The Kimberleys

On Wednesday morning 6.15m it was time to meet our new group. HAlf of them knew each other alreay, as they did the Perth-Broom journey I did the week before. This group was a lot older than any group before ( we got 3 64 year olds, 2 of them have never been camping before, and the third one is Michael, a pensionated scottisch man, who started his second youth when he was 49 and decided to bungy jump from the Victoria waterfalls... since then he remained in his early thirties.....). As this is also the hardest tour they sell in Australia, I was quite surpriced. But they are all really nice and good :)

The first day brought us to the tunnel creek, where we made a 1,5 hour walk through the caves with our headlights on. Most of it went through the water, but we also climbed in higher caves with lost of beautiful stalagtites. Of course there where some bats, what is a cave without :) Do you know what bats are most afraid of??? As they always hang upside down: diarrhea..... 

At the end of the tunnel we saw some green bottomed ants, whose bottom actually taste rather pleasant... it is just quite a hard task to grab one and hold it still enough.....There were some nice and old aboriginal paintings, around 17.000 years old. They pictured the weather Spirit, but without his mouth, so he would keep the bad weather inside of him... such a clever solution! That is why it is always nice and sunny here, and so cold and rainy in the Netherlands! I know what I am going to do, when I get back home ;)

We made ourw way to Winjana gorge where we had our camp for the night. We made a nice sunset walk into the cave. Hanneke scared a crocodile, or the other way around...it started to warn her producing all kinds of sounds... After dinner we made an evening hike to spot about a few thousand spiders (their eyes lit up if you shine on them). We also saw the eys of 4-5 crocodiles, and many little frogs. We slept in our swags (short for "sleep with an Australian Guide) under the stars...there are millions of them up here.....

The following day was my favourite one :) We went into Bells gorge, where we had a fantastic walk. We climbed into the gorge which was a lovely rocky walk to reach a nice plateau with little lakes and waterfalls. From here we started our swimming tour: first around the beautiful little lake, then up the rocks, and sliding back in the water via a very flat steep rock, like a natural slide with a free fall into the water at the end. some swimming, down a waterfall, over some rocks, another little lake etc, untill we reached our final destination: a rock like the one the lion king is standing on, with a beautiful view over the valley woth more little lakes. It was simply beautiful! 

Our afternoon walk in Galvans gorge was nice again, but less special than the previous one. Except that it had a beautiful boab on top op the gorge, with a nice reflexion in the water. That night we stayed in the Manning gorge :)

To get the stories not to long, I will continue the rest of the KImberleys in a different story