Photos from the Real AUSTRALIA

The Kimberley region of Western Australia

The north of the state of Western Australia is remote, wild and wonderful, one of the most isolated in Australia. The Kimberley region in particular is one of rivers, gorges, many caves with Aboriginal paintings and a coast that is largely inaccessible. Both Abel Tasman and William Dampier sailed past this coast in the 17th Century and both thought this continent didn't have much to offer! This is absolute adventure country. It is possible to sample part of it following the Gibb River Road, about 670 km of rough gravel that was originally carved in this remote landscape to transport stock to the ports of Wyndham and Derby from the cattle stations that were established in this region after an overland trek by the intrepid Durack Brothers in the 1880s. By the way, this is now a bitumen highway; the photos were taken in 1977!

Following this Gibb River Road (now Highway) brings many rewards. Travelling from west to east there is Windjana Gorge; this was the scene of the gun battle in which Jandamarra, a Bunuba leader who was known to the whites as "Pigeon", released a group of Aboriginal prisoners and shot a trooper while employed as a tracker. He became a leader of his people in the struggle against the white invading pastoralists in which the Aborigines engaged in guerilla warfare in this rugged limestone country until he was shot: by an Aboriginal police tracker.

Nowadays it is peaceful of course; the Leopold Ranges have wonderful scenery, clear waterholes and wide vistas; there are galleries near Mount Barnett and Manning Gorge with rock paintings from the Aboriginal people who lived here for millenia and the typical boab or bottle trees, close relatives of the baobab trees of Africa and Madagascar; it is thought baobab fruit may have floated to the Western Australian coast from Madagascar 75 million years ago.

One of those, a squat, hollow boab tree near Derby, was used as a place to lock up Aboriginal prisoners in the old, darker days. Derby was established in 1885 to serve as a port to serve the newly established cattle stations, although its large tidal range and treacherous rips made it far from ideal. It ceased to be a cattle port in 1968 when it became just too difficult; the port saw its last commercial vessel in 1983.

At the other end of the road is Wyndham, established in the late 1880s when about 5000 men landed here to work the gold fields near Halls Creek; this didn't last long, however; in 1919 meatworks were opened here which gave the town a bit of a boost. Today its port exports live cattle to the Asian market.

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