Here are a few pics from my first trip from Melbourne up to the north of Australia in July 2001 with Ben,
my partner in exploration from the anti-outback capital of the world....New York City.

As usual, the best photographs have gone to my photo agencies to ultimately pay for the trip, but these informal pics still tell the story.
We drove around for nearly 3 weeks, covering 5000 kilometres in a rented 4WD Toyota Land Cruiser campervan with kitchen, fridge, and a tendency to shake up the beers on the bumpy bits.
(I must stress that shaken beers were not a problem though because we only consumed after the days driving was done,
although the first round was usually a little frothy.)

Any resemblances to persons living or dead, is completely intentional.

Make yourself a cup of coffee, or if its too early, grab a beer.
(allright, if you must drink tea, I dont want to know about it if it smells like flowers.)



 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
Here we are on the way home at last. This is not the rented Toyota, but another friends car which got me back from Alice to Melbourne. The train track you see here heads off behind us for the longest straight stretch of railway track in the world......nothing but nothingness for 500 k.
The train drivers love it because they dont have to touch the steering wheel for hours.  (Glendambo, South Australia)
(The vegetation is really green, not red...any weird red stuff in these photos is due to my using Infra-red film.)
















 
Backtracking now, this moth was big enough to eat Ben and I for dinner. It was inside our vehichle though, so we hitched to the next town and drank beer while we waited for our rental company to open an office there.  I think Ben is still there. 



 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 


 

This is Ben looking a little out of focus at the thought of walking into this spooky tunnel enclosed creek. In the background can be seen some other hard core, seriously tough outback adventurers emerging from the dark depths of this several hundred metre long claustrophobics' nightmare. We were doing great until I saw that I was sharing the water with many pincer laden shrimp, so my bare feet took much longer strides on the way back.
(Tunnel Creek, The Kimberley, Western Australia.)















 
   Half way through the tunnel was a piece of daytime again, illuminating such "Journey to the center of the earth"
treats as this tree-thing.





















 
 

 

This poor Wallaby was being incessantly dive bombed by this Magpie. (or maybe, a mudlark.) A wallaby is like a kangaroo, only its a Wallaby.
(Katherine Gorge, Northern Territory.)





















 

 

After several days of cloudy skies and driving down a 700 kilometre dirt road, frustrated photographers will shoot just about anything, and here, as I was practising on this pretty flower, this BLUE and black bee flew in to my composition...? I'd certainly never heard of a blue bee, but now I've heard one.
(Gibb River road, The Kimberley.)

 (Aug. 30 Update:  Your bee is an Amegilla sp., bluebanded bee,  from the family Anthophoridae.  These bees often nest in aggregations either in flat ground or banks of soil but each female makes her own burrow and cells.  The cells are lined with a layer of secreted wax-like material and the larvae are fed on a liquid or semi-liquid diet. 

Catriona McPhee 
Collection Manager Entomology
Melbourne Museum)

 Thankyou for that information Catriona.

















 

 

Not the kind of vehichle you expect to see in the outback. The "Desert Rose" here holds the world record for the fasted average speed for a solar powered car over one hour. (107 kph / 66 mph). This was a short dirt detour around roadworks on the sealed highway linking Darwin to Alice Springs.
(Thats like Fargo to Kansas City, but without the weird accent.) feel free to FIX me some eggs though.





















 

 

It would be the "Desert Woes" for this driver though facing this river crossing in The Kimberley if it was not the dry season.
This was the widest but shallowest of many such crossings we had to make along the Gibb River road.
If you get stuck in one of these, you dont walk out, you sprint. The crocodiles have no table manners.





















 

 

Much safer to paddle around here. At worst, you will get hit in the head by a pebble thrown by one of these scary Perth suburban soon to be teenage boys just out of view of their still gasping mother trying to recover from the 45 minute walk into this lovely spot.
(Emma Gorge, The Kimberley.)





















 

Walking into these gorges, prudence is essential before cooling off in the stream, thanks to the abundance of these rather large arachnids who like to build just above the water between the rocks for a lovely view. (Known locally as the "Jesus spider", due to their cross shape.)





















 

Views like this.  (El Questro Gorge.) 

"El Questro" in English means: "Now that we have figured out that we can make oodles more cash on our huge cattle station by letting tourists on our property to see our beautiful natural features, we dont care if you lose your sunglasses in the stream and the only pair we have to sell you are these ill-fitting white ladies sunglasses which you will have to buy for forty dollars, or you will go blind driving out of here when the sun finally comes out." (No, ...really, I thoroughly enjoyed my stay there...until I lost my sunglasses.)




















