Gateway

Taken at Twin Falls, Kakadu National Park, with a Pentax K20D
and edited with Photoshop CS5.

Go(ing) west. This is what we did. Part V

Just an average evening of Gunn Point glory.

So, where were we? That's right. In Darwin. After leaving Cairns about a fortnight earlier.
What we did next was probably the highlight of the entire trip.
Because we had five days at what can only be described as paradise. Well, a camping version of paradise. There were still pesky/carnivorous insects and no running water.
Paul's friend in Darwin, Ian, took us to this slice of paradise. It's called Gunn Point, and is about 40 minutes from Darwin. Think pristine beach, secluded camp spots, sea breezes, fresh-caught seafood and sunsets over the sea. And think all that, with no crowds.
We arrived early Friday afternoon, before anyone else, and claimed the best camping spot. Several other groups arrived later but by Monday morning they were gone again and there was not another living soul in sight.
Which did mean we couldn't share around the mutant-sized March flies that descended in hordes upon sunset, but that was a small price to pay for heaven.
What does one do in heaven, you may ask. Well, not much, as it turns out. Which is probably a big reason for its appeal.
My days looked something like this:
6am: Wake up. Peek out tent window and check our two dogs are still in the vicinity and also have not been gnawed to bones by ferocious March flies (I swear those things had teeth). Go back to sleep.
7am(ish): Wake up. Notice Paul is getting up. And that it's light outside. Go back to sleep.
8am(ish): Wake up. Get up. Walk along beach with dogs in tow.
9am: Breakfast on the beach.
10am: Paul, who has been out exploring/being a boy on his motorbike, returns. Knowing his activities hold infinitely more fascination for me than the bestselling book in my lap, kindly fills me in. Where he went. What he saw. The people he saw. What speed he got up to on the bike. Where he moved the crab pots to and the chances of us catching, and therefore eating, a mud crab or two that day (a matter that was, in fact, of great interest to me).
10.30am: We duck back into the tent for, ahem, married-people-on-holidays activities.
11am: We have coffee in the shade by the beach.
11.30am: We go for a drive to the mangrove area nearby so Paul can go 'crab-spearing'. I won't go into details, but suffice to say PETA will be knocking on my door any minute now (it is legal, though). Most days he snaffles a crab. Including the day he found one but failed to get a firm hold on it and flung it out of it's hole and almost onto my foot. My toes were lucky to survive that incident.
1pm: Return to camp. Have lunch. And another coffee. By the beach (of course).
2pm: Read. Talk to the dogs. Generally laze about.
3.30pm: Start cooking day's catch of mud crabs. Eat mud crabs.
5pm: Have happy hour (drinks, cheese etc). Followed by dinner.
6pm: Watch the sun set over the beach and marvel at how life can give you moments of absolute perfection. While wearing thick woolly socks to protect self from voracious March flies, which seem to attack only the lower leg area and can't get fangs through said socks.

The fishing crew.

Foiled! The monster March flies went hungry that night.

You can never do enough beach exploring.

Our Darwin friends, Ian and Cath, came out for the Saturday night so we had ourselves a bit of a party and feast. The guys wandered about doing guy stuff for the afternoon and Cath, also a book person, and I parked ourselves in the shade with our tomes (ok, they were chick-lit numbers, but give us a break - we were on holidays!).
After five nights we decided to return to civilisation. Which offered the benefits of bathrooms. And significantly fewer March flies and piles of sand, the presence of which admittedly had started to wear a bit thin. But it was a magical place, and we had a magical stay there. We couldn't believe our luck in finding such a wonderful spot, having it to ourselves, and being able to eat fresh (and free!) seafood virtually every afternoon.

More glorious-ness.

Best friends, watchin' the world go by. 

Low tide at sunset.

To be continued...


For other Going West chapters, see:
Go(ing west). This is what we did. Part I
Go(ing west). This is what we did. Part II
Go(ing west). This is what we did. Part III
Go(ing west). This is what we did. Part IV


I'd love to hear your thoughts on this post! You can leave a comment below or send me an email. Thanks!

