13 April 2013 Tarunda Caravan Park, Fitzroy Crossing, Great Northern Highway, Western Australia

Today we have enjoyed the clear blue skies for which the Kimberley is renowned and made the most of an otherwise quiet lay-day. We could have been up with the birds and taken the 8 am Gieke Gorge cruise, however it was never on the agenda and quite frankly, I was glad to enjoy a slow morning.

I had lunch all packed up and we were ready to go when Julie, the very pleasant and informative camp manager came over and started chatting. She is a talker and her husband had headed off early all the way to Derby for the regular grog provisions. Apparently alcohol is prohibitively expensive here however it does not seem to deter everyone.

She confirmed what we had read, that a group of local Aboriginal Communities own several enterprises in town including this caravan park and the Crossing Inn and the Fitzroy Lodge, in fact all the caravan parks along with the Tarunda IGA Supermarket and the Ngiyali Roadhouse. Top marks, I say, to good use of all the money that has been poured into the place, however sadly there are few of those aborigines employed in the businesses. They simply cannot be bothered to put in more than a couple of hours or a day or two. 

Instead there is a string of Asian student / backpacker types working in the supermarket and people like Julie and her husband, Gary, employed to manage what could be real work opportunities for locals. One of the deterrents is something we have heard of time after time; a person will defy the odds and take up employment only to be humbugged by their unemployed relatives. Hardly a quiet satisfying life to be employed.

Julie was most informative about the locals, their behaviour and income management, and a host of stories, some which stretched belief like the fact that the local aborigines receive money from the government for every dog they own after the first two. Now that defies logic no matter which way you look at it unless…. they are breeding them as a protein supplement to their diet. But I don’t think so!

One story we heard related to the curtailing of education in young males which is a concern. I did know that traditionally aboriginal males undergo an adult initiation at puberty which includes circumcision and this is all happens out in the bush; “men’s business” which is not spoken of. While there are often medical concerns arising from this, it is more worrying to learn that the boys are withdrawn from school to undergo this ritual and that “school” may well be a boarding school down in Perth or the like, especially if the boy has shown great promise. He is brought home to the community and trundled out into the bush to become a man, after which he must not return to childhood pursuits, one of those “pursuits” being school. And so there are many of these young circumcised teenagers roaming about, apparently too old to attend school but too young to be slotted into the European role of adulthood. Interesting!

Another story we heard was how those with managed incomes and carrying a “basics” card which can be redeemed only for food or fuel, is manipulated. You may pull up at the fuel pump and one of these card carrying persons will offer to pay for the fuel with their card if you give them the cash equivalent. Cash is power, or rather a ticket to forbidden fruits!

I could fill the page with these stories and we would never get away as we nearly did not today. After being taken up into one of the motel units, high on stilts to combat the occasional flood, and shown about, we said we would leave Julie to her work, which by all accounts was busy and we had a picnic to attend.

The Gieke Gorge National Park is the jewel in Fitzroy Crossing’s crown, just twenty kilometres up river from the town. Flood waters have carved the thirty metre deep gorge through the limestone at the junction of the Oscar and Gieke Ranges. During the wet season, the Fitzroy River rises about 16.5 metres, staining the walls of the gorge and flooding the national park with seven metres of water. In the dry, the river transforms itself into a quiet stream strung out beneath the towering cliffs of the Devonian reef. Unlike modern reefs, which are built of corals, algae and a group of now extinct lime-secreting orgasms built the bulk of this reef.

We were pretty excited about the geological wonders we were about to see and looked forward to doing all three walks on offer. The road up to the national park is all sealed and it was just out of town that we came across a black form lying across one side of a causeway.

