You may not have noticed but recently I disappeared off the face of the earth for two and a half months. Well not quite but close to it. I just spent two and a half months working in Western Australia's Kimberly region.
The Kimberly is a pretty remote area so the only contact with the outside world was with a satellite phone that we used only to arrange evacuations. The only other people we saw were brief encounters with helicopter pilots that evacuated students or brought us more food.
The first 40 days we spent canoeing the Drysdale River. The Drysdale River is a challenging river in very different ways from what I am use to paddling. First of all we are paddling tandem canoes loaded with 40 days worth of gear which is really heavy in the boats, and makes them sit very low in the water. We put on the river at the end of the wet season when the river is dropping off from when it peaks. In the dry season the river all but dries up making it a great place for trees to grow. So that means that when we put on the river is flowing through trees. This year the river was very low after an unusually dry wet season so we also had a lot of rocks to contend with. If that isn't enough the river is also full of crocodiles, snakes and spiders, isn't Australia a wonderful place? So basically we set off with complete beginners, in boats that barely float and travel down a river full of strainers and deadly creatures for 40 days!
Even the Grasshoppers are scary
I was lucky (?) enough to end up working with an all male group of 10 students and another instructor who was of course male. However that is a challenge that I am pretty use to paddling.
There is abundant animal life in the area from the fish that bite you when you go swimming, to the frogs that are everywhere just after it rains, and you can't forget the birds with flocks of parrots squawking from 5.30 am onwards. There is also a lot of incredible human history in the area with a lot of Aboriginal sacred sites a rock art.
The canoeing section went well with the group being frustrating at times but always entertaining. We had to do a couple of evacuations one for appendicitis and one for a rotten wisdom tooth but they all went smoothly. 40 days is a long time to spend lining and portaging with only a couple of runnable rapids however it is such an amazing place that it is still a great expedition.
After 40 days we ditched the canoes and packed our gear into backpacks and started walking back upstream. It was awesome to see the Kimberly from a different perspective other than the river. The flat landscape made navigating challenging at times as there is no trails out there and there were some days that we spent just walking on a bearing through cane grass with no land features at all. The heat also makes hiking challenging and there is always the danger of running out of water. To get around this we got into the habit of waking up at 4 am and starting hiking at first light. That way we got into camp, which was usually at a beautiful waterhole, by midday and we got to spent the rest of the day relaxing and exploring. Also teaching some classes of course!
After 26 days of hiking we arrived back at Drysdale Station where we started 2 months before. The Kimberly region is such an amazing place and I am sure I will be back again one day.But for now I have two months off kayaking in California!!!!!!!!!!!
Photos - Rob Hughes Games
