Sabbatical XI – Darwin to El Questro

Monday June 3 – Not too sore after race effort, possibly from pre-travel focus on things other than aches and pains.  My flight was at 8:40 am, so I shot for the 6:30 am AirTrain to BNE.  The expected uphill slog through the CBD.  Same homeless guy sleeping on the same cot on the sidewalk, in the same place as past days.  The augen gneiss pavers are nice but hell on rolling luggage.  Gate.  Platform.  Train, and one quizzical thing about Brisbane mass transit: the horizontal and vertical gap between platform and train:

I assume this is a misfit between old stations and new trains.  Expected but mildly cruel on this day when my luggage feels heavy.  Sit.  BNE is the last stop, no anxiety as to that.  Arrive, good-bye to luggage for 3 hours 55 minutes.  Another full flight, another eggy Qantas brekkie.

Darwin, midday.  It’s hot, probably 30 C.  Doesn’t feel that humid, maybe because of the bushfire smoke.  It’s the season for lightening strikes in the Top End.  Uber, learning a lot from my Malaysian driver, although he doesn’t know why my destination, 17 Bombing Road, is so named.  Britz Rentals, and there are the Paul I know, and Paul I don’t, maybe I’ll refer to them as PA and PR respectively.  Add to the pile of gear, prove I’m a licensed driver, truck orientation.  A near new Toyota Hilux (Toyota Tacoma with a real diesel engine, suspension, etc.).  We will fit:

The tires look a little under robust to me, but can’t do much about that but be careful.  Like MG, it will keep us out of trouble. 

Off – for food.  the native gets to drive.  A lot of veg, a lot of meat (PA and PR follow the keto diet) and escape from Darwin.  Quickly into subtropical grasslands with scattered gum trees.  I know this landscape.  Eventually, intermittent fields of termite mounds, buff dirt of the Darwin region.  Not too big, maxing at maybe a meter. Still quite smoky.  South on Route 1.  180 kms, we enter hilly terrain.  

PR seems good to drive as it gets dark.  We chat, all get to know each other again and initially.  I sense it will all be fine.  Through Hayes Creek and Emerald Springs (population seemingly zero).  Bushfires continue:

Our goal is Katherine, NT the only town of any size on this road before Alice Springs.  It gets dark.  The headlights work.  PA and I were in Katherine on our last Top End trip.  Camping and a quick look at the nearby National Park.  This time, we just camp, trusting the amazing app I used in NZ.  Success: we can walk to a good restaurant (barramundi and chips for me) and there is plenty of space to figure out how to put our swags together.  PR just sleeps within the horrible Britz canvas tent, unerected. 

Tuesday June 4 – Another plus of this campground is that it’s walking distance to Katherine Hot Springs and an adjacent coffee bar.  I recon this, starting my usual habit of early morning walkabout.  PA and I eventually go for a look, or in my case a swim:

Well, it’s a thermal pool, but it must be a deep old magmatic heat source as it’s at most 88 F.  No worries, feels great.  PA returns with coffee.  Breakfast, we figure out how to cram all our crap back in the truck and I drive.  The plan is to first travel the Duncan Road, an unmaintained route that serves several large cattle stations.  450 or so kms of hopefully fun dirt driving.  It will connect with Route XX south of the Bungle Bungle Range and Purnululu National Park, which we want to visit again. 

Southwest on Route 1 (the Victoria Highway).  A quick stop in Gregory National Park, loosen up with a short hike:

Australia, right.  Flies: 

Dubious water: 

We stop in Timber Creek for lunch.  I do the math on mileage the Duncan Road, now that we know how the truck gulps fuel.  Our range is unacceptably marginal, given where we can buy diesel.  Thanks Britz.  So PA buys a pair of jerry cans, which we fill and tie on the roof rack.  One the butane stoves the truck came with is also crap, so we search for alternatives in the store.  No go.  Thanks again Britz.  Back in the truck, now that we all smell like fuel.  Oh well.  Onwards to the Duncan Road turnoff:

It gets close to dark, time to camp.  I enlighten the Ps about feeling out the Zen campsite (thanks to Bruce S).  We find it.  Time for a short wander, there’s a good outcrop of limestone across the road from camp, PR gets to hear PA and I go on about rocks.  It has a cool cherty horizon, which looks stromatolitic.  Sleep.

