Derby, Tuesday night, unnamed hotel, 17 18 S, 123 28 E
I'm not naming the hotel, I don't want to be sued, but I'm certainly going to tell Lonely Planet that their description of "basic"should be changed to "derelict"...... Anyway, after a few dollars here and there I managed to get a room a little (not much) better than what I've experienced in the Libyan Sahara.........
An interesting 350 km on the way though, in spite of the unrelenting sameness of the Fitzroy River floodplain - leaving Fitzroy Roadhouse I met a Police patrol car and realised it was only the second on this 4000 km trip (and the first was because of the road train accident between Cloncurry and Mount Isa, way, way back in time and road). Civilised and law-abiding drivers these Ozzies - it must be the road train terror? Or are they just as pleasant as they seem?
The test of that came a little later when I stopped for my mid-morning break at a designated rest stop, each normally about 100 km from the last (no facilities, just a necessary drive-off, trash buckets, maybe shelter from the sun, maybe an outback loo.... ) Enjoyed my ice coffee and cookie, drove off and landed kerbump in an unseen dustbowl in the middle of the gravel, suddenly almost up to my axles in hot red loose dust.... Oh no, not now, after so long and so far !!!!! Luckily a popular stopping place on this long stretch, but first attempts by helpful ozzies got me even deeper in dust and despair... Then along came http://www.thegoodoil.tv/ - you MUST check this website out! Paul Carter, driving around Australia on a motorbike that runs on recycled cooking oil - including all the fish and chips that Australian love - in spite of cracked ribs and other problems he's had on this trip so far, still journeying on, works it all out, his support truck pulls me out, we have a good laugh, all filmed, I sign an agreement that they can use this sequence in any film they might like to make, and on we go... Me thinking back to the Sahara again, the same extreme conditions, no forgiveness from nature for a simple mistake, the same friendliness and help between total strangers....
So on to Derby, where the 800 km long Fitzroy River finally runs out into the sea, not out into the real sea though, but into King Sound, the open Timor Sea still about 150 km to the NW through the labyrinth of the Buccaneer Archipelago. A windswept outpost, surrounded by mangrove swamps and mudflats, at 12 m tidal difference between high and low the 2cnd largest in the world (biggest is Bay of Fundy in Newfoundland I seem to remember from my vague sedimentological past - 15 to 18 m???). Right now a most grey, hot and oppressive place, in spite of all the help from the friendly lady at the visitor centre.....
Broome, Wednesday night, 17 57 S, 122 14 E
Lavishing the comfort of "Beaches of Broome" in a simple but elegant twin room that will be our "home" for the next few days, trying to wash the sweat and dust out of my clothes and mind while I look back over the last 15 days - what a roadtrip!
Unforgettable and unrepeatable.....First though, an apology to Derby - in the warm light of this morning's dawn I redid the town - after all, the night had gone without too many invasions - unlike an unforgettable Saharan "luxury hotel" when a whole ant colony decided to take over my bed just before dawn...
But I got out of NN Hotel and revisited the jetty, still driving over endless mudflats (high tide was in the night), but got my photo of the sailboat snug in its mangrove creek harbour. Then on to the old town gaol, the pioneer cemetery and the "prison boab" - all with remarkably frank accounts of the way the locals were treated until very recently, first the stealing of their land by the European pastoralists in the late 1800s, then the massacres, the segregation, the declaration of Australia as "terra nullis" - nomansland - when the Brits arrived..... Only now are they getting their rights. Maybe this frankness and willingness to really say "Sorry" sets Derby apart from the other communities I've seen so far - the locals here looking like they belong and not like disposessed waifs? Maybe just my imagination....
Then on to the final leg to Broome, nothing eventful, just thinking back to that day in March 2007 when we were visiting Cairns from Timor-Leste and I got bitten by the signs describing the "Savannah Way" across northern Ozz - the feeling "Gotta do it!" And now I done it! A fantastic trip - great people, landscapes and geology all the way!!! But what a bloody big country, one might say!
More on Broome later.....