We stopped and could then see that it was indeed an aborigine, perhaps even dead, or soon to be, if they remained there for much longer. We called out to her, having by now ascertained it was a rather lithe and attractive young woman, well dressed if you can be wearing short shorts. There was no response. We poked, gently. Still nothing although there was enough stirring to suggest she was alive. Pure alcohol exuded from her form, more pleasant than the normal body odor one encounters, but alas, more disturbing. We each took an arm and told her we were going to move her to the grassy bank of the creek where she would be safe, also noting by now that there were two other comatose forms already laid out there. She mumbled in her mother tongue, tried to wriggle free and slipped down into the creek. We told her she must come to the bank to be safe, but she was adamant the cool water was safer. By now she seemed to be securely sitting or kneeling on the creek bed, and had also registered that we were two whitey strangers trying to assist. She mumbled thanks and indicated we should leave her. And we did but not willingly. I spent the rest of the day expecting to learn of a drowning and that we would have to go put our official report in and would in some way feel responsible for the whole business. I can now confirm that nothing of the kind has occurred.

The Crossing

The old township and concrete crossing lies a little beyond this creek and we detoured to see what we could find. The crossing was closed however there was evidence that several vehicles had gone down and through despite the official sign. I got the impression that Chris would have liked to give it a try too, however did not encourage him and we returned to the car and hunted around for evidence of old historic buildings. All we found was a memorial to an old hospital.

We arrived at the national park and set off for the first walk at about 11 am. It was already hot, perhaps 35 degrees. The pamphlet states that the walk is best done in the early morning or late afternoon and that one should take adequate water. We followed the latter advice.

The Jarrambayah Walk is supposed to take an hour and a half and follows the western edge of the gorge wall along the flood plain, along under high rugged and jagged limestone cliffs. These were quite impressive but our attention was more taken with the pathway, most of which was hidden under a season’s growth and all abundant with Gallons Curse or Noogoora Burr.

Jagged Limestone cliffs

This is a grass burr that not only catches on your clothing as the brochure warns, but embeds into your socks and your shoes and your shorts and the bottom hem of your shirt. The prickles embed into your exposed flesh and those that can reach through the so called protection of clothing prick yet again. It was indeed a “prick” of a walk in more ways than one. Initially it was Chris who suffered the most loudly and stopped our progress, but soon I was carrying great clumps like dags on a sheep and protesting as loudly. We finally arrived down at the bend in the river where it is impossible to proceed on this bank and found a log on which to sit and pluck the burrs. Now they embedded into our finger tips as well. I suggested we lunch however Chris was in a state that could only see us back at the car park rid of our shoes and socks.

We returned to the vehicle along the river bank, trudging through the deep river sand and across the great mud cracks, and then we were back and soon feeling much better in our sandals and with lunch spread out on a rug on the ground. The park has a couple of shelters but nowhere to sit; there is obviously much to be done to bring it up to the standard promised by the glossy tourist brochures and they have not even begun. Track signs would be a good start but then these are probably uprooted each year by flood and so we are probably being a little unfair. Apparently the park only reopened last week.

While we were chewing our rather stale sandwiches, the chap from Perth we had greeted along our walk came over and started to chat with us. What a lovely man he was too and we now have his name, address, telephone number, the name of his wife and excellent suggestions for how we should attack the route south to Perth from here. This was indeed a highlight of the day.

As we crossed the creek location of the little drama earlier in the day, we were pleased to see no further evidence of last night’s carousing but only several families enjoying the cool waters of the creek. This was a relief.

We took a quick detour up to the Crossing Inn where we understood there to be an aboriginal art gallery. We were also keen to see where the ford had been, however the door to the gallery was firmly locked. Sounds from the inn suggested that it was full of locals filling up in readiness for the evening. No doubt we will hear the distance night noises as we did last night. Aborigines are far less inhibited than we are.

Chris was not too excited about my suggestion of canned beef stew for dinner so we popped into the IGA where he gazed unsuccessfully into the doors of the refrigerated cabinets where there was a great array of meat products. Uninspired and looking a little lost, I suggested one of my pasta specials. He agreed. It would seem that he has had enough of cooking!

Back at camp, we plucked the last of the burrs off our shoes, discarded our socks into the rubbish bin and swore we would wear gaiters on our next walk in the Kimberleys.