Here's a story from our time in Western Australia, high up in the tropics. The setting is Kununarra, it's mid-May and we've almost reached the Northern Territory border after leaving Perth in April.
The weather is sunny, real sunny, the kind that makes you squint even with sunglasses on. It isn't even 8am, but we're standing by the road outside the Ivanhoe caravan park, dressed, fed and feeling only slightly dopey from last night's wine. A bus rolls up, not the one we were looking for, but ours anyway, and four junctions later we pull into the airport. There's a check-in desk, but no need to check in. We don't have any check-in baggage, so they weigh us instead, and I joke we shouldn't have had seconds at dinner.
Aviator Moustache. He walks over. Points at a map and briefs us on the route, then we're on the tarmac with the wind in our faces. A glance at the windsock tells me it's a nor-westerly, but this is a return mission so there's nothing to gain from the tailwind. Aviator Moustache runs through basic safety then asks "who's taking the seat up front?" There are two guys up close who face each other in a murmured show of you're-welcome-no-please-I-insist, but they're too late, because before they even start talking, my hand is up and I've called it. There are times to be polite and there are times to play at be the copilot.
We taxi into position and I confirm with control before increasing the fuel mix. The light plane jostles with the wind as we pick up speed, holding on to the runway until I ease the control column back, flick some switches at random and bank sharply to avoid the incoming Messerschmidt. We gain altitude quickly to avoid trouble, then I transfer control and take up navigation and photographic duties, mapping enemy lines and identifying key strategic defence positions like these stunning hills and this dam.
The flight path takes us away from Kununarra and the Ord River irrigation system, and then in turn up the Lake Argyle spillway, which has category 6 rapids in the wet season (on a scale of 1-7, 6 means really big white water). We pass a ridge and the view opens up to Lake Argyle itself, which is so big it awes us. The pilot spurts facts: normal surface area 1,000 square kilometres; 25,000 freshwater (the smaller type) crocs; superquintillionbillionlots of water. We don't listen, just gape and take photos. We take ages to pass the lake, but the scenery changes dramatically as we do. The hills are straight line ridges, sawtooth in profile, with rivers trickling slowly and half the valley hidden from the sunlight. In the wet season, these streams would be massive rivers, but that seems unlikely right now at the start of the dry. On and on we go, the hills green and sandy. The pilot tells us we'll swing round the Piccanniny area then land for our tour. What he doesn't say right then is that the Piccaninny is an ancient meteorite crater, 7km wide and amazing from the air. We see the Bungle Bungle range, smooth and stripy, the rocks in waves, domes and massifs. Red and black, red and black, the blue-green of low eucalypt scrub and the intense blue sky: the colours are vivid. Aviator Moustache guides the plane round to allow us a better look before aiming us at the dirt line airstrip.
On the ground there's a bus waiting for us, a big 4x4 truck that looks like an airport catering vehicle with windows and a plump Jolly Old Guy who introduces himself as our tour guide. He is knowledgable about the plants we pass, even stopping the bus to pick sweet-smelling bush tucker flowers for us. I'm grateful for the huge suspension on the bus as we career down the car-width dirt road; this is definitely not a road for our wagon. A patch of tarmac appears on the road ahead of us and we slow down as it's too potholed to take at normal dirt-road speed. Jolly Old Guy says there's a creek so they used tarmac to stop the road flowing away in the wet, but now it's too far away for them to maintain! As we arrive at the carpark, the Bungles come full into view, rising over the scrub. The hills seem to sprout hills of their own, bumps on bumps, and all stripy. As one, the whole group ignores the scene while heading to the toilets, but amaze as they return. We're up close now and it's nothing like the view from the air. The rocks are rough, crumbled and breaking, and the hills abruptly ramp up from the dirt before gradually flattening in to domes. As we walk along dry sandy stream beds, Jolly Old Guy tells us that the Bungles were formed by a huge river and flood system, that the red layers are finer sandy material laid down gradually as an ancient river flowed this way. When that old river flooded, it flooded dramatically, dragging down huge quantities of silty sand, clay and small pebbles, which formed layers with the finer sand. The thing is, he tells us, those layers aren't red, aren't black, so why are these hills coloured? The silty layers are a better growing surface for green algae, which thrive in the wet season but die back in the dry season and turn the rock black, while the sandy layers don't have the mineral content to sustain the algae, but do have enough in them to support the microbes that make Australia's 'red centre' red, just like in pictures of Uluru / Ayers Rock. To prove it, Jolly Old Guy stops and points out a recent rock fall. The freshly uncovered rock is pale, quartzy and not at all red or black.
There are snakes here, including poisonous kinds. There are dingoes too, and undoubtedly a plethora of nasty spiders, but we don't see any. In fact, we mostly only see cane toads, many of them desiccated in the bottom of empty rock pools. They reached here a few years ago, and decimated the local fauna populations through poisoning the predators, though at least the native frogs don't seen to be being out-competed. Jolly Old Guy points out edible plant after unusual animal after taxonomic speculation (the sandpaper figs may have two distinct populations - fine-grain leaf versus coarse leaf - which he hasn't seen documented anywhere), while we wander up to Cathedral Gorge with its waterfall, pool and excellent acoustics. We eat our packed lunches and giggle as another tourist's fart echoes.
On the way back to the bus, we look at the water marks on the walls of the gorge. This wouldn't be a place for walking in the wet. Over in that corner, a vertical crack has put clear sky between a huge pillar and the rest of the gorge, and nearest us lies a family car-sized boulder with no obvious source. Away from the two permanent waterholes in this gorge, the greenery gives way to scrub, and it's a lot harder to visualise the wet season from here than it was from the air.
Helicopters have been zooming around all day, but by the time we get back to the airstrip, only Aviator Moustache and our Cessna remain. He's been shooting the breeze with the off-duty helicopter pilots all day, what a job. I cede my copilot seat to Annie and take up position as the tail gunner in the back row and pull the cargo door shut behind me. Taking off is far less exciting at this end of the plane, and despite size of the plane and the dirt runway, it's as smooth as a shorthaul flight to Europe on an Avro turboprop. The similarities with commercial flights end pretty shortly after take off as we bank towards the massif. Aviator Moustache likes this part of the job, you can tell, roaring close to the top of the hills, dropping a wing to let us see straight down a huge gorge, then circling back for the other side to see. He takes us over all the main gorges we've heard of in the brochures, providing commentary as we go, until all too soon we've left the stripes and long shadows of the hills and are heading North, over the ski jumps, the cattle paths and winding streams. We've one last attraction left, flying over and round the end of a ridge that has been half eaten by machinery, and as he tells us the story of the Argyle diamond mine's discovery, we marvel.
We land as the sun finally passes below the horizon, tired, excited and thoroughly satisfied with a memorable day out. It was the kind of day to make a year's diversion worthwhile (ha! Like we needed it to be made worthwhile!), and fully worth the upgrade from just a scenic flight. A great big thank-you to Annie's mum for the help, and to the rest of you, I hope this description goes some way to sharing with you what was a wonderful experience.
