2006/07 Australia trip - Parry Lagoon |
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On our way out of Keep River we stopped off at Cockatoo Lagoon again to say goodbye to the brolgas and the ibis and then drove to the border with Western Australia. There, everyone has to stop and discuss their fruit and veggies and honey and toads with a border guard. We had little left by this time and Sandie had trimmed and quartered our remaining onions so they were allowed into the state.
Time goes back 90 minutes at that border, so now we would have sunrise at about 6 am and sunset just after 5 pm. It probably makes sense for the politicians over in Perth on the western edge of the state but not here on the eastern edge. We reset our watches, cameras, clocks, and computer.
John’s repair to my watch had lasted well, but the rest of the watch strap had disintegrated around it, crumbling off a little more each day. Either it was built out of biodegradable plastic or it had contracted leprosy.
Kununurra was the first town we came to. It was created to house the workers at the Argyle diamond mine just up the road, so it’s a new town, barely forty years old. The area also benefits from the Lake Argyle dam and the Ord River irrigation project. The aborigines in Kununurra looked to be much better off, some driving large, expensive sport utilities. The young boys would have flashy basketball shoes even though Mum and Dad still had bare feet.
Kununurra was busy and functional. The store selling very expensive diamonds from the nearby mine was housed in a very basic corrugated iron building. The town was useful to us as it had a supermarket, diesel, and an Internet connection, but we soon moved on, looking for a campsite. This was important here as camping outside a campground could be expensive. The Northern Territory allows camping in rest areas for 24 hours. In general, Western Australia does not allow this, and in some holiday areas, like around Kununurra, court may fine campers $1000 for camping anywhere other than in a campground.
North of Kununurra, the scenery looked much like Africa, great valleys of savannah, grasslands that looked like they should have giraffes and zebras instead of kangaroos, and a backdrop of red mountains and cliffs.
We were planning to camp close to the Parry Lagoon conservation area, on the Great Northern Highway, on our way to Wyndham on the coast. There is a campground at Parry Farms at the end of a bumpy track, our kind of place. We camped on the edge of the billabong, and the owner ran a power cord out to us so that we could recharge our batteries.
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We were sitting around drinking tea and swatting mosquitoes on the edge of the billabong when Sandie noticed the snake behind me. It didn’t seem to be very interested in us, but it was obviously hunting for something. It lifted its head up about two feet off the ground to look around and then was attacked by a pair 
of birds, willie wagtails, normally inoffensive little birds but obviously worried about the neighbourhood going downhill. The snake made its way across the meadow towards some other campers. No one seemed to know if it was dangerous but the people in those tents were not ‘appy. The owner showed up and pronounced it harmless, a medium-sized python, a frog eater. The owner eventually chased it up a tree with a broom.
We watched another beautiful sunset as the pink lit up the clouds above the billabong, and then we retreated inside before the bugs became too bad.
Tuesday July 4th
Sandie had some more excitement in the morning: a large frog in the toilet. I told her she shouldn’t be upset and should 
consider the event from the frog’s point of view. Our neighbours confirmed that it was a tree frog and not a cane toad, and should be left alone. In this part of the world every outdoors flush toilet had its own frogs. If they were flushed away they’d just swim back up the plumbing anyway. It was quite rare for us to have flush toilets as most campgrounds just have pits. I’d rather not know what may be lurking down in those!