G’day!
Welcome to Letters From the Road, and letter number 22. Thanks for joining me and for keeping your postbox open and junk-free.
For those of you for whom this is your first letter, welcome! Good on ya for reading. Letters From the Road is the story of a family road trip in Australia, told one weekly installment at a time featuring my journal entries written during the trip. The journal entries are practically word-for-word, and you’ll see them highlighted in the letter.
If you’re not yet a subscriber, but want to get some letters coming to your postbox? One letter, one story, once a week. Too easy.
And finally, if you’ve just joined us and want to catch up, you can find the other 21 letters here, in the back of a truck next to a lawnmower and a hammerhead shark. (And that’s the name of my next children’s book, by the way, The Lawnmower and the Hammerhead Shark)
Let’s get to your letter!
Luke
In terms of beloved and venerable institutions in Australia, the BOM is up there.
The Australian Government Bureau of Meteorology, nicknamed ‘The BOM’, is one of the few government agencies that every Australian seems to have a fondness for, and even if they don’t, they probably cross paths with it on a regular if not daily basis. Even if you don’t use the BOM’s surprisingly good - for a government agency - weather app, your favourite app probably gets its information from the BOM.
In addition to the usual weather information, the BOM uses words like ‘fine’ and ‘oppressive’ to describe the forecast, warns you when your crops are at risk of brown rot, or when your sheep are at risk of blowing away in the wind.
I’m normally one of their biggest fans, because how could one not appreciate the contrast of a starchy government agency specialising in something as staid as the weather, and has the nickname The BOM? It’s perfect.
But at this point in our trip, my feelings were elsewhere, sizzling like an egg on the pavement probably. Needing someone other than God, the ever present fiery sun, and my children to curse, I had turned to the BOM and its weather. Guilty by association.
In its regularly issued Climate Outlook, the BOM had this to say on 29 September 2019, 2 days before we left on our road trip: “Daytime temperatures are very likely to be warmer than average for virtually all of Australia for the remainder of 2019 and early 2020.” You only had to witness our family of four stoically and with much dampness breaking camp at Windjana National Park, slowly cooking in the morning sun while wearing not much more than our jocks, to confirm the BOM’s outlook. The bastards.
Our plan for the day was to drive the short two hours to a town called Derby, and then hunker down in some air conditioning for the afternoon.
Before doing so, I wanted to see Windjana. It’s one of the most famous spots in the Kimberley, and heat or not, I wanted to walk up the gorge. I wanted to see the Lennard River that’s supposedly filled with friendly freshwater crocs, the waterway framed on either side by towering reddish brown cliffs that are the remnants of 350-million year old coral reefs.
The family revolted, however. I tried guilt and other tactics, but only halfheartedly, as all four of them were set in and refused to move. So I went out on my own.
As I walked along, I started to think about all the things that could go wrong, me out there by myself. Heat stroke was the obvious one, but I had water. Snakes are always a worry when you’re out in the bush, but they’d never given me much trouble in the past. What if I came across one of those freshies who’d decided to take a walk? Then I almost walked through a massive spider web that was occupied by a huge creature that looked fake, like someone had decorated the track for Halloween by stretching out some cotton and sticking something from the party store in the middle.
Still I pressed on, with the high cliffs on my right, the muddy remnants of the river on my left. Every so often through the trees I could spot freshies cooling themselves in what was left of the water. Then the trees opened up to the vast expanse of the river.
31 October 2019 - Windjana Gorge
I went walking to find some freshies, found some, but their normally epic river was reduced to a few dingy pools of water. There was no river.
I walked up the sand for a short time before calling it quits and turning around to head back to the car. It was waiting for me, running and ready to go, Katie and the boys sitting inside in the comfort of the blasting air conditioning.
Windjana closed that day for the next six months, because who wanted to be there at that point anyways? We didn’t, and drove off in the direction of Derby.
The temperature was 37C (99F) at 11 am. It dropped 5 degrees by the time we were pulling into Derby, with that coastal cool down welcome. But it didn’t feel any better outside. In fact, it felt worse. We were no longer in the dry, desert centre.
We found humidity.
For the first time since we left Melbourne 31 days before, we had reached the coast again. But this one, the one at Derby, was a very different bit of water from Melbourne and its cold bay and steel gray Southern Ocean.
Derby and the region is more like southeast Asia than what people think of as Australia. The town itself is around 3,000 kilometres (1,900 miles) from Melbourne, as the crow flies. It’s only 750 kilomtetres (470 miles) to the Indonesian island of Timor.
