Australian travels...: Day 13, Broome to Windjana

Another early morning....seriously, will they ever end?? We finally left the hostel at 0710, and Marina was on my tour, so I sat next to her. Again, it is an almost full tour, with only 3 empty seats, I think there was a total of 18 of us on the bus. We made a couple stops at roadhouses en route to Windjana gorge where we camped. This tour was all in the outback, no staying in hostels this tour, which also meant there was only one time to get booze. Out guide made a good point, he said, whatever you think you will drink on the tour, double it! I thought logically, averaging 4 beer a day, for 9 days, so I brought 66 beer, and it lasted perfectly. We stopped at a famous Boab tree, which are very large hollow trees (see picture below). In the late 1800's the aboriginals used the trees as a prison for those on their way to Derby for sentencing. You could fit 13 people in the tree!! We arrived at our camp at lunch time, made our lunch, and then headed to the Windjana gorge where we saw a LOT of freshwater crocs, and a beautiful gorge. The gorges in the Kimberly's are a bit different then in Karijini, in terms of their structure anyways. This gorge specifically used to be coral under the sea, but over the years, it has slowly been covered, and protected by limestone. When sections of the limestone fall off you can see the white powder of the coral and how delicate it is. We then headed to tunnel creek, which, during the wet season, is a massive river that flows through the tunnel. When we where there, the deepest the 'river' was, was about knee deep. The middle of the tunnel was completely pitch black, and we all required 'torches' as they say here. We saw some spirit paintings in the tunnel as some cool rock formations. After the tunnel we headed back for supper, curry chicken and rice, I can get used to this food! We then headed back to Windjana gorge at dusk to check out more of the freshy's, and boy did we see them. All you could see was their red eyes in the water! The largest we saw was about 7 feet long. You couldn't see their whole body, but you can tell by the size of their head, whatever it is, you times it by 7. We headed back to camp, sat around the fire for a bit, and then headed to bed - in a swag under the stars - life is grande!!