Wordless Wednesday - Water

Welcome to my first, official Wordless Wednesday. I'm kicking off with a 'Water' slideshow, which is a collection of pics I've taken at some of the beautiful Australian beaches and waterways I've been lucky enough to visit.
Oh, and it's not 100 per cent wordless - I've put it to one of my favourite KT Tunstall songs, The Other Side Of The World.
Like the idea of Wordless Wednesday? (Or just glad I've shut up for a bit?) Well, you can find more Wordless Wednesday over at My Little Drummer Boys.
Hope you enjoy!

PS I was too slack to caption the pics, but if you want to know where any of them where taken, just ask.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on this post! You can leave a comment below or send me an email. Thanks!

Go(ing) west. This is what we did. Part IV

The Katherine River. Image source: http://www.worldisround.com/

We'd arrived in Katherine in the early afternoon. Quite a famous town, but once you're there kind of wonder why.
Now that I think of it, I hadn't heard a lot about Katherine. I'd just heard it mentioned a lot. This may be because it's an actual town, and you can pretty much count on one hand the number of actual towns in NT.
It was nice enough but there was nothing sensational about it. I suspect it's true attraction lays in the reportedly spectacular gorges, rivers and parks, surrounding it. Attractions we didn't make the time to see. (One day, and all that).
At this point I must tell you about our camping fridge. It was both a curse and a blessing. A deep, cavernous affair, it was designed by Paul and a refrigeration mechanic friend (who also built it) with chilling multiple slabs of beer in mind. It even has a generous freezer section.
All that space was handy. Especially after our possibly excessive first shop in Mareeba. But things that provide a lot of space tend to also take up a lot of space. And space is at a premium when camping.
It also meant it was gut-poppingly heavy. Even Paul struggles with it, and he lifts most items so easily I often wonder if he has a He-Man gene or two.
But once it's in place, and filled with tasty holiday food and drink, I find myself quite impressed with it.
Anyway, by the time we got to Katherine the fan on the fridge compressor which (without going into specifics) keeps the whole show running was well and truly cactus. So it was fortunate we arrived in an actual town, where there was a good chance of buying a replacement, when we did.
However the procuring of a replacement fan that fit and lasted more than six hours was a different story. A rather convoluted one I won't go into here other than to say it did eventually have a happy ending.
We had four days at Katherine and stayed a few minutes from town at a place called Manbulloo Station, right on the Katherine River.
B set up in the camping ground and we booked into a self-contained cabin that had a (functioning) fridge/freezer and - joy! - it's own little bathroom.
As well as fixing the fridge, we (by we, I mean Mr Fix-it/Paul) were also able to address some other mechanical concerns. Eg the slightly essential brakes and tyres.
And we got in some holiday-style relaxing by the river, accompanied by the dogs and a good book or seven.
The final morning was a bit sad as B and baby left for Kununurra.
We went on to Darwin that day and had a trailer tyre destroy itself on the way. It was rather dramatic in its demise and ended up in strips along a section of Stuart Highway. Didn't take Paul long to change it though, him being Mr Fix It and all.

A larger-than-life bronze statue of a drover at the Junction Hotel/Store & the Drovers Memorial, dedicated during the Last Great Cattle Drive in 1988. This is on Newcastle Waters Station, which is actually closer to Tennant Creek than Katherine, but I thought I'd include it here.

Paul replacing the decimated trailer tyre. Apologies for not Photoshopping out the plumber's crack.

We made it to Darwin in one piece otherwise, and were able to stay with an old workmate of Paul's who now lives there.
And I'm not sure I can adequately express just how pleased Paul was to have another bloke to talk to after a fortnight with two women and baby.
The first beer was cracked and it was on - fishing talk this, hunting talk that, fitting talk, blah blah blah (his friend, Ian, is also a fitter-machinist). He even got to go to the tip - the Darwin couple had been doing some yard work - so finally felt like a man again.