The weather is a tropical mix, with distinct wet and dry seasons. We’d arrived at the cusp of the wet, where weather is defined by cyclones bringing buckets of rain, and heat, bringing buckets of sweat.
With 3,009 people, Derby is the 3rd largest city in the Kimberley region, after Kununurra and Broome. So it’s a small country town with a small country town feel. There’s a scenic jetty, one pub, two caravan parks, and a pair of excellent art galleries.
The history of the place is mostly related to farmers using Derby and its access to water as a transport hub for livestock. Livestock transport is boring though, so I’ll tell you instead about planes and plane crashes and superstar pilots.
Derby was home to Australia’s first airline. Founded in 1921, Western Australia Airways inaugurated their services with a flight from Geraldton to Derby that crashed. So the fact that the airline is not around anymore might not come as a surprise. Things have looked up with Australian airlines since then, however. The national airline Qantas happily boasts that it has never had a jetliner crash, a fact confirmed by Dustin Hoffman in the movie Rain Man.
Charlie: “Ray, all airlines have crashed at one time or another, that doesn't mean that they are not safe.”
Ray: “Qantas. Qantas never crashed.”
One of Western Australia Airways’ first pilots was named Charles Kingsford Smith, a legend in Australia and in aviation in general. He was Australia’s version of another Charles - Charles Lindbergh - without the scandals and Nazis and such.
In 1928, just a year after Lindbergh completed the first transatlantic flight, Kingsford Smith did the same across the Pacific by flying a Fokker monoplane named The Southern Cross from Oakland, California to Brisbane, Australia. He later completed the first Australian cross country flight, and the first Trans-Tasman flight from Australia to New Zealand. On the return flight from New Zealand, Kingsford Smith and his co-pilot famously got lost, and when they eventually landed in Australia, they had fuel remaining for only 10 more minutes of flying.
Kingsford Smith was no stranger to crashing himself. He was shot down flying in WWI, and he lost two toes during the crash - a fair outcome in my book. He wouldn’t be so lucky the next time. He died in a crash in 1935, going down into the Indian Ocean in bad weather while attempting to set the England to Australia speed record. He was 38 years old.
The Sydney International Airport bears Kingsford Smith’s name, and the plane he used to cross the Pacific -The Southern Cross - is on display at the Kingsford Smith Memorial at the Brisbane Airport.
Derby sits on the King Sound, and beyond that, once you get past the neighbouring Dampier Peninsula and another chunk of land that looks like flames, you’re in the Timor Sea and then eventually, in the Indian Ocean. Among the things that people go to see in Derby is the sunset, and specifically the view from the jetty that sticks out into the Sound. Originally built in 1885, the jetty curves gracefully out into the water, allowing unobstructed views to the north and west. After setting up camp at one of the local caravan parks, we headed for the jetty.
And there we met Duncan.
Even if Duncan hadn’t been poised at the rail of the jetty with a long fishing rod when we met him, I could have pegged him as a fisherman, with his fisherman bucket hat, esky full of bits of fish and tinnies, and short cropped beard that was straight out of central casting. ‘The seas, they were rough that day…’ you could imagine him saying to you.
I’m no fisherman. Actually, I hate fishing, always have. When I was a kid, we had an excellent little green tackle box, filled with bobbers and weights and hooks and potential. I emptied it out and used it to carry Dungeons & Dragons supplies, 20-sided dice and good pencils.
And yet, I’ve had the opportunity to fish lakes and rivers and oceans, from Florida to the Boundary Waters in Canada, and I’ve never caught anything, a fact which has only deepened my distaste. You may have heard golf called ‘a good walk spoiled’. Fishing is a good canoe trip spoiled, or maybe more generally a good time down by the water spoiled. In any case, as strong as my feelings are about fishing, I feel more strongly that sometimes you have to do things with your kids that you may not enjoy. Meet them where they are. And while I have tried to control this to my advantage by encouraging Henry and Oscar to get intested in activities that I enjoy, so we can enjoy them together, fishing is one that got away.
Sorry.
So we bought our boys a couple of basic poles and tackle boxes when we were in Mildura, way back on day 2 of our trip. Nearly 30 days later we dug them out of the back of the car for the first time and brought them to the jetty.
Which brings us back to Duncan, ye olde fisherman.
On the jetty, our fishing shit show. There we met Duncan.
‘Duncan. Duncan the Drunken,’ he introduced himself with a cheeky smirk.
He pulled from a can of Great Northern* beer while showing the boys how to fish, gave them little pieces of bait, acting as our surrogate fisherman, a role we’ve made use of many times during this trip. And he looked the part. Little hat. Full Long John Silver/ Hemingway beard.
