All Good Things...

April 24-28

Derby, WA

Lots more clicks

After a little morning homework session, while Chris hiked the Joonjoo Trail on his own and scored some Solanum dioicum as well as a pretty rare bustard sighting, we packed up & moved out.

We passed the Boab Prison Tree on our way south to Broome. We were all excited to get our photos taken in the tree jail until we learned about its somber history. It was used as a temporary holding cell for Aboriginal criminals who were eventually enslaved as pearl divers. We left this spot feeling a little ashamed & disgusted.  

The beaches of Roebuck Bay were a welcomed sight and our camp was in a prime spot. At check-in we asked about stingers (box jellyfish) & were told there'd been no reports recently, but if we got any stings we should let her know. I'm pretty sure that was the catalyst for the tidal surge nightmare I'd had. 

I'm used to salt water & the things that live in oceans -- I grew up going to beaches where the jellies would descend every July, but they're easily visible & they only leave you itchy. Box jellyfish are transparent & are the real deal (i.e.: hospital).  I mean, I've watched every re-enacted nature show to know the stings leave tremendously ugly scars & cause pain severe enough that you continue to scream under anesthesia. ; p

While in Broome, we spent a good chunk of time at our field desk or in the library or on the library lawn, processing fruits & seeds & simplifying polynomials. 

The tides changed about 10 meters per day & offered a great swimming spot and even greater mud flat and mangrove exploration:

On our last beach night, we took a walk with our headlamps & saw tons of land hermit crabs scavenging for food. At any given time, there would be 6-12 of them in your headlamp light, scurrying back toward darkness. We also saw these black crabs about 4 inches across with stalk-eyes like Mr. Krabs from Sponge Bob. If we spotted them out & about, they would quickly bury themselves in such a way that it was difficult to pry them out, but when we did, they scrambled in a zig-zag pattern so fast across the beach they were impossible to catch. 

Well, all good things must come to an end...it's time to wish Cousin Erin farewell.  Here we are at Matso's Pub for Erin's farewell dinner:

Fire trucks (or was it fire engines??) for the children (lemonade with grenadine --tastes like liquid PEZ):

And a Pearler's Pale Ale for the mother:

And a zillion or so bats at sunset:

The kids had chicken fingers, fish & chips & the adults shared a triple curry plate, a seafood platter (fish & peppers in coconut sauce, anchovies, grilled prawns) and a vegetable platter. The kids begged for $12 ice creams, but we negotiated a buy for the night. 

We dropped Erin off at the tiny Broome airport & waved good-bye from the Wombatmobile til she was out of sight. The kids already miss their back-seat buddy & have adopted a representational coconut...

Parking Lot Ramen

April 23-24

2,868 clicks

On the road again...as gravel flew and the Wombatmobile screamed to a halt, Jackson & I were given a good scolding by our driver for not telling him soon enough to pull off for a pit stop. BUT our full bladders lead to a very fortuitous discovery of Solanum dioicum at Ngumpan -- female plants that are helping to prove a previous collection might be a new species. 

I was busy photographing the bathroom floor as Chris was making his discovery:

We arrived in Fitzroy Crossing (pop. 2,000) and checked in at the Fitzroy River Lodge after getting some provisions at the IGA & sending out some postcards. Set up the walls of the tent & headed for the pool...

We all needed this little oasis...water has such restorative power, even if there's a little chlorine mixed in.  We saw a goanna looking for dinner while we swam & watched the kids do a million or so backflips. 

Chris made friends with a stick bug that flew on to me afterward, and yes, I yelped. 

I actually stayed up until 10 pm reading "The Goldfinch" last night -- that's a good 2 hours past my regular bush bedtime. No kookaburras waking me up this morning at 4:30, just the familiar din of garbage bins being emptied by the park employees.

Found this little cutie in the lower portion of the tent this morning:

He was as friendly as our camping neighbors who turned out to be traveling photographers. They live out of caravans for 10 months out of the year, traveling to small towns in the Northern Territory & Western Australia taking family portraits and staying in caravan parks along the way.  They've got a pretty swanky set-up too -- they were watching tv on an outdoor flat screen last night & they had a mini washing machine running this morning.  One of their caravans has a full photo studio set-up inside of it.  They send one team to town & they book appointments, then the photographers follow.  Some of these towns we're passing through have little more than a grocery store, a pub & a hardware store, so this is the only opportunity to get a portrait professionally taken. 

They were very interested in our expedition & had a lot to say about the Aborginal situation here in Australia. We all agreed we wouldn't last a day in the bush left to our own devices, yet the Traditional Owners of the land would have no problem. 

It was another banner morning for solanum. We've pulled off the road 5 times in the last 2-1/2 hours for Chris to collect. This has thrown us waaaay off schedule & we're staying in Derby tonight instead of heading directly to Broome. 

Here's our lunch stop -- this boab tree is HUGE!!! And guess what...no tuna for lunch!! I had a frozen lettuce & hummus sandwich (our fridge temperature gauge got turned way down low to freezer temps & we woke up to frozen yogurt, frozen carrots, frozen hummus).  Ugh!!

How's that frozen ham, Erin?

For dinner tonight, we went to the Derby Wharf & shared a couple take-away battered fish dinners in addition to our soup appetizer "Ramen a la Parking Lot."  It's pretty handy to have a kitchen & water supply in your vehicle!  Derby has the 8th biggest tide change in the world & is the 1st biggest in Australia. It changes over 12 meters with each ebb & flow.

We walked along the wharf & were all yawning, so we headed back to bed. Back to bush bedtimes...