Lee Pt, Darwin. The first place we visited upon arrival. Was so nice to see the beach again.

* I think I've overdone it with the talking here (may be turning into my mother) - all these words and I've only taken us from Katherine to Darwin. Will continue later with our time in Darwin, which included Gunn Point. If I had to name one place along the entire journey as the most magical, it would be Gunn Point.

Go(ing west). This is what we did. Part I
Go(ing west). This is what we did. Part II
Go(ing west). This is what we did. Part III

I'd love to hear your thoughts on this post! You can leave a comment below:

Go(ing) west. This is what we did. Part III

The open road. Somewhere between
Normanton and Lawn Hill, QLD.

We decided on Gilbert River (our first stay for the trip) following a recommendation from a friend. Perhaps discovering it was a dud should have given us some warning about heeding people’s recommendations. Because our next destination was also suggested to us and once again turned out to be less than idyllic. This place was Leichhardt Falls. Upon arrival it was lovely.
For starters, there was water in the river. Quite a pretty river, even. But there was also sand. A LOT of sand. And thanks to the gale that started blowing approximately two minutes after we got ourselves set up much of that sand ended up in our eyes. And food. And underwear. And tents. And ... you get the picture.
“Maybe it will die down once it’s dark,” we told ourselves. And “It won't be such a problem when we’ve finished dinner”. “At least it’s not hot” (it was actually bloody freezing). “The trailer does block a bit of it, I think.” “I wish this fecking wind would just fecking well feck off!”
It didn't.
Under the sand was rock, so our tent pegs didn't hold well. And by breakfast the tent had virtually collapsed. Anything less than half a foot high was buried. Everything taller was supporting a wall of sand.
But the river was nice. I'd actually recommend this place too - just be at the ready to clear out if there’s so much as a hint of breeze.
Once you got yourself down the bank and at the water you were largely protected from the wind. And there were some beautiful little pools and falls to explore. From the edge of course - you never know when Mr Crocodile might make an appearance.
After our morning exploration we went on Burketown - only about an hour’s drive away. We booked into the town's only caravan park for a night so we could use the water to clear the approximately 20 ton of sand we’d accumulated.
From there we went to Gregory Downs aka oasis of bliss. Here we found the spring-fed Gregory River, with crystal-clear depths and lined with palms.
The (free!) camping area was packed, but we found an ideal little spot right down the end. We stayed for three nights and enjoyed every minute. Especially the gap between unpacking and packing everything. As I may have mentioned once or twice, this was starting to become as much fun as repeatedly smacking my head into the nearest tree trunk.

The Gregory River. Sparkling water. A fringe of palms. Beautiful.

Up the path at Gregory Downs.

The water looked inviting but was icy. Or nippy, depending on your tolerance for frostbite. The others went in a few times, but I was sensible chicken and stayed warm and dry on the bank.
From there we went to Adels Grove/Lawn Hill. (Adels Grove is a property and caravan park; Lawn Hill is a stunning national park.) We had to stay at Adels Grove as we couldn't take our dogs into the park. It didn't have much to recommend it but Lawn Hill was fantastic. With beautiful walks and the option to hire a canoe and paddle through a spectacular gorge. I definitely recommend visiting this one, if you're ever in the area.
Our next few days were spent primarily travelling. Along the way we called in for a look at a fossil site at Riversleigh. Impressive fossils, including one of a massive, vicious-sounding, meat-eating bird. Upon viewing ‘Big Bird’s’ remains, one senior-ish gent there at the same time as us remarked to his wife: “sounds a bit like you dear”. She did not clout him in response. Luckily for him, if she is in fact any way similar to the long-dead bird.

Lawn Hill Gorge. And Paul (below).

More spectacular-ness at Lawn Hill.

