Eucalyptus leucophloia
All across the Pilbra grows a small twisted eucalypt known as Snappy Gum. So called because the dead branches snap cleanly across the grain when cracked across a rock or log. This makes them ideal for fire wood. The young trees are smooth and graceful, but as they age, develop into fantastic, knotted,twisted shapes. They are great fun to photograph, particularly with a 10mm lens. Here are some of my favorites.
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There was a review of Nicholas Rothwell’s book “The Red Highway” in the Weekend Australian a month or so before we left home. I read the review and thought it would be an interesting book to read while traveling.
I carted the book all the way up the Queensland coast, across the gulf and up the Stuart Highway to Darwin, where I finally began to read it.
Coincidently, the opening chapters of the book are set in Darwin, so as we were wandering around Stuart Park, Nightcliff, the Military Museum, Knuckey Street, all these places started to emerge from the book. I was starting to wonder at times if I had been to places or had just read about them.
We left Darwin and wound our way across to the Kimberley, and so did The Red Highway. Familiar places like the Gibb River Road, Mt Elizabeth, Gogo Station, Fitzroy Crossing were all popping up in the text as we made our way through what was left of them.
The book also touched on the life of Maxine McDonald, a Kimberley personality we had drinks with on the verandah of Fossil Downs in the early 80’s. It was all quiet amazing, a book with so many twists and turns triggered by chance and coincidence should coincide so closely with our travels.
Beyond the geographic movements of The Red Highway are the mental dips and peaks. Traveling for a long period of time through this country seems to open up all sorts of strange mental doors. Rothwell sweeps you with him through these openings as he journeys from place to place and engages with many interesting characters.
The Red Highway is a great story, made even better for me, running parallel with its movements across Australia.
KARIJINI NATIONAL PARK
www.johnlovett.com (opens in a new window)
The Karijini landscape is dominated by the Hamersley Ranges. These are probably the oldest mountains on earth, the rocks dating back 2,500 million years. Driving through the Hamersleys is unique and beautiful. The undulating hills are covered with spinifex and broken by exposed weathered faces of deep red rock.
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Cutting through the landscape are numerous gorges. Some are accessed by a short walk, others require climbing and scrambling over rocks and ledges, and some can only be reached with ropes and climbing equipment.
Some of the gorges narrow down to passages just wide enough for a person to squeeze through
Others are broad and open with clear pools at the bottom
Looking down into the deeper gorges is an awesome sight. The surrounding country is undulating and fairly unspectacular, but the gorges seem to drop way below the surrounding landscape.
Passing sculptors have installed some impressive structures using just rocks and gravity.
Waterfalls and waterholes are found throughout the gorges
The water is usually freezing cold but, somehow, backpackers seem to be tolerant to near freezing water
Whistling Kite – Pentax K20D 18 -250mm lens
Scattered through the gorges are veins of blue asbestos. The Wittenoom and Yampire gorges have been closed because of the high concentration of asbestos
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KARIJINI VISITORS CENTRE
Architect John Nicholes designed the Karijini Visitors Centre to weather into the landscape. Most of the exterior of the structure is built from heavy welded steel panels. These are acid washed to rust, echoing the iron ore outcrops of the landscape.
It is an impressive building that also hints at the rusted remnants of the areas pastoral history.
Old rusted Pilbra sheepyards, built from flattened oil drums
Power is provided by a large solar array with a thumping big diesel generator, waiting for a rainy day.
The Pilbara region in the northern half of WA not only contains some of the countrys most beautiful scenery, but also generates the bulk of Australias foreign income. Tens of millions of dollars worth of iron ore, oil, gas and salt are shipped out of this area every day. The major towns of Port Hedland, Dampier, Karratha, and the mining towns of Tom Price and Newman are prosperous and incredibly busy.
Newman mines run 24 hours a day, the average wage of a mine worker is around $150,000/ year. They work a 12 hour shift, night shift one week, day shift the next week then the third week off. Food, accommodation, work clothes and equipment is all provided by the company.
Huge trains, over 2 kilometers long , run constantly back and forth between the coast and the mines.
Catching one of these trains at a crossing sure gives you plenty of time to stop and take a photograph.
The little town of Port Hedland has an incredibly busy port, with a constant string of ships waiting at sea to come in and load.
The whole town is coated in a fine red dust from the iron ore loading. Even the concrete shipping tower, high above the town, is stained iron ore red.
It was disappointing to learn that the mountains of salt shipped out of Dampier and Port Hedland don’t find their way into little paper sachets to sprinkle on fish and chips.
Dampier Salt (owned by Rio Tinto) is the largest salt exporter in the world, selling mainly to the industrial chemical markets in Asia. It’s hard to imagine 5 million tons of salt being shipped across to Asia each year. It’s even harder to believe it has nothing to do with the salty taste of Asian food.
A fine piece of installation art on the salt flats outside Dampier.
Remains of old sheep station out camp near Wittenoom – corrugated iron at its best
We camped a night on a wind swept headland on the southern end of 80 mile beach, below Broome. In the morning the wind had stopped and as the sun came up, a heavy fog rolled in. When you faced directly away from the sun you could see a pure white rainbow in the fog. Really weird but a lot of fun to photograph.
The Coast north of Broome looks amazing with turquoise water and red desert sand punctuated by mangroves. We decided to drive up to Beagle Bay, Cape Leveque and One Arm Point to have a look at the settlements and landscape.
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The red desert sand is great to look at, but makes a really lousy road. From Broome to Beagle bay is non stop corrugations covered by a central ridge of sand and high sloping sand shoulders, so keeping in a straight line was a bit of a challenge at times.
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Beagle Bay is a sleepy little Aboriginal Community with an amazing church built by German Missionaries in 1917. The alter and much of the decoration inside is made from thousands of mother of pearl shells.
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One Arm Point is another small Aboriginal Community with fishing shelters built along the waterfront
They are watched over by a pair of extremely laid back guard dogs. The one on the left could wag his tail slowly – that was about as active as they became.
Dog on holidays
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Pentax K20D 500mm mirror lens
It was a lot of fun photographing this Osprey feeding its chick at Gambanan, near Cape Leveque. The mother fed the baby for almost half an hour, just as the sun was going down. The light was perfect and the bird wasn’t disturbed by me, perched among the rocks with a tripod and camera.
After she had fed the fish to the chick, she carefully picked up all the scraps that had fallen beside the nest and gave them to the baby. Once the feeding had finished she made a sharp squeak, the baby sat down in the nest and she took off.
Fifteen minutes later I was back at our camp. I heard another loud squeak and there was the mother Osprey in the tree beside us. (Dead tree on left)
Pentax K20D 500mm mirror lens
She had another large chunk of fish and spent the next 20 minutes eating. Just as it got dark her mate flew in and joined her.
When I woke at 5:00 next morning they were still there in the tree.
CANE TOADS OF THE PLANT WORLD
Boabs are unique to North Western Australia. Starting as a slender stick, boabs grow into the most incredible, distorted shapes. They don’t develop growth rings like a normal tree, but scientists have dated some at over 1500 years old. Every time I come across a big one, I cant help taking a photograph. Just when you think you have the ultimate Boab photo, another more distorted example will appear.
Here are a few of my favourites.
Splashing Paint 