Millstream Park

Millstream National Park is a wonderful oasis in the midst of the arid Pilbara. Between the Hamersleys and Millstream, we’d spent a night on the outskirts of the iron ore-mining town of Mt. Tom Price, which was pleasant enough, but we were delighted to get back to wilderness—especially this wilderness. It was a real change [...]

Hamersley Gorge

If you know anything about plate tectonics, you know that the surface of the planet is not static. It is, rather, in constant, if slow, motion, with continents moving, seas opening and closing—and earthquakes and volcanoes along the edges where the plates meet. Over the ages, land has been repositioned, created, destroyed, pushed under, and [...]

Dales Gorge

The region through which we were now traveling is called the Pilbara. The Pilbara is a large (197,000 square miles), rugged, and remote region of northwestern Western Australia where both the Hamersley and Chichester Ranges are located. It is arid and can be on the warm side. In fact, Marble Bar, a town in the [...]

Around Broome

I spent my first day in Broome seeing some of the sights. Stuart took me first to the Japanese cemetery. Because Broome has long been a center of the pearling industry, Japanese pearl divers arrived fairly early in Broome’s history. Unfortunately, no one knew about “the bends,” or diver’s paralysis, when pearl diving was in [...]

Heading West

After the day at Katherine Gorge, I caught a bus heading west. It was a 21-hour ride, but the scenery and the delightful people on board both contributed to making it more fun than you might imagine.
Before dawn, we left the Northern Territory and crossed into Western Australia (WA), the country’s largest state. The northern [...]

A Gorge-ous Day

My last day in the Northern Territory was a long one, but splendid. It started with an all-day climb/swim/boat up Katherine Gorge and ended with boarding a bus after midnight and heading for Western Australia.
Katherine Gorge, also known as Nitmiluk, is owned by the Jawoyn people, the same people whose corroboree I’d had the pleasure [...]

Mataranka

Contrast always makes things more interesting. For example, when I visited Iceland, despite a light snow, we could go swimming, because there are geothermally heated springs. At Mataranka, the contrast is crisp and bleak vs. wet and lush—and the contrast is just as striking as the cold vs. hot of Iceland.
Every day, several million gallons [...]

Pandanus spiralis

Pandanus is a genus of plants common to tropical Asia and Australia. There are about 650 species, most of which have a lot of stilt roots that help support the slender trunks. Pandanus tends to grow near water, either along coastlines or in marshy or wetland areas. (That was a clump of pandanus in the [...]

Paperbarks

I love the trees in Australia. Of course, the eucalypts are my favorite and are by far the most diverse and most ubiquitous. But paperbarks are high on the list of other trees I fancy. I love the willowy leaves and the soft, pale, tattered bark that peels off in thin layers. Of course, I [...]

Twin Falls

As you might imagine, a towering plateau such as the Arnhem Plateau has more than a few waterfalls. The afternoon of the day we visited Jim Jim, we put on our swimsuits and hiking boots and headed for Twin Falls.
Twin Falls was a delight. Getting in was an adventure, but it was worth the [...]