By now we were almost at the NT border, but had one more night in Queensland and camped at Camooweal.
We intended to spend the following night somewhere north of Three Ways (the Stuart Highway junction, now well into NT). But once again the weather failed to co-operate and a rain and wind storm cracked open right over our heads. B was feeding the baby, who was getting grouchy, while Paul and I tried to set up a tarp so we'd have somewhere to cook and eat without getting soaked.
Have you ever tried to set up a tarp in the midst of a gale and downpour? Or even just attempted to hang a sheet on the clothesline on a windy day? It flaps and flaps and flaps and refuses to be manipulated, doesn't it. DOESN'T IT?!
We’d just get a corner pegged down when the other one would work loose and go flying. We had a joint dummy spit and decided it would be a miserable night there, so we banged everything - which was only marginally drier than our dripping selves - back in the trailer and kept driving. We ended up at Renner Springs just on dark and were able to book into motel rooms for the night. Much drier. Much cleaner. Much better.
We arrived in Katherine early the following afternoon. Quite a famous town, but once you're there you kind of wonder why this is so.

To be continued…

We take a break just east of woop woop and west of nowheresville.

Razz and Chiko. Adventure dogs.

From the archives: I don't see my parents for a year. Or my husband for a month. Then they all arrive on the same weekend

* This post is one from my archives; I wrote it in June 2009 when I was contributing to a news website. It is another cheat post, I know, but I've put it up because I wanted to try a June-themed link-up thingie run by a fantastic blogger I discovered this week: www.lifeinapinkfibro.blogspot.com So here it is (originally posted at http://www.blog.emmamayalldesigns.com.au/ on Feb 18, 2011).


Yesterday morning a few workmates asked me, as polite people are wont to do on Mondays, how my weekend was. I gaped like a fool for some time while searching for an answer.
It had been the kind of weekend for which I’d switched off my brain and the question left me fumbling for the switch to start it again while simultaneously struggling to remember specifics of the preceeding two days.
It had, in fact, been a lovely weekend. Spent with my visiting parents, which allowed me to regress to the state of childhood. In other words, uselessness. I don’t normally do that. It’s more my sister’s role whenever the folks are about.
However I’ve never seen anyone quite so adept at it as my husband. It’s a sight to behold, this sudden transformation from perfectly capable grown man to helpless creature that must be waited upon for everything from a cup of coffee to his ice cream and sprinkles.
But back to the weekend. (During which I also welcomed the above-mentioned husband home after a month-long absence for work. I neglected to mention this during the Monday morning catch-up because anyone who had previously commented on it had done so with decidedly gutter-minded remarks, and I sensed it may not have been appropriate conversation in a professional setting.)
He’d returned just in time for the four of us to spend the weekend camping. But I’m afraid I’m still in lazy mode so won’t attempt to provide an entertaining recount. I’ll instead resort to providing photos (see below) and a plug for tropical Queensland tourism: we broke up the hours of lolling about by exploring, firstly, the amazing Paronella Park, and then the beautiful Hull Heads beach. If you ever get the chance to do either, I recommend you do.

Paronella Park building, by night

Mena Falls, Paronella Park

The main Paronella Park building

Water fountain at Paronella Park

Avenue of trees at Paronella Park

Mum and Paul take a walk along Hulls Head beach

Go(ing) west: This is what we did. Part II

First posted on Feb 23, 2011 on my original blog www.blog.emmamayalldesigns.com.au



Camping at Gilbert River, Qld. Please note the use of
the legendary trailer.


I don’t want to put you off the place, but there are not a lot of reasons to go to Mutchilba. We stopped in because my friend B lived there but was, coincidentally, also moving to WA about the same time as us.
Her husband had been working in WA for a few months and flying home for days off, but they were now ready to settle in the west.

The move incorporated a camping road trip and, in our collective wisdom, we thought it a fantastic idea for B to join us for some of the way. And it was a good idea. I, at least, had a great time.
She, however, may beg to differ. Because she had to travel with her eight-month-old baby. Though not just a baby - a little parcel of wonderful.

