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We’ve just spent a couple of days in Katherine and although we have left the Kimberley’s, we keep talking about it. Little things, like signs at restaurants requiring ‘Kimberley Casual’ dress code ie not bare feet and at least a singlet top. The ‘Kimberley massage’ ie corrugations in the dirt road.
Kununurra was an interesting stop. We mainly used it as a base for seeing the Bungle Bungles which were pretty awesome. We flew over Lake Argyle to begin with and then over a few huge cattle stations before seeing the Bungle Bungles. The plane was the smallest we had been on, a 12 seater and the trip over (50 minutes) was a little bouncy, but was smoother sailing /flying by the afternoon. They really do look like beehives from above. We were lucky enough to walk amongst them and see Cathedral Gorge; our guide was a geologist so we learnt heaps about their creation, and our pilot had a well versed spiel about local history, so we were well saturated with facts and figures by the end of the day.
Favourite facts include:
1. The explosion that broke up local rock that was used to dam the Ord River in the 1970’s was Australis biggest non-nuclear explosion, actually registering on the Richter scale in Brisbane.
2. 35000 fresh water crocs live in Lake Argly and 80% of them are female because eggs need to be kept at a higher temperature if they are to become male crocs.
3. An open water licence is required to go boating on Lake Argly because at times the other side of the lake can’t be seen - sometimes it is the size of 70 Sydney Harbours, but more often it has the capacity of 20 Sydney Harbours.
4. The beehive colours of the Bungle Bungles is about a centimetre thick, the rock formations are actually white underneath and it’s just alternating layers of red dirt (again!!), well, actually the iron oxide in the dirt that rusts; and black cyanobacteria that cause the colours.
We then drove to Katherine to start our ‘Top End’ adventure. Today we dropped into the Katherine School of the Air. Elizabeth and Jonathon were a bit apprehensive as they initially thought they would be required to do some actual school work, but when we explained that that wasn’t the case, they were happy to come along. We spent nearly 2 hours there touring the whole ‘school’ and it was so fascinating. They organise 'Inschool' weeks where on average 80% of the students come into the physical school for mostly social activities, including Sports Day. They currently have 160 students, and do a weekly Webinar-style assembly. The teachers have green screens in their studios, most lessons are held like sophisticated webinars, all lessons are sent to students on USB but they also get an old fashioned stack of paper notes - since in the wet season internet can be unreliable. The teachers have 'patrols' where they try to get out to the students at least once during the school year to check on them, and the kids have an online library just like our public library system. We donated a couple of books (Thea and Geronimo Stilton - we felt we should since Jonathon had taken one of them off the donation shelf and plonked himself down to read it, they are both sorely lacking new reading material) and the teacher showed us pictures of the family she was going to send them to first, they live just over the WA border.
The afternoon was spent with a quick stop at Katherine Gorge (since swimming isn’t allowed in it, it doesn’t hold much appeal to Elizabeth and Jonathon) and then 3 hours at a 'cultural experience’. ‘Yawn’ you may think, but oh my goodness, this was awesome! ‘Top Didj ‘ it’s called and in that 3 hours an aboriginal man played a didgeridoo, sang us a traditional song (we were his only customers - the benefit in coming early in the visitor season), we all did an aboriginal painting, we each had a go of making fire from rubbing 2 sticks together (we did it!), learnt how to throw a spear using a woomera, and got to cuddle a 7 month old Agile Wallaby joey. And feed other wallabies. So the afternoon pretty much ticked boxes for all of us. This man has won NT tourism awards and it’s easy to see why. It was awesome.
A mango daiquiri this afternoon under the huge fig tree at the caravan park bistro and we planned the next couple of weeks of our trip. We head to Darwin via Edith Falls and Litchfield NP tomorrow, and then onto Kakadu. We are all looking forward to Darwin. The kids have seen pics of water slides and splash parks, and also on the agenda is the RFDS ‘museum’, a reptile park, the Darwin museum which has a Cyclone Tracey section, the deck chair cinema and Mindil beach markets. The van is getting a wheel alignment and we might have to send the car through a second car wash to get more of the red dirt off. Locals have told us it will actually rust your car if it’s left on, and despite our efforts at the Kununurra DIY , where we were in fits of laughter over how much mud came off and out of the car, we were only about 2/3's successful. Photos aren't in order sorry.