Wednesday, June 5 – Duncan Road is pretty.  Evidence from morning walkabout:

PR drives.  I’d noticed on my morning stroll that the road got more rubbly and rougher up ahead: that limestone unit intersecting the land surface.  We bomb along.  PR and I notice at about the same time that something sounds funny.  Could be the road surface, could be the truck.  It’s not driving badly, but we stop.  Oh crap:

Note the shredded tire and no longer round wheel.

Well.  Block wheels, extract and install spare, put tire remains on roof rack. What to do.  300+ kms forward, no spare, unknown road conditions.  I notice that the spare isn’t holding air super well.  Consensus on Plan B, abandon the Duncan Road, go back to Route 1, and head to Kununurra (the nearest large town) for fixes.  PA has the required-for-foreigners max insurance on the rental, so this will only be a matter of time.  I drive, which seems kind.  I expected at least one blown tire, this one was dramatic but not dangerous.  Insufficient tires.  All that said our group decision making process was easy.  Similar threat/risk envelopes.

The first step of Plan B is back on Route 1 to Keep River National Park, on the way to Kununurra.  It makes sense camp here and hit town in the morning.  After a gingerly return up the Duncan and bit more westerly on Route 1, we reach the park.  Drive as far as we can to the Jarnum Campground, where PA and I camped on our last trip.  It’s new to PR.

Camp, set up, bugger it’s hot, easily 33 C.  Hike anyway.  The rocks here are the same stratigraphy we’ll see in the Bungle Bungle Range, Mesozoic sandstones.  Pretty flat-lying, on top of all the old bedrock.  We sweat long through the subtropical savannah: head-high grasses and reeds, with spaced gum trees and boabs.  Much evidence of periodic fire.  Eventually an overlook:

We loop back to the campground along the margin of the cliff in the picture.  It’s a bit wetter here, likely courtesy of springs in the sandstone, which allows fan palms to thrive:

The soil under the tall grass flora is a sandy red brown loam.  We also see occasional clear patches of ground: floods probably, they don’t look burned.  The soil here is a white quartzitic sand.  This confuses me, and PA when I tell him about it.  Where do you get white sand in a red landscape?  I hypothesize imported flood deposits, but this doesn’t feel right.  We eventually realize that the sandstone of the hills is a clean white quartz beneath it’s thick weathering rind – that must be it.  Local transport, nothing exotic.

Thursday June 6 - Jarnum camp during dawn walkabout:

On to Kununurra.  PR has lived here; PA and I have visited before.  Bridgestone is delighted to fix our problems (new wheel, two new tires, it turns out, as the spare we put on had two leaks.  Thanks Britz).  So coffee, a bit of shopping, and we are out of town within four hours. We’d planned on seeing Kununurra in a few days, as it’s where PR departs for Perth.  Call this a preview

So south to Purnululu National Park.  PR drives.  We pass road trains.  Here’s an example.  62 tires, by my count:

We have all been to Purnululu before, but it’s too cool not to revisit.  The sandstone we saw at Keep River is here eroded into closely spaced striped domes, which as far as I know are unique on this globe.  Before looking at them, we watch the sunset:

Friday June 7 – I go for a run before the Ps are up:

We hike.  It is hot.  There are flies:

I run out of gas and sit and contemplate domes:

PR gets tired:

PA, I dunno:

Purnululu is lovely but has people, so we leave.  I make us stop at Calcio Spring to admire the Halls Creek Fault, which is the major sinistral strike-slip fault on this side of the Kimberley.  It moved laterally, like the San Andreas system in California (which moves dextrally), but a billion years or so before California existed.  At Calico Spring, it’s defined by a huge mass of white quartz.  It’s rare to actually be able to see the guts of such a significant fault system. 