Well, I thought he was wonderful. I had previously believed, perhaps inaccurately, that babies spent about 80 per cent of their day squalling, about 15 per cent alternately poking food and sundry other items down their throats and sicking them back up, and squalled again for the remainder. While also needing changing countless times and occasionally (finally!) sleeping.
So when this little fellow, whom was also teething at the time, cried far less frequently than this and ate with gusto, I thought he was lovely.
Nonetheless, it turned out that road-trip camping and babies don't make for the most ideal mix, and there were certainly challenging moments for B.

Also along for the ride were our pets - two dogs of ours and two of hers, so we were quite a troupe once we got going. Last-minute preparations were made over a rather frantic couple of days at Mutchilba. Including a visit to the supermarket, where we may have slightly over-estimated our needs. Slightly, in that Paul and I still had a couple of boxes of that food when we arrived in Coolgardie 10 weeks later.

I would say that miraculously everything fit in the vehicles (two 4WDs and two trailers). Except that having unpacked (for making camp) and then repacked (breaking camp) every single day - for near on a fortnight - enough gear and supplies to equip an entire AFL team climbing Everest, I know there was nothing miraculous about it. It fit because we jammed and shoved and beat it into fitting. Paul came to believe that the more he swore at it, the better it co-operated.

I must point out here (or risk divorce) that our trailer was built by the very clever Paul. With his bare hands. (And a welder). It is quite the set-up, with a pull-out kitchen and everything. Well done and thank you Paul!
The plan was to take about two weeks for us, B and baby to get to Katherine, NT. She would then go to Kununurra (WA), where she'd meet her hubby and they'd manage the remainder of their trip themselves. And we would go on to Darwin and get in a bit more exploring/bludging before our funds dried up.
Our first night of the trip was at Gilbert River. Sounded nice. Until we arrived and discovered the river was missing. Instead there was an expanse of sand, then dust, and beyond that some dirt. On the whole a rather unappealing place.
The next day it was on to Normanton, where we checked out a statue of a monster crocodile. VERY cool. Its sheer size did nothing to diminish the width of my thighs when I posed next to it though, more's the pity.

To be continued…

Replica of monster crocodile.
Pictured with monster-thigh woman

Paradise lost? Not exactly

Today we headed out of town and took our two dogs for a bit of a frolic through a local nature area. It's one of the simple joys of life and we do it whenever we can.
This used to be our favourite place to take them:

And this is where we went today:

Alas, the first picture was taken when we lived in paradise. AKA tropical Far North Queensland. Sea and reef on one side of you, rainforest on the other.
We now live in Coolgardie, WA. Desert on one side of you. And - surprise! - more desert on the other side.
With the possible exception of Siberia, it would be hard to find a place more different from Cairns than the Coolgardie (I should point out it's in the Kalgoorlie region, because most people have never heard of Coolgardie. I know, how weird is that?).
Even the threats to life and limb differ. While at the beach we'd be on the lookout mainly for stinging sea creatures (of both the deadly and merely agonising-but-you'll-live variety) but also had to be wary of stepping on a crab or stonefish and, if near a river, of running into a crocodile.
Here, dangers include snakes, baits laid for wild dogs, falling down old mine shafts and the very real likelihood of choking to death on a fly or 20. People are not kidding, or even exaggerating, when they say WA is home to a schmillion billion flies, with all but about six of them looking to take up residence in your eyes and mouth.
Now, it's very easy to fall under the spell of tropical Queensland. I loved it more than I had loved any other place. But this little corner of WA I've now found myself in also has it's own beauty. It's there in the endless, captivatingly red dirt, the rich afternoon light and the big, wide sky.
And, for all the glaring differences between here and there, it seems the magic of each springs from the same source: the sense that neither landscape can really be tamed.
The sheer lushness and vitality of the tropic's rainforest simply over-runs any attempt at control that isn't sustained. Out here, the desert is silently defiant. Its harshness will, given time, overcome all but the most resolute efforts to make life softer.
Except for the flies. I doubt anything short of apocolypse could move them.

