Brown Rivers and Brown Trousers

Greetings all! My sister has come through with the goods and sent a CD of the remaining photos of my time in Derby. So here is an second tome of what else I got up to in my time up north.

I went out and visited the Prison Boab, which was, despite being a place of significance for the local Aboriginal population, used by the early settlers as a place to incarcerate Aboriginals that had broken the law and I believe it was also used to hold Aboriginals that had been taken by 'blackbirders'. Blackbirders who were whites who captured Aboriginals and then sold them into slavery for the pearling industry in Broome. It's such a shame for such a beautiful and majestic tree (which could well be near a thousand years old) to have such a disturbing recent past.

And here's a better idea of what it looks like inside.

The names and initials you see carved on the outside are from when the site used to be an army and airforce base back in WW2, when the northern Australian coastline was being bombed by the Japanese. Bit of a waste of munitions if you ask me. The site was also a stopping off point for drovers driving cattle between Derby and Broome and thus there is the Longest Watering Trough In The Southern Hemisphere TM.

Other than that there was more time with the dogs. Here is what generally occurred in pictorial and descriptive form. As I was patting Lucky with one hand, Luci decided that as he wasn't getting enough attention (despite me patting him withe my other hand). So he decided he would climb onto me.

Being the complete attention whore that he is, he then decided that being patted with one hand wasn't enough, so he had to try to appropriate the hand I was patting Lucky with.

Unfortunately, Clare didn't catch a shot of Luci going A over T off the chair onto the floor.

Other than that it was swimming in the Derby pool (no photos of that- be glad) and exploring around town prior to heading out to the Fitzroy River with a woman that Clare works with, called Ness. She was heading out to visit her brother Neville and sister in law Jo at Udialla Springs Station and took us along for the ride.

On the way out Ness drove off into the bush and stopped the four wheel drive at a stand of paperbark trees in a sandy floodplain. I climbed out wondering what the stop was for when she wandered over too a tree, picked up a pile of paperbark sitting at the base of one and showed us a hole dug into the roots.

It would have been about twenty centimetres in diameter and about eighty to ninety centimetres deep and it was full of water.

Being a fairly warm day and having drunk a good portion of my water already I happily refilled my water bottle while Clare snapped away with her camera.

After that Ness took us to a waterhole where she threw in a net and caught some (yabbies, marin?) freshwater crayfish type thingies. Clare was much more brave than I and happily volunteered to pick up those caught and put them into a bucket. She duly got bitten not once, but twice by the first she tried with. Heres one of the nasty buggers in all it's glory.

After catching a good half dozen, and from what I was told, quite large beasties we went to head off in the four wheel drive. Ness turned the key. Nothing. Tried again, the starter kicked in. Still nothing. We're parked down by the river in a one way track. So we need to do a three point turn prior to getting on what is (thankfully) a downhill track to give it a push start. This is when being a big bastard comes in handy, so a quarter hour of puffing and exertion later we've turned it around, got it rolling downhill and got the engine to kick over. Ness kept the revs up from then on to make sure the car didn't conk before getting to the homestead.

Once we got to the homestead, which despite looking like a corrugated shed, was quite nicely appointed inside with huge fridges, air conditioners, fans and a comfortable dining table to sit around and chat. Apart from running a cattle station and wrangling two young kids, Jo and Neville also run a Kimberly guided tour company, which allows you to name your destination(s) and itinerary. It can be found on http://www.uptuyu.com.au/

After a while of socialising, having a cold drink, putting care packages away in child safe cupboards and the fridge we packed the eskies and fold up chairs and cruised to the Fitzroy River for a picnic.

Now, for those of you who have never been to the north in Summer, it's the wet season. Thankfully it hadn't rained much over Derby while I was there, but it has certainly been raining elsewhere and the Fitzroy was rising. Jo and Neville said they had a picnic at the river the day before and when they arrived the sandbank they had sat on had all but disappeared underwater.

With the extra water flow came a stack of mud and debris, making the water brown, hence the title of the blog entry. The brown trousers wasn't due to dust on our travels or anything as benign as that. No, I shall go into that in a little more detail later. But first, a picture of the beautiful Fitzroy River.

Anyway, we settled down to a nice feed with our chairs in the river, keeping cool.

As we sat there, over the space of a couple of hours I could feel the water level of the river rising on my calves. Then I started getting an itch in the back of my neck. The higher the water level got the worse the itch got. After a while I just had to get out of my chair, sit on the bank with my feet in the water and watch the river flow past.

