Travel Diary

Our cultural guide is Neville. He is a local, born in Arnhem Land. He is unnervingly personable. His underlying formal education he tries to hide but his articulate presentation gives him away.

He talks of the cool burning techniques of the Indigenous people and how with their control, the undergrowth is reduced while leaving the trees. His explanation fills in many of the questions asked by what we saw on the way here from Mataranka.

Talking about being “on the road”, its time to get the Cruiser serviced. As we will be here almost a week. I call the local Totoyta dealer. Apologetically I find its a three week wait. So much for the that economy being hit by the effects of Covid.

Home and our hunter and gathering exploits are inspected. Now what to do with them. Silver Leader deals with the fish, skinning and filleting as we want. The crabs need to be cooked up. We certainly do not have a pot to do them all at once.

That aside, making sure I had the right gear for the job in the boat is of prime importance. The new reel needs to be threaded with line.

That was the last fish caught for the day. For the next two and a half hours we fought the wind chop, averaging less than 20 knots on the return voyage

The planning, the lockdowns and what we might be able to do in the next few weeks is the subject of a large discussion. We at least have options at the moment. We need to get into Western Australia first – the forms supposedly allow that, but then what.

For us at least protein was not going to be on the menu. We had to cook everything and we did, adding where we could fit it in, Rose’s supply. The leftovers will carry us through for a few days and we will not be “wasting” any food at the border.

We are beckoned out of the line of traffic and pulled aside by the police, quickly have our passes checked, the quarantine staff do their bit and we are back on the road. Not sure why we were short tracked around but we appreciated it.

Service is a thing of importance, not something that is a consequence of business. Here in the Kimberley the supply and demand of tourists runs the economy. Operators struggle with the whims of our politicians playing one upmanship, closing borders and slamming lockdowns into place.