Day 48 - Wolfe Creek Crater

Friday, 16 July 2021

Three hundred thousand years ago a fifty-thousand tonne meteor travelling roughly 15 kilometres a second slammed into earth somewhere in the middle of what is now Australia. The crater it created was discovered by accident when some Aussies flew over it in 1947, though Aboriginals had known about it for thousands of years. They called it Kandimalal, home of a mysterious serpent. It’s now called Wolfe Creek Crater and this was our destination when we turned onto the Tanami Highway yesterday.

We camped at a road gravel pit 20 kms from the crater, took off early this morning to get there before the crowds arrive. The pictures we’ve seen of the crater are interesting, but not impressive so I’m a bit dubious whether it’s been worth making the 200 kms detour to see the phenomenon. Road trains approach like giant smoke-breathing dragons threatening to swallow us whole in their dust clouds. The only thing we can do is stop on the side of the road and wait for the storm to pass, the dust to settle, until we can see again.

At the top of the trail that leads to the rim of the crater, the view is stunning, much more picturesque than photographs we saw at the Visitor Centre. Aided by the soft morning sun, the interior of the crater is a flat plane, a ring of green trees encircling a field of purple flowers and white sand (salt encrusted). The wider circle outside the trees is a pale green ring of spinifex which rises abruptly into the rusty red donut ring of the rim, approximately 60 metres above the flat desert plane that surrounds it. Very impressive indeed.

Johan prefers a descent and follows a thin trail to the bottom of the crater while I circle the top of the rim. Again, our early hiking hour means we have the trail to ourselves. We meet up halfway around the rim as Johan crosses the base and climbs the opposite rise. We sit for a while, watch a curious lizard watching us, move at a slow pace back to the car, mesmerised by this desert wonder.

It was definitely worth the 200+ kilometre roundtrip down the dusty road.

Back on the bitumen, we travel a 200-kilometre stretch of uninteresting landscape before rediscovering a 24-hour rest stop we’d found on our 2015 Kimberley trip. It sits above the highway and looks across a lovely outlook of escarpments and green hills. In 2015 we and one other overnighter were the only ones parked for the night. Tonight, peak of the season, we are one of a couple of dozen campers, mostly large caravans.

We’re lucky to find a spot on the edge of the rise with great views. We walk along the ridge of the escarpment then down into the valley and scramble back up the rocks to our camp. 

As we enjoy the last rays of the setting sun and a Friday glass of red, our nearest neighbour turns up with a sheepish smile and stab at humour to ask if we mind if he turns on his generator. His wife needs to use the microwave and there’s a footy game he just can’t miss tonight. What to say? We’re impressed by his concern for the impact the noise might have on his nearby neighbours. But can we be honest and say, No thanks. Actually generators are pretty irritating for campers who like to enjoy the outdoors, especially at sundown. And by the way, have you considered solar panels? Work great for us. Instead we smile sheepishly in return and try to be friendly. His isn’t the only noise to contend with anyway. A family of boisterous kids are enjoying the fun of dinnertime around a too-bright camp light. A quartet of seniors are enjoying their own sundowner with a jocularity that rings throughout the camp.

Meanwhile, the western sky turns from sapphire to navy to black while Venus trumpets her own bright chorus of light and good cheer, waving bye to Mars as he sinks further and further beneath her each night. By 8pm, all is quiet, the campers and their generators gone to bed. 

 

Day 47 - Bungles & Tanami Highway

Thursday, 15 July 2021

We’re glad we came to the Bungles. So glad that we decide to get up at dawn and do a last trek before we leave.

At 5:30am, surprisingly, other campers are stirring. We’re often the first ones up at camp. But when we arrive at the trailhead at 6:10am, the carpark is empty. We walk the first kilometre of the trail that winds under the escarpment just as the sun is peaking over the northern tip of the range. Lyrical birdsong is our only companion. It is splendid to be up at this hour, alone on the trail.

