West Kimberleys

3 July - Kimberleys, WA

We have seen a lot of jaw-dropping scenery in our travels. Probably the most impacting was our first sight of the Grand Canyon. The Kimberleys come very close! Rocky escarpments with red, gold and every colour in between, tower over rolling gold and light green valleys dotted with tangled, bulbous boab trees. Lake Argyle, just over the border from the Northern Territory is the largest fresh water lake in Australia. Man-made by damming the Ord River, the lake adds a brilliant blue to the spectrum of colours.

Kununurra and Wyndham are the two main towns of the northern part of the region. Neither have much going for them. Kununurra is by far the larger of the pair. It was created to service the Ord River Irrigation Scheme. Today, a service town is about all it is.

Wyndham today would hardly even be worth the drive, except for the fact that it is one of the ‘must visit’ places on most round Australia travellers’ itinerary, simply because it is WA’s most northern town. The town does have an interesting past, but it is mostly in ruins today. Wyndham Port is far more interesting from this perspective than the newer town a few kms inland. Four or five battered corrugated iron shops are all that is left of a once thriving multi-racial community. Chinese merchants, tailors and market gardeners supported the old port where they gathered after the gold petered out around the turn of the century. Afghan camel herders and local aborigines worked the gardens that fed the town and sailors from South-east Asia. Some of the Chinese families still live in the town, though all that remain of the Afghans is an isolated cemetery.