When we first arrived, he was hauling a large hammerhead shark out of the water. He threw it bleeding into the back of his truck, next to a riding lawnmower.
‘The tide right now is at about 11 metres,’ he said. ‘In the morning, this will be dry. Derby has one of the largest tides in the world,’ he said.Duncan’s from Kalgoorlie* and told us he’s a lawn mower by trade. I didn’t know there was such a thing as a travelling lawn mower. He was waiting on the helicopter that’s going to ferry him and his lawnmower up to a remote antenna site, somewhere near a place called Cockatoo Island, so he could mow the lawn. Awesome job.
He’s staying at our caravan park. I hope he shares some hammerhead with us tomorrow.
Duncan was right about the tides, they’re something else that the people of Derby are proud of. Derby has the largest tidal change in Australia, and one of the largest in the world. Depending on the time of year and the moon and such, at high tide the water at Derby can be over 11 metres (36 feet) deep. When the tide goes out the next day, it’ll be dead dry.
*Great Northern is highly appropriate, as it is a terrible beer befitting of a vagabond fisherman, and also because it has a giant sailfish on the can.
*Kalgoorlie is a country town in south central Western Australia, a looong way from Derby and a long way to be driving with your lawn mower.
1 November 2019 - Derby, Western Australia
My dream last night: A friend of mine - Homer Simpson? - gets in trouble for money laundering. His crime: he went to the U.S. and bought up a large quantity of Strohs beer, which they do not make anymore, in the hopes that he can stockpile it.
And also
‘Loitering is no fun.’ - Oscar.
We spotted Duncan at the caravan park in the morning, off in the distance loitering around his caravan, however he never returned to produce any hammerhead shark.
We had selected our caravan park based on the fact that it had an odd albino peacock that wandered the grounds, and once the novelty of that grew tiresome, something which didn’t take long, we decided it was time to leave Derby and head for Broome.
On the way out of town, we decided to stop at the Norval Gallery. It was recommended to us as the place to go for Aborginal art. Katie and I needed artwork like we needed a sauna and a hot towel, the boys even less. But I felt obligated, in some sense, to throw in an activity here and there that did not involve walking and rocks and sitting in the car for long stretches. We were not disappointed.
Stopped at the Norval Gallery before leaving Derby and hung out with the woman working there named Ruby. Amazing place. The art, the record collection, Ruby giving us her chips. Awesome place.
We blew a giant chunk of money on a piece of art, more than I’ve ever spent on art, total, in my whole life. The boys, who are obtuse on a good day, came in and were really engaged. Ruby and Oscar were talking about the art and specifically the carved boab nuts.
Ruby later commented on the boys, how lovely they are. Well behaved. Good looking. She actually said that.
Flattering the boys and giving them free chips is a good sales tactic, in case you were wondering. We walked out the proud owners of a painting by an Aboriginal artist named Leslie Nangagee. It depicts a boab tree in an explosion of colours, and it makes me happy every time I look at it. Amazing place. Awesome place.
As we headed south and west toward Broome, the temperature pushed 40C (104F). Again.
I feel like it’s been upper 30’s the whole time we’ve been travelling. But we’ve survived. Though we could go for some nicer weather. Broome won’t be the place for it, neither will be the Dampier Peninsula, north of here, nor will the Pilbara and Karijini (I think). So maybe a month from now, by the time we’re on our way home?
Bullshit.
As we got closer to Broome, at one point the sun in the cloudless sky suddenly grew dim. We slowed the car, and drove cautiously as the smoke obscuring the sun began to also cover the road. Burning shrubs and trees began to appear by the side of the road, some vegetation already blackened. Sometimes the smoke cleared and we could see flames burning high above the treeline off in the distance. Then the wind would change and we’d be driving through smoke again.
The fire and smoke only occupied a short stretch of road, and it may have been a controlled burn set by local Indigenous people who still use fire for agriculture and for land management. Whatever the source, the fire left an impression.
Bushfires. We’d heard of the recent one that burned areas of the Kimberley and led to some early closures of parks and campgrounds. But until we actually drove through one did the risk of bushfires come to the surface as something so obvious that I wondered why we hadn’t thought about it, worried about it, more. With everything so dry and the BOM’s ‘warmer than average’ temperatures that had been cooking us and everything else, I was both surprised we hadn’t seen one yet, and also sure that we’d not seen the last of them.
But my mind quickly turned from smoke to sand, from bushfires to beaches. Broome and its resort lifestyle was on the horizon.