As we get ready to head out, a truck pulls up.  The driver leans out and says, is there anything good down this track?  His partner (female) looks slightly embarrassed.  We tell him about Purnululu, and they head off.  We then speculate, who would drive the 50+ kilometers of exceptionally up and down, windy dirt track from Route 1 to Calico Spring without asking this question first? 

I LIKE this kind of driving, so no worries there.  We commute back out to Route 1, and head south to Halls Creek for diesel.  PR lived here too.  A community of 1000 or so, I think, many Aboriginals; I’ll write more about that when my thoughts are clearer (no problems, just a profound experience of the other).  Halls Creek is here because of gold – the first strikes and subsequent gold rush were around here in 1885.  White quartz-hosted epithermal deposits, like the Mother Lode in California.  The rush didn’t last long, though people still poke about for ore.

We don’t stay in town long.  It’s hot, it’s dirty, and there are flies.  A tad further down Route 1, and we catch the other end of the Duncan Road and head up into the Albert Edward Range.  We find an old track, get the better part of a kilometer off the road, and swag out in a little valley flanked by white quartz ridges.  Dinner, and to sleep.

For a while.  At some point in the early AM, I wake up and hear loud music: the same song (vaguely heavy metal) repeatedly.  And lots of loud Aboriginal dialect.  Car headlights.  I think oh crap, what’s going on?  PR and PA are independently having the same thoughts.  The noise continues, and at one point the headlights seem to get closer.  I wonder, confrontation?  Belligerence?  We move our swags closer to the truck.  I fall asleep.

Saturday June 8 – Walkabout in the morning.  I climb the white quartz ridge by our camp, and peer about for what happened last night.  No one in evidence.  I walk down to the road, where the story becomes clearer: a set of tire tracks, one normal, one all higgly-piggly.  All that noise resulted from an early morning tire change.  Relief.

After a difficult night.

We head further out the Duncan. 

Palm Spring and dunny:

Dunny and Sawpit Gorge:

It gets hot.  There are flies and dust.  It is time to take PR back to Kununurra so he can go back to the world on Sunday.  So Halls Creek, Route 1 through Warmun, Doon Doon, and Dillon Springs.  Travelling along the trace of the Halls Creek Fault and the remnant mountain ridges – all quartzite – that it helped to erect.

Kununurra.  Rowie, a friend of PR, has graciously offered to let us camp in her yard and clean up.  She plans a get together with some of her family, so we stop at the store and buy a contribution, as well as stocking up for the Gibb River Road drive.  Rowie is great.  I learn a lot from her about Traditional Owner groups (Aboriginals) and how they manage in the 21^st century.  PA entertains her daughter and friend with the rubber masks he brought along.  They think it’s Christmas.  We eat.  I play darts (and lose) for the first time since 1996:

Sunday June 9 – Adios to PR at the airport.  We all had a good compatible time together.  I expect to see him and PA again sometime in the states.

The second part of the adventure begins, as Paul and I set out to drive the Gibb River Road:

First stop, El Questro Station, or “ElQ”.  It’s a 16 km detour off the Gibb, with a couple of entertaining, bow-wave inducing stream crossings.  This is why the truck has a snorkel for the air filter.

ElQ was the first cattle station to figure out tourism, being the closest to Kununurra, and now it’s got everything from a five-star accommodation in the old station house to “private river campsites”.  You can guess where we go.  A nice spot by the Pentecost River.  A warning not to swim as there are crocodiles.  There are also flies, dust, and heat.  Paul and I agree we are tired, so we sit in the shade all afternoon, finally rousing for a sunset hike to El Questro Gorge:

More to follow!