Mini Palms Gorge is wider than Echidna Gorge, full of magnificent tumbled balls of conglomerate rock, once a river bed that carried the stones out of the Kimberley Range (350 million years ago). Now they look like giant jewels resting along the path. The trail weaves around and between them, some so close you have to suck in to squeeze through. It helps to be a small person. 

In the centre of the gorge is a grand oval canyon, ruddy rock walls extending high overhead and a ceiling of blue sky. An impressive construction of steel ladders takes you to a platform overlooking the v-shaped end of the gorge, a flat sandy garden of Livingstone Palms, wild grasses and ferns lining the walls. We are the first visitors for the day and enjoy 20 minutes of rapt silence in this tranquil setting.

 

Drunk on its beauty, it’s time to leave the Bungles. The road out seems more course and irritating than the way in. Perhaps we’ve been sensitized, or maybe we’re just sore that we have to leave, back through a landscape where cows have ravaged and ruined the land, which looks dark and miserable compared to the paradise of the Bungles. After a two-hour drive, our nerves are rankled, moods grumpy, relations snappy.

The silky smooth ride on the bitumen highway helps calm our moods. By the time we get to Halls Creek, an unappealing one-street town lined with caravans and camper trailers alongside the ever-present lulling black pedestrians, we’re feeling better. Good enough to make a right turn just past the town onto yet another gravel road, back into the desert.

Day 46 - Purnululu - Bungle Bungle National Park (north end)

Wednesday, 14 July 2021

How do you capture this? Johan asks, clutching his camera with awe and bewilderment.

The more pressing question is how to position your head. Lean it back and your jaw opens in utter awe at the grandeur above you. But if you don’t bend it forward, you’ll end up tripping on one of the multi-sized rocks strewn on the path into the gorge. I try a gooseneck approach, up and down, up and down, but it makes me dizzy. I note that many trail travellers are opting for keeping their eyes on the trail. Nothing worse than falling flat on your face with a stream of trekkers behind you. I settle on the stop-start approach. Walk a few metres, eyes on the ground. Stop, look up and gawk.

So then it’s back to Johan’s question: how can you capture this? You can’t, I reply. Photographers and writers have tried forever to capture the magnificence of nature. Some make good enough replications to elicit a Wow or admiration from their viewers and readers. But none can conjure the true experience of walking through and into a powerful experience of nature, robed in all her glory.

I certainly don’t have skills enough as a writer. As I walk the trail that threads into the thin slit of the Echidna gorge I play with metaphors. Like a snake slithering its way into or out of the giant rock. Like a crack that forms in the perfect cake you just pulled out of the oven as it cools. Like the little camera they stick up in you when you go in for a colonoscopy … hmmm. See what I mean? 

Yet there we were weaving our way into this thin canyon, walls towering 100 metres overhead, spread at the beginning by a few metres and by the end by only a mere metre, or less. Water gushes into this natural gash and softens its curves like an expert sculpture, painting it with hues of red, orange, white and black. The cave it creates is in shadows, darkens the deeper in you go, but look up and see a thin ribbon of blue reminding you of the day you left behind.

Near the end, the trail opens into an oval room with two simple benches and an interpretive sign that looks like a podium. I imagine a musician with her cello letting the walls of this great sanctuary play ball with her tunes. A quartet playing soft music while a poet stands at the podium, reading his artistic renditions of the grandeur of nature.

A narrow passageway leads into the final thin ribbon that ends at the tip of the gorge. This room is simple, grey, small. The nexus of nothingness where it all ends…and begins. We have the privilege to sit here for a time with no one else to break the silence.

We had planned to do two walks in the Bungle Bungle range today, this and the Mini Palms Gorge. But we’ve lingered so long in the Echidna Gorge that the afternoon is nearly spent. Instead we walk partway up the Homestead trail in that bewitching hour before the sun sets. The towering rock faces gradually absorb the sun's golden rays, saturating us with radiant colour so splendid it feels like the rock will burst like a too-ripe orange.

It has been a day of wonders at the Bungles.