Ord River - Kununurra

Liz was planning to go to the Ord River with her DAS (previous dragon boating club) mates, and I thought I'd tag along for a comeback half-marathon, which was serendipitously scheduled for the same weekend. Unfortunately it was rescheduled (or maybe I had misread the dates/year), so I ended up settling for a 20km walk on the day. That was good, anyway, and didn't have any risk of damaging old injuries. Plus walking in Kununurra heat is a non-trivial form of exercise.

I had about 5 cameras in my hands while taking this shot - it's most of the crews of the 7 boats that took part in the marathon itself getting themselves organised for the final photograph. Shooting into the sunset wasn't such a clever idea. You can make out the Ord in the background - it's pretty wide here, about 2km upriver from Diversion Dam - and in the far right background you can see what's on the other side of the river. Vast expanses of not much.

 In fact, although I didn't get over that side of the river, I'd be pretty happy to bet that it looked like this, which is the view walking from town to the caravan park where we stayed, about 2.5 km. Pretty much every view looks like this.

Sometimes there are lumps. Usually not. That's the main highway you see in the foreground; right to Katherine and left to Wyndham/Broome. I'm on the bike track, which is a bit of a puzzle really. It goes from the edge of town to the Diversion Dam barrier wall. Approximately 4 km. Maybe there was once an engineer who liked cycling, and a town council that liked the engineer. Who knows? But it was good for running for me, and a few locals in training as well.

Sadly I didn't get to meet the linguist/manager here; it was closed 2 of the 3 days I had free, and he(?) was busy on the day when we both managed to be there. Saving languages is a highly worