Camaraderie in the Kimberley

The Kimberley night at Emma Gorge is still and silent, and velvet dark.

And I had expected to start this story with something about that.

The next morning, we walk up the gorge and back, 22 of our group of 55 readers reaching the pool and droplet waterfall at the end, and the rest of us having our own little adventures in this cleft in the 1.8 billion-year-old Cockburn Range.

And that would have made a good start to this story, too.

We sit together for a spectacular and elaborate “family share” dinner at sunset overlooking Lake Argyle, as the sky turns candy-coloured, until the pinpricks of the Milky Way spray across the sky.

And that would also have made a good opening . . .

As would our day on the Triple J Tours boats weaving down the Ord River, spotting crocs, cutting through the Carr Boyd Ranges, submerged in country, in a dreamlike sequence of East Kimberley magic.

But the real point of our three-day Kimberley Wild Weekend is about people. About those 55 readers who feel like extended family. It is about the moments we share, the stories we tell each other, and how we learn from each others’ lives, as much as from the places and its history and spiritual narrative.

One of my companions was here in the 1970s, when Kununurra was the new town set up to service the Ord River Irrigation Area. The Kununurra Diversion Dam was built in 1962, to create Lake Kununurra as a water source for the growing area, with its “black soil” and alluvial sandy loams. The main Lake Argyle Dam (or Ord River Dam) wall, which opened in 1972, created WA’s biggest freshwater reservoir. When full, it holds 10.7 billion cubic metres of water — 20 times as much water as Sydney Harbour. Usually it covers about 1000sqkm but in flood that can stretch to more than 2000sqkm.

When we lap the town, the main spot that seems unchanged to him is Hotel Kununurra.

Another companion had been in Halls Creek about the same time with her husband. Who would have thought she’d be back here today?

I feel so strongly that we are all “in the moment”; living fully present. And companion Noella Ross is kind enough to say pretty much that to me.

The best of travel.

Personally, I am glad to be with good people; known and new friends (readers).

And I am very glad to be back in the East Kimberley.

I have a history here. I’ve been here dozens of times over nearly 40 years; mustered cattle, ridden motorbikes with station mates, researched and written two novels, and countless feature and travel stories. I came here on my honeymoon. It is amazing.

That’s why I chose the East Kimberley for this trip, having confidence in the power of the place. That’s why we put together this long weekend for readers, in partnership with my good friends at Holidays of Australia & the World.

And there are no better trusted partners. In a last-minute challenge, our charter flight was hit with a massive fuel surcharge, which Holidays of Australia managing director Ben Mead manoeuvred us through, saving the day. Margot Vine, from Holidays of Australia, is our experienced host and tour manager, as she has been on our Uluru direct charter flight weekends. Another friend.

On the two bus trips, I tell the story of the place.

My first assignment, mustering cattle on horseback with Peter Lacy’s indigenous stockmen on Mt Elizabeth Station.

The team maintaining the Gibb River Road and a boss Fish who did the final cut with a grader that could polish a road.

My adventures (and misadventures) with “brother-of-sorts” Byrne Terry, owner of Ellenbrae Station.

Will and Celia Burrell buying El Questro station for $1m in 1991, at first living with their kids under canvas by the river, then giving the place its start in tourism.

The building of the Diversion Dam then the Argyle Dam, to provide the constant freshwater for the Ord Irrigation Area, which started with cotton, and now, this 50-odd years later, is growing cotton again.

How Rover Thomas, who revolutionised Indigenous art, met Queenie McKenzie (another huge art name) on the East Kimberley’s Texas Downs Station, where Rover worked as a stockman for nine years and Queenie worked as a station cook for 40 years. One day at a mustering camp, Rover got thrown from his horse, which stepped on his head tearing a large part of his scalp off. Queenie sewed it on so well that later the doctors didn’t even need to restitch it. They went on to paint up a storm.

How all that led to my two novels set there.

And how Virginia and I came here on our honeymoon.

THE DAYS UNFOLD

+ We fly on an Airnorth charter flight direct from Perth to Kununurra in a bit over three-and-a-half hours. The red ridges of the Great Sandy Desert’s sand dunes give way to green as we arrive in the Kimberley, which has just had a good wet season. We’ve timed it perfectly. The land is lush, but the temperature has a top of 30C with a refreshing 17C at night. It’s a great time to be in the East Kimberley, which has a tourist season from May to the end of September, but gets hotter as the months go by.

+ We’re straight on a coach, heading north for just over an hour to Emma Gorge Resort. On the bitumenised east end of the Gibb River Road, and part of El Questro, Emma has only tented cabin accommodation, each with proper beds and a bathroom. Its restaurant and bar area is in shade with lawns, by its swimming pool. An oasis.