 

In stark contrast, this lizards' skeletal head like tree branch is the victim of regular controlled burning of the bush. (thats not some kinky sexual hair removing ceremonial practise, but a seasonal back burning of the undergrowth spanning the equivalent of about 13 US states.) (No, Delaware isn't one of them...go back inside and consider yourselves lucky to have a tollbooth on the freeway)






















 

Nearing the end of our weeks long search for a 7/11, our Toyota finally succumbed to my driving techniques and Bens' stop/start jewellery store approach to  outback touring. (Pearls and diamonds abound in these parts, in fact we drove by the worlds largest producing diamond mine, in Western australia.)  (Bens' girlfriend-fiancee? will be one lucky woman.) 





















 

Another pretty yellow flower, with a very well formed stamen, dont you think?


























 

The berries on this tree didn't like the thought of being too far away from the mother trunk.
Thats me in the background doing the taste test. 
We had been on the road for nearly a whole day, so anything was worth a try by now, before we resorted to actually cooking.
(Kakadu National Park, Northern Territory.)





















 

I didnt know dragonflys could get this badly sunburnt. Seriously, this guy was fire red...maybe it's called a dragons' breath fly?
(Katherine Gorge.)





















 

These very unusual trees (being two very different species it would appear), are sharing the same roots, next to the fifty three kilometre track with numerous water crossings and every other kind of speed limiting obstacle which lead us into the "Bungle Bungle". (The guide books suggest allowing three hours to drive in, but if your vehichle has an outboard motor it would be quicker.) The Bungle Bungle (meaning more than one bungle) is an amazing natural feature of the Kimberley consisting of many beehive like rock formations which were only discovered 19 years ago (by white man). It still remains undiscovered by us however, on account of the rain which forced us to get out the morning after we arrived, because our sox got wet.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Another weird duo-species tree thing on the Bungle Bungle road.  The Serpent Tree? 




















 

This sour-faced guy wishes his whole body was on the same branch at least.
You wouldnt look too happy either if your favourite bit of anatomy was stuck over there out of reach!
(Between Katherine Gorge one and two, - a coincidence, really, Northern Territory.)





















 

Here is a real lizard, (maybe a Goanna, or a monitor), who was quite intrigued with the method us humans used to cross the water. 
He is about three feet long, so one foot short of real stability.





















 

The water lizard. The waters in Australias' north are inhabited by two kinds of crocodile - the fresh water, which run from people,
and the salt water, which run towards people and eat them. 
The one in this photograph is Kevin.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

I had to do it. The view Ben is looking at looked like the next shot an hour earlier......
Broome
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

The very rare Indian Ocean "Zipper" cloud......or is it the "Ripcurl" cloud?
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

(Eighteen years earlier, on the other side of the planet in Lisbon Portugal, the sunset looked like this. I didn't know Ben then.)





















 

I headed out of the outback after flying to the middle of the country to meet my good friend Sonia, whom I drove back to the south in her car (picture one), along with her two lovely children. (Ben flew out of Darwin on his romantic quest, in a state of mind much to my envy, or anyone elses for that matter.) 
Here you can see Julian, all of 5 years old after seeing Clint Eastwood in the "Eiger Sanction".
(Simpsons Gap, Northern Territory.)




















 

Meanwhile, Mum is busy doing her own thing, after hearing that you can get a two dimensional representation of something really amazing if you have a camera. (With all due respect, after seeing the results of her photography, I'm the first to enroll when she starts teaching.)
However, she obviously has no idea of the heights her son is aspiring to reach.



















 

"I've had a gutfull of nature...Lets get the hell out of here"
(Broome - the Indian Ocean, Western Australia.)





















 
In conclusion, let me say that when on a travelling experience, although you cannot control the weather, or many other aspects of the trip, if you tip your waitress, she will always reciprocate promptly with a nice coldie and will even pretend to be interested in your babbling ravings about the weirdness you just encountered.

Be aware also, that a GPS (Global Positioning System receiver), is only of use if you knew where the hell you were when you started. Thats why we could only use it to prop open the fridge lid while re-arranging our supplies of beer, film, beer, food, and spare beers.
 

I would like to thank the guy with the badly fitting overalls at the Derby Shell who noticed my petrol tank cap on top of the pump.

Ian Lawrence
 

COPYRIGHT 2001  (use cut and paste.)

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