staying one night he declined my suggestion and proceeded to set up a table and chairs for dinner about 1.5 metres from our back door. No wonder they have so many wars.
Also amusing were the five couples from Victoria who had hired 4WDs and were off on a big trip. They were all wearing identical camouflage shorts and had green tops screen printed with the details of the trip. That IS keen. We met the female contingent in the laundry where ten identical sets of clothing (undies possibly excluded) were being fed into the washing machine. We got talking and were told all about the trip by a woman who apologised because she was wearing the top from the 2006 trip. Don’t ever let me go on a trip like that.

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 27th, 2008 at 1800 and is filed under Darwin-Broome 2008. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.