In between writing about the Mitchell trip, I’ll post about one of the day-trips I did after returning back to Kununurra. Richard invited me to another of the Hash Harriers walks, this time a more involved hike through a spot called Packsaddle Springs. After a short but especially rugged ride along a dirt road (complete with stream crossing), we set off up a hill that didn’t look too special, but at the top was a splendid view of a wide gorge with a stream and series of small falls running through it. We rested under a tree for a little while, then turned left and started climbing around the side so that we could descend to the creek level for a swim. It was a lovely day to be hiking because it wasn’t too hot (for Kununurra anyway) and there was a nice breeze.
Of course I hadn’t realized we were going to be swimming, so I had to wear my clothes in, but the water felt really nice, once you got into it (not too cold, but fresh after the heat of walking) and we had cliffsides to view as we paddled around. I found a few mini-islands and half-submerged rocks to stand or sit on, and could see a some bowerbirds hopping around up the cliff (too far away to see their bowers, unfortunately). After we put our gear back on (or in my case, just my shoes) we picked our way across the rocks and over the stream to a spot level with the steepest of the waterfalls. I had to take my shoes off again (oh, the dramas) so that we could get a photo of us all crouching under the waterfall. It felt like a very nice but hard massage, and the only downside was I wasn’t wearing any goggles or anything, and the water kept crashing in my eyes. Still, it was the first waterfall I’ve stood under since the old Stanford in Australia days, up in the rainforests of Queensland.
Further up the stream it got a bit rockier and we had to do some mild rock-climbing up the red sandstone. Richard was taking us to another lake in the stream for lunch, and we were still enjoying the view as we progressed through the gorge/ravine (what is the difference between those, anyway?). There were only 11 of us on the trip, a few of the people I recognized from the last time, and then a couple of New Zealanders (one of them we nicknamed the hippopotamus because he kept striding into the water, fully clothed, with his bag and everything, while the rest of us carefully leapt over rocks to cross the streams). There were also two Japanese holidayers who had just started working in town. We had trouble convincing the girl to jump in the water, but the boy was pretty keen and when I mentioned that I was from Seattle he asked about the Mariners, and Ichiro, which was cool – I guess Ichiro is still pretty famous over there.
We reached the spot for lunch, slightly shaded and with a nice pool right next door, but first Richard led us through a muddy, hillocky path to the lily pond, which was a small pool literally filled with lily pads and flowers – pretty “spekky,” I’d say (I can’t remember which Australian I met said “spekky” all the time, I’m losing track, but someone used it a lot to mean spectacular, and I liked it). The Maori fellow made another hippo-like disappearance into a nearby pool, and then we all headed back to the other spot for lunch and a swim. Someone climbed up a rock ledge and a few of the guys did jumps and dives from the top. I finally decided I needed to jump, at least from the lower ledge, so I swam over and gave my best screaming leap off, which was pretty sweet.
Finally we had to start moseying back to the cars, so I put my dripping feet into my socks once more (the absolute worst thing about swimming while hiking is putting socks and shoes back on) and we made the trek back, over the streams, past the waterfall (this time going around by the top so we could get shots looking over the edge) and bypassing the first swimming hole to return to the top ledge. On the way we saw lots of small kapok trees covered in yellow flowers, looking nothing like the giant kapok I saw at the Posadas Amazonas lodge in Peru. I’m assuming it’s a different species or group in the kapok family, which would make sense since the Kimberley is pretty different from the Amazon rainforest, along with the fact that they’re in two separate continents. Anyway I had seen a lot of the flowers when I first arrived in Kununurra, but now some of the trees had big green bulges hanging from the end of their branches – shaped sort of like gigantic olives, and a brighter green. Apparently the inside is super fluffy, at least when ripe, and one of the women, from Derby (which is still in the Kimberley but much further west) said that they used to have kapok fluff in their pillows, which was nice until it lost its fluffiness and got kind of hard (not sure how or why this happened). At any rate it didn’t sound like the best pillow stuffer, but it’s pretty cool that they used it anyway, coming from a weird green fruit off a tree.
We had another hash beer-and-nibblies session back at the cars, and the newbies had to chug their glasses of beer while everyone sang the silly song about drinking it “down and down and down.” On the way back into town Richard stopped at the Zebra Rock Gallery, so I could see some of the cool sculptures and jewelry they’ve created out of this striped rock type that’s only found in the region. It’s like a sedimentary rock but in dark and light alternately layers (hence the zebra name). There were lots of pretty pendants and cool sculptures that took advantage of the different layers of dark and light, the coolest was a face that had been carved so that the dark lines etched the features while the rest of it was mostly light – clever.
We also got mango smoothies and grabbed a slice of bread to feed the catfish down by the pier (the gallery is right on Lake Kununurra, which I was to learn a lot more about two days later). The catfish were huge and very eager for pieces of white bread, lifting their whiskers out of the water and clambering all over each other – one of them was massive, like the size of a groper, or a small pygmy hippo (okay, so it wasn’t that big, but still). Then we chucked a few pieces into a green, plant-filled area, and up came turtles to vie for the bread (the catfish usually snatched it from in front of their noses). There were as many as 8 or so turtles up at one time.
Right before we left we visited the cockatoos and corellas they had at the back of the gallery, which are supposed to speak multiple languages. All we heard was “hello,” over and over, and in an up-beat way that emphasized both syllables equally, like a Brit might say to a child, or like what Pooh-bear is always saying when he’s surprised by something (“hu-llo!”). Cute. One of them, a sulfur-crested cockatoo, kept displaying his yellow crest in between trying to burrow out of the bottom of his cage (according to Richard, he does this a lot).
It was a very nice day, and I was thoroughly wiped out by the time I got back to Ian’s place (I housesitted for him when he and his family took a holiday to the Mitchell Falls for a week. We were supposed to have gone there as well at that time, but the plans shifted and we’ve had to wait). Pretty sweet - swimming, hiking, gorges, turtles, parrots, and mango smoothies to boot!
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