Bell Gorge to Broome, Western Australia
We decide to pack it in, and get out of the Kimberley.
Well, we're doen with the Kimberley. It's hot and dusty and crowded. So we knocked off a couple of the national parks, and headed into Broome.
Pulling away from Bell Gorge (and the noisy Germans with their two kids), the road takes us through 40 kilometers of pretty nice scenery as we cut through the King Leopold Ranges. It's the best scenery we've seen since leaving Kununurra, a good 500 kilometers ago, and the early morning light is wonderful on the red sandstone hills.
Fairly soon thereafter, though, we're back to undulating plains covered in tall scrub, and it stays like that for quite awhile. We've noticed, though, that the plants aren't as sparse, and off in the distance there's often a hill or a ridge to break the horizon.
Our first big stop is Windjana Gorge, and it looks quite a bit different than the rest of the gorges. First of all, it's not sandstone or red rock--it's limestone! The rock is black from exposure and eroded into weird shapes and spires and ramparts. I think it looks pretty stark, almost evil--it looks like it's guarding an evil warlord's lair. We take a short hike up the canyon, and much to our amazement nearly stumble over a crocodile! There's lots of them up there, the fairly harmless freshwater crocodiles, all basking in the sun. They don't move much at all, except for their eyes, which follow you around. We must've seen a good dozen or so. Once you figure out that they look kind of like washed up logs, you soon spot them everywhere on the stream banks. That hike was a really good hike.
After Windjana Gorge, we head next to Tunnel Creek, where a creek has essentially tunneled through 700 meters of limestone from one side of the ridge to the other, making a long cave that's open at both ends. We wandered down to the cave entrance, but didn't bring our swimmers or flashlights, so we hung out for a bit then headed on down the road towards Derby.
Derby is where we'd hope to stay the night, and catch a flight to the Horizontal Waterfalls tomorrow. When we called the flight company from Windjana Gorge payphone, though, they were all booked out, but could we wait until Friday? Uh, sure we could. After we saw Derby, though, we weren't all that interested in hanging out there for two days; it's pretty dusty and dry, with fairly basic motel rooms and not much to do but drink in the pub. So instead, we looked around, and found a nice 1 bedroom apartment in Broome, about 2 hours drive away. We figure we can always drive to Derby if we need to on Friday.
So we finished our day by driving to Broome. And Broome is nice, a large town of 10,000 people, and a fair amount of tourist resorts that promote low-key activities like eating in restaurants and shopping. It actually feels a bit like civilization. We made that assessment after seeing how wonderfully stocked the Coles supermarket was in Broome. You don't find normally find bok choy in the middle of the outback!
Weird Wildlife Sighting
Lots of freshwater crocodiles! These were at Windjana Gorge.