Dinner is served in its rooved but otherwise outdoors restaurant, after which I retreat to the night that is still and silent, and velvet dark. The night with which I could have started this story. + The next morning, after a cooked or cold breakfast, there’s adventure. Each year, after the effects of wet season rains pouring down the gorge, the 1.6km walk trail into Emma Gorge has to be remade and remarked. Each year is different. This year is tricky. But, with one El Questro walk guide to 10 or each of the 39 guests planning to walk, we’re in safe hands. Others come with me on a shorter walk to a flat spot with a view of the massive gorge wall. It has a pool of water below, and a small plateau of ripple rock — a remnant of when it was the ocean floor. It’s a morning of private conquests and camaraderie . . . followed by a “barra and beef” lunch.

+ And then we’re back on the road, heading south to Kununurra, for that lap of the town, and then 70km further on to Lake Argyle Resort, for a night in their clean and comfortable cabins. But first there is the clifftop sunset dinner. It is quite an event — the chef announcing that this will be a shared, family-style meal, with a lot of bushtucker ingredients. First is a shared charcuterie board, complete with native saltbush and cheddar damper, kangaroo salami, native caramelised figs and quandong chilli jam.

Then comes plates of silver cobbler (the local “catfish” which predominates in Lake Argyle), huge beef steaks and chicken. Oh, and the vegetables.

It is a feast which is a blend of bushtucker and fine chef and maitre’d professionalism.

Oh, and it’s all topped off by an exquisite green ant and lemon aspen tart.

+ Jeff Hayley has been driving tour boats on the Ord River for 38 years. Indeed, he is one of the J’s of Triple J Tours who set up the company. It was his idea that visitors might pay for boat trips on this river in a spectacular environment created (or perhaps, rather, enhanced by) the constant management and flow of excess water from Lake Argyle. They sold the business in 2026 and Jeff retired to Margaret River. But he’s back, driving the boat he largely designed, and had built. “This place gets inta ya,” he says. Jeff is a brilliant, knowledgeable and entertaining guide. Questions about birds? He has detailed answers. Plants? Do you want common or botanical names or both? The boat, which carries 40 of our guests (the others in a smaller boat), has three 300 horsepower outboards on the back and a guest asks: “Have you thought about jet boats?” I remember that JJJ started with jet boats. “I could write a book about boat power,” says Jeff, then giving a specific but more concise answer than that. Basically, they didn’t work well here, as they drew in weed and Jeff’d be over the side several times each trip clearing it out of the intakes.

I should mention that this part of the Ord River has the highest concentration of freshwater crocodiles in Australia. Which means it has the highest concentration of these Johnson crocodiles in the world. We see them basking on the river’s edge.

Are they dangerous? “Nah,” says Jeff. Well, not unless you impinge on them, as someone clearly did recently in Lake Argyle, ending up in Kununurra Hospital. (The man, not the croc.)

+ And then we are back on our Airnorth charter flight back to Perth. As companion Lian-Siew Ti says to me as we stand on the Argyle Dam and she coaches me with her selfie skills: “I took just one day off work, and I’ve been able to do all this.”

As you see, there are many moments that could have started this story — that could have dominated. But as I write this, they have all blended into one, complex pastiche. A multi-hued, textural backdrop to what is a human story . . .

A story of 55 readers coming together as one family-of-sorts, to share a long-weekend adventure.

Monday morning. Work for some. The busyness of retirement for others. But for each of us, I hope, there is the echo of insects in the Kimberley night, the taste of the land still lingering on our palates, the powerful palette of its colours shimmering in peripheral vision, and the pull of this ancient, living land on our hearts.

And the warmth of the fellowship of known and new friends.

THE NIGHT AT EMMA GORGE

I don’t want to sleep.

The Kimberley night has settled to its gentle insect lullaby.

The dark is a cooling blanket, sucking the warmth of the day.

The air is motionless, but the nocturnal world is alive.

I am acutely aware that I am at the end of a gorge which cleaves northwards into the Cockburn Range of the East Kimberley.

Its red Pentecost sandstone hues were exploited by the setting sun. The west wall fell to shade. The east wall was livid flesh with the darkness of its opposite steadily inching up to it.

I have seen this gorge as a sort-of rainforest.

And I have seen it wiped clean of plants by the wet season, leaving it looking like a quarry. This area is pelted and drowned by monsoonal weather patterns. There will regularly be more than 690mm of annual rainfall.

But now the plants are back. The years have ticked by.

River gums and swamp bloodwood trees are sentinel.

Pandanus, that quintessential plant of the Kimberley, likes the rocky, water-fed trails of Emma Gorge. They corkscrew their sharp leaves with purpose.

Livistona palms stand regal and mop-topped.

The yellow flowers of stick-thin Kapok bushes are bright against the blue sky.

The path to the droplet waterfall at the end of the gorge is remarked by guides every year. The swim is worth the rock scramble.

But all that is for another moment. Another thought. Another time.

For now, I simply want to lie in my tented cabin at Emma Gorge Resort, and not sleep. Not give in the wash of weariness and memories that this day has flooded me with.

I want to simply be, in the Kimberley night.