What do you love - or hate - about where you live?

Sun! Surf! Sand! Was mucho excitement on days like these.

Even here, there is still sun, sand (the red sort) and
great excitement.

Going west: This is what we did. Part I

Image credit: http://www.startwelllivewell.com/

 For the past three months the husband, Paul, and I have been working and living in a town that I did not know even existed until about a fortnight before I arrived.
Our arrival was preceded by a bit of adventure involving the chucking in of old jobs, packing up our worldly possessions, and travelling across the country.
The plan behind this all began, in earnest anyway, when my grandmother died almost a year ago. An awful time, naturally, on which I won't dwell here. But it essentially made us decide that we would one day have to live closer to our families. Made me decide, that is. Paul was itching to leave Far North Queensland, sire a couple of sons and shack up down south.
To backtrack a little, we had been living in Cairns since 2005. As most of my family as well as his were still in central NSW, moving ourselves a few hours south, say to Mackay, wasn't going to cut it.
So, we moved to Western Australia.
From tropical paradise (effing humid, sticky, economic black hole toilet of a place – Paul’s input. Thank you, Paul) to woop-woop desert. And, yes, I am aware it is further from central NSW.
But there was method in our madness.
Our dream, as the Americans say, is to one day have a little patch of land in the NSW countryside. Where we can live among the birds and sit on the verandah and watch the rain come in. While drinking coffee from the whizz-bang espresso machine I'll have then, which also features heavily in this dream.
To fund all this we looked to the resources boom. Firstly, Queensland's mining industry. But it didn't want us - it kept demanding inconvenient things like 'experience' and a list of tickets as long as a Tony Abbott silence.
So we turned to WA, which was apparently a bit more desperate. But not fond of people who still wanted to live in Queensland. There was nothing for it but to move - much to my mother's "you're going to go and leave us!?" disappointment. A disappointment that allowed her to overlook the fact that our current home was 2200km away.
Subsequent research indicated that my best hope for employment in WA would be as a haul truck driver. For which you needed a HR (heavy rigid) licence. So I took myself off to truck school, which thankfully resulted in nil damage to persons or property, and one shiny new HR licence (bearing a photo of me with a crazed grin as I couldn't believe I'd passed the driving test at all, let alone on my first attempt and was hence maniacally relieved/overjoyed).
Paul only has an MR licence, so was a tad (a lot) smug at trumping him for once. The smile was quickly wiped off my face, however, when I learned how much the removalists were going to cost.
I'd warned myself it wasn't going to be cheap, but when the quotes arrived it was still a nasty surprise. "How freaking much!" echoed around my head for some time.
I felt like declaring "you know I could drive the bloody truck myself rather than paying you lot of extortionists". Well, I could. Because, if you didn’t know, I HAVE A HR LICENCE! But it transpired we needed a bigger truck than I could manage, and I wasn’t all that in love with the idea anyway, so had no choice but to hand over a soul-sucking amount of our savings to the extortionists lovely removalist company people.
To be honest, the entire removalist experience was not the best. Having only had two, that would be our 2005 move from Dubbo to Cairns. It could have been far worse, I am all too aware, but I will not easily forget the agent's numerous paperwork mix-ups, discovering that our TV was not even packed in box but just perched in the shipping container, and assorted other dramas.
Nevertheless, after much sorting, packing, fee-paying, organising and farewelling (sniff) it was our departure week - late August - and we drove off. And landed in Mutchilba (approximately 80km from Cairns).

To be continued...

Note: I realise I haven’t actually mentioned where this adventure took us. We are now in Coolgardie, Western Australia. Home to about 800. And, yes, it is every bit as sleepy as that figure makes it sound. Delightfully so. It is in the goldfields of WA. No surprise then that my new job is at a gold milling site. In what is called ‘the gold room’. And, no, that is not as glamorous as it sounds. Paul also works there; he is a fitter on the maintenance crew.