WA 2022: Post 5 of 6 30 May 2022
One of the hardest things about this blog is selecting which of the many amazing photos to share. My advice to you dear friend, if you have ever pondered adventuring to the north-western parts of Australia, you really need to do it. Disappointment does not exist up here. Only wonder, beauty and surprise.
Our road trip has been a perfect mix of campgrounds in remote places interspersed with Airbnb’s that have fly screens and hot showers. I really love camping but I also really love having clean feet. It is hard to balance the two!
Campgrounds are a social enigma. On this trip, sunrise is at 5:30am and suddenly the world turns up the volume – birds, dogs, humans, 4WDs and scenic flight helicopters are all abuzz making sure I’m buzzing too. Most campgrounds have shared cooking and eating spaces where we find people are very curious about us because we don’t fit the mould of the standard traveller. By this I mean we are not grey nomads (despite the increasing intensity of grey hairs), we are not dragging around tanned dusty kids, nor are we backpackers skimping on necessities to pay for fuel.
Campground users are entertaining, honest, rude and ridiculously kind all at the same time. We must appear friendly because we have received all sorts of travel commentary and advice, and even a couple of marriage proposals. Remote Australia is full of lonely men of all ages looking for love. We have been wooed with boxes of cherry ripes, had a phone number left on our windscreen, and had men seeking to share our tent/s because they only brought a hammock. My favourite pick up line was “I like your messy hair…”, and most recently I was told in earnest that I looked intelligent and he liked that. Ha!
There are some grapevine tales about towns in the north of Australia being dangerous. Yes, you will see locals looking shabby and drunk, and there is too much litter in parts, but if you are sensible and cautious you will feel safe, welcome and respected as we have. The tourist information centres and public libraries have been fabulous, the supermarkets and shops have been decent, and the locals friendly and interested.
Our last long stop in WA was on a mango farm just out of Kununurra, on the land of the Miriuwung and Gajerrong people. The town is home to about 7000 people and was established in the 1960s to support the Ord River Irrigation System. Given the river and irrigation system, Kununurra itself is green and lush, is surrounded by red and purple escarpments, and has a myriad of waterholes, creeks and hikes for exploring.
Drive an hour west of Kununurra along the Gibb River Road, and you’ll find yourself at El Questro Station – a private 700k acre pastoral lease with a huge tourism focus. No one knows what the name means but there is so much happening at El Questro that they have established a “township”. It is mostly high clearance 4WD country, but we were still able to do a range of bushwalks that required water crossings by car and foot, and great swimming under waterfalls and in hot springs.
We finished our WA adventure at Lake Argyle – essentially a huge dam on the Ord River which is a Ramsar wetland, home to over 35k fresh water crocodiles. The water temperature sits around 28 degrees so a pool-noodle sunset drink swim is a thing and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I figured there were some large white pickled males that would have been more appealing to a crocodile than me…
And so that ends the WA adventure. We now cross into the big middle, the Northern Territory, to wrap up my part of Aditi’s road trip.
Photo credit Aditi Das Patnaik (@aditipatnaik)