Easter Miracles...

April 19-20

2,123 Clicks

Drove to Turkey Creek Roadhouse to camp for the night in preparation for our drive into the Bungle Bungles the next morning. We were befriended by this cattle dog who hung out at our campsite for most of the night. She immediately showed us her belly & whimpered til someone indulged her. Man, did she need a bath!

Easter morning...the Easter Bilby left something for everyone. He got creative when he couldn't find any baskets.  (You know how hard it is to keep chocolate eggs from melting in this heat??!? This bunny deserves some props!)

He even left some goodies for cousin Erin. 

The first miracle of the day was finding my missing boot. Not sure if you noticed in the boot pic, but there are only 3 matching pairs. Chris had his match in the truck, but after a thorough search, mine was missing.  I quickly remembered Chris driving to our site from the parking lot with one of the storage doors open. I was coming out of the bathroom & hollered at him to stop & closed the door so he could continue. (Mind you, there's a really annoying rage-inducing high pitch squeal that the Wombatmobile emits when the ignition is on & her doors are open.  He must not have heard that.)  I retraced his route & found one of my socks flattened into the dusty road and started to panic just a little bit because there was no boot with it. The miracle occurred when the maintenance man from the roadhouse was emptying the picnic area garbage & noticed it lying roadside... Major phew!! 

I'm not sure about the more urban areas of Australia, but entire towns are shut down for the 4 day Easter weekend. All the grocery stores we've passed have had reduced hours on Saturday/Monday & were completely closed on Friday/Sunday.  No big sales, no door busters going on, just closed doors. 

Second Easter miracle = roadside solanum!!

Great Northern Highway to Purnululu and our dashboard dryer system:

Below is the the gate to Purnululu (Bungle Bungles), a world heritage site. Little did we know, it was going to be a 90-minute, snakelike, really bumpy dirt road to get to our hike.  I've not been getting carsick thus far, but this ride was a killer (renamed our destination: Barfle Barfles, Puke-alulu).  I completely understand why people shell out the big bucks to fly over them, rather than ride in -- between the corrugations in the road that make the car seem as if every bolt is about to fall out & the "deeper than we thought" creek we went through. 4x4's paradise!!

  

Feeling sick, but more solanum!!!

Lunch was...you mighta guessed. Tuna. 

The entrance to Echidna Chasm.  Most of the palm trees are gone from this area.  The only ones remaining grow in sheltered coves or cliffs, relics of a formerly wet, tropical forest.

These rocks are 360 million years old.  Our landscape in PA is a baby in diapers compared to these naked mountains. 

Back in the Saddle Again

April 18

10 more clicks than yesterday

Despite our rocky start at Kununurra, we managed to breakdown camp & get on the road to Mirama on the early side (lots can happen on "the early side" when you wake up at 5:15).

Mirama (or Hidden Valley) is a small park immediately on the outskirts of town. It has ramps throughout its lower sections so its accessible to wheelchairs & is more easily walked in the wet season.  We knew our luck was changing when Chris spotted a Solanum less than 3 feet past the entrance...

Here's Isee and an interpretive sign with the ramp in the background. The signs identified what plant/tree you were looking at and how the Aborginal people used/avoided it. It is really amazing how connected these people are to their land and how wise they are about its flora and fauna. They've figured out which tree barks contain fish poisons, which tree can heal the rash from another, how to use tree bark as an oven or a thermos, etc. 

Encountered more beautiful sandstone landscape formed 360 million years ago during the Devonian Period. Sand from Lake Argyle blew down to the area and formed rocky outcroppings as tall as 30 meters (darned spell-check wouldn't let me type metres!).  This time, the view was somewhat spoiled by big, white hotel roofs in the distance. You can just barely see a little white patch in the center of this pic as I scooted over as far as I could to block it without losing the view. 

Jackson spent some time making his own ochre paint out of crushed stone, though we were fresh out of animal blood to darken the hue. All we had on hand was spit.    

Chris found a huge cache of solanum in a gorge that completely blew his mind. These plants were really tall and bushy compared to others he's studied, so the botanist is still out on the exact species. 

Chris and one of his collections -- you really need to love these plants to endure their prickly nature. (Get it?  They're prickly & from nature...).

We made friends with our camp neighbor Michael & his menagerie. In his camper he was traveling with 2 dogs (Taco & Rex), one cat (Felix), a bird (BB), and a fish (Elvis).  He took to the kids & shared some of his toys with them. Below, he & Isee are setting up a turtle trap baited with sausage. 

After about an hour in the Ord River, Jackson pulled up the trap to find a turtle party -- 5 Victoria River turtles!!  Michael proceeded to chuck each of these in the direction of our ankles to see how we'd react. Let's just say the ladies were doing a bit of dancing...

Here's Chris' makeshift lab outside the truck:

Close-up of fresh solanum fruit -- these started out with white flesh when Chris cut them open, but quickly oxidized and turned red. 

After processing all the fruits and putting all the plants in the plant press, we walked down the Sunset Strip (that was the road our camp was on) and went to a fundraiser dinner put on by the camp owners. We had oysters, prawns, threadfin salmon sandwiches, & rice salad. Dee-lish!

The next morning, while we packed, the kids swam in the Ord River, using a pandanus tree as a diving board & made friends with a northern laughing tree frog. 

Jackson & his new best Australian friend both painted themselves with red mud from the riverbank.

Ended the fun & packed everyone in the car for a 3-hour drive to Turkey Creek Road House. On our way to the Bungke Bungles!