The Bungle Bungles
Trip Start
Jul 05, 2007
1
37
48
Trip End
Dec 24, 2007
Kununurra,
Australia
Saturday, October 27, 2007
There were 15 of us on the tour to Broome. We were picked up early on Tuesday morning in a monster four wheel drive truck and headed west. About 5 miles out of Darwin, we came across an injured wallaby on the road. The driver wrapped it in a towel and put it in the bus.
"What should we do?" asked one of the girls at the front. I was immediately ostracised from the group when I suggested that we eat it for lunch.
The Bungle Bungles
The highlight of the tour was the Bungle Bungles: a huge range of rocky domes which are striped black and orange. I've never seen anything like it before. Unfortunately we were caught by a huge thunderstorm while on a walk through the beautiful Cathedral gorge in the Bungle Bungles. It's quite scary having to scramble over open rock in a thunderstorm. Luckily, there was a six foot six bloke from Northampton on the tour, so I stuck near him to protect me from the lightning.
The lowlight of the tour was the bus. Notwithstanding the two flat tires, the windows that didn't open and the dodgy clutch, the worst thing was that the air conditioning broke on day two of the five day tour. And it is hot in this part of Australia. Some people took it very badly - the smell was horrific. I offered to lend them some deoderant, but this just seemed to ostracise me from the group even further.
The rest of the Kimberly is sparsely populated and wild. It's a great place to go though. We saw loads of things you can't see back home: crocodiles, kanagaroos, the sun, etc. We also saw the world's longest cattle trough - but no sing of human life.
Prison Boab Tree
On the first night, I had a tent to myself - or so I thought initially. When I got into my sleeping bag, I felt something tickle my leg. I unzipped it to find a spider on my calf - about the size of a mouse. This made me shout something that I can't put in the blog because there's nice people reading it (or there might be - there's none on my e-mail list). Sadly one of the girls heard me. She ran over to my tent and shone her torch in. This made me more uncomfortable. I trapped between the only two creatures on earth that really scare me - a spider, and a woman. I was also not clothed. I asked her to leave, but she wouldn't. I asked the spider to leave, but it wouldn't. I eventually resolved the situation by with my trainer, and a well-aimed whack. Then I turned my attention to the spider.
There was no accomodation or tents provided for the rest of the trip so we slept out under the stars. This sounds nice, and generally it was, but on the last night I was atacked by vicious ants and mosquitos. I've been itching ever since. It looks like I've got fleas. I don't mind it that much though; I quite like the wide berth people give me after being crammed in the bus for five days.
I've a few days to chill in Broome by the seaside next.
