It’s been a while since our previous blog, sorry about that but we’ve been mucking about in the Kimberleys for a month. We loved being in Darwin, especially at this time of year but after 2 months in the marina we needed to get out and see the ocean and feel the boat move again! The weekend before we left we attended the last event on the Darwin Social Calendar – the Darwin Cup.
We cycled up to the race track to soak up the atmosphere and watch the last few races. Lots of folks were dressed up in their finest and paying $30 to get into the enclosure to bet and watch. Not being dressed for the occasion(!) and feeling $60 was a bit steep to bet a few of horses and be overcharged for your drinks, we cycled up to the bottle shop and picked up a few beers. We found a beautiful shady, grassy spot on the other side of the track beside the starting gates where all the grooms and drivers etc. hang out. We had all the excitement of the start of each race but it was anyone’s guess who won! We had a fine time.
We left Tipperary Waters in the second week of August and headed for the Kimberleys in the northernmost part of Western Australia. Our first port of call was the King George River which cuts a deep gorge for about 10 miles through sheer sandstone cliffs. At the end are a couple of waterfalls which are pretty slow running now (at the end of the dry season) but it is easy to imagine how spectacular they would be during the wet. We climbed up the side of the gorge and walked up the river above the falls until we found a swimming hole. We had a great dip feeling (fairly) safe in the knowledge that no croc could have made the climb.
After we left King George River we sailed into Napier Broome Bay and had a couple of weeks poking around the many coves and anchorages there. We spent the time exploring in the dinghy, doing a lot of fishing and barbequeing on the beach when were successful! We caught barramundi, mangrove jack, a spotted cod and various trevallys – all good eating. The bane of our lives has been the sea pike, actually not a pike at all but similar to a barracuda. They are strong, have a voracious appetite and very sharp teeth like razors.
On our first encounter we hooked one and hauled him in alongside the dinghy and were working out how to deal with him. Suddenly he made one last lunge and broke the line and we lost our favourite lure. As he swam off we spotted someone else’s hooks left in his mouth from a previous encounter – what a punk! The next day when we were hauling in our second pike one of his mates swam below the boat and bit his tail off! The third pike actually made it into the fridge!
The Kimberleys area is well known for the river gorges and waterfalls but many of the rivers have shallow sand bars across the mouths. It was time well spent to survey the river mouth in the dinghy and check the depths before taking Distant Drummer further in. Often a high spring tide is needed to get into the river which then locks you in for a couple of weeks until the next spring high! Unfortunately the tides were not in our favour with the spring highs at night so we didn’t manage to go up any more rivers.
The Kimberleys were fantastic! Stunning in their natural beauty, a more remote and ancient feeling spot would be hard to find. Walking up the rivers above the falls we found aboriginal rock paintings on the rocky shelves and overhangs, some of them were the Bradshaw style which are believed to be very ancient. You can feel in the rocks and the rivers a sense of how the landscape is untouched since the first contact with humans. It was kind of wild around there and we absolutely loved it.
We will be here in Darwin probably until the end of the month, possibly longer, before we return to our eastward voyage.
Cheers for now!