I'm sure anyone who knows me can attest I'm certainly not a bushman, but I've heard from numerous sources that Saltwater Crocodiles are found right along the length of the Fitzroy River. And it is when the river is flowing at its strongest that they're at their most active in moving up and down the length of it. I also know that they're patient buggers and will happily observe and stalk their prey, often waiting for them to return and hiding nearby until they're ready to strike. Given Jo and Neville had been picnicking there the previous day, this did little to quell my discomfort. I also know they can appear, seemingly from nowhere, in quite shallow water.

Now, I know I may sound paranoid here, everyone else seemed quite unfazed by it and everyone being quite vigilant. Reason told me to defer to their superior knowledge and experience, but it was near impossible for me to ignore the primal centre of my brain screaming at me to GET THE FUCK OUT OF THE WATER! BIG MONSTER LIVE HERE! SHARP TEETH! OOONGAWA! OOONGAWA!!

So I happily sat on the bank of the river.

In fact, Neville mentioned that when his son was born a few years earlier, a four metre salty had appeared around the area we were picnicking and stayed for the duration of the pregnancy. It left just before he was born. One of his Uncles (a local elder) said this was a portent and that his son's avatar is the Saltwater Crocodile. Another Uncle (also a local elder) said "Saltwater Crocodile?! SHOOT THE BLOODY THING!".

A little bit of a conflict of opinion there, methinks.

Anyway, no sightings, no people suffering the fate that many predicted would have likely been Steve Irwins demise and a pleasant picnic by the Fitzroy.

Come New Years, Clare and I hitched a ride to Broome with a local doctor who had come to Australia from India, seeking a new challenge having worked for several years for the Sultan of Brunei. He was a lovely man and had many interesting stories to tell and he and Clare chatted away happily in the front of the car about mysticism, spirituality and eastern philosophy.

At one stage or another, everyone would have encountered someone in their life that just doesn't know how to drive a car. Well, this was one of those times.

In the end I forced myself to doze off to sleep as I got tired of grinding my teeth as we jerked our way around corners or raced up at speed behind other cars, then slowed to a crawl and followed them for a good five to ten minutes before he realised he could just overtake them in a trice in his brand new, top of the line Ford. Despite Clares subtle and not so subtle hints that if he wanted too, she could drive, he was quite happy to do so all the way to Broome.

We explored the town, checked out the old pearling dock that has now been overgrown with mangroves, stopped off at various friends houses for a visit and paid a visit to a local microbrewery, Matso's (short for Matsomuto's- a Japanese pearler who settled in town in the '50s and founded the business). I happily drank a schooner of each beer they had on their menu in the space of an hour. Here's a picture of me admiring the local artwork (the caption on the picture is "Now that's a nice Ginger")

New Years was a fun occasion at the ninety year old Sun City indoor/outdoor cinema. Quite a decent crowd was in attendance as local indigenous musicians, The Pigram Brothers, put on quite a gig. I would recommend their folksy/country/melodic rock to anyone. Excellent stuff. There are seven (!) brothers in the band and throughout the night numerous family members (including the support band made up of various teenage Pigram children) got up on stage and sung and played.

I only drank a couple of beers on the night, having done my dash earlier, but Clare got happily sozzled, starting with St Angus (which coincidentally was the name of the Pigram kids band) brandy, a half bottle of white wine and later, the demand that I buy her a couple of beers.

Throughout the night Clare introduced to a stack of people, many of whom even she didn't know, and I even got up to dance under a threat of Clare crying if I didn't. Upon producing the second beer that Clare marched me to the bar for (not really, but I'm enjoying telling the story) I turned around to discover she was gone.

I looked over the crowd (everyone in Broome is short) and couldn't spot her anywhere. So, knowing she would be up the front dancing, I headed in that direction, scanning the crowd. I stood on the edge of the dancefloor with a beer in my hand and couldn't see her anywhere until finally I spotted her.

She was most certainly up the front.

She was standing on a podium at the front of the stage, right next to the band, dancing away to her hearts content, oblivious to the world around her. She was also thankful for the beer.

Anyway. We got home late after I drove everyone home. Trying to get four drunk people out of a venue after a good night is like trying to herd cats.

Clare was surprisingly mildly hung over the next day and we happily pottered around town. She showed me her previous abodes, and by mid afternoon had to leave for Derby so she get back before the sunset. I watched Happy Feet (not a bad lighthearted movie, good storyline and Australian made. I'd recommend it) at the local cinema before flying out that night. No wonder I was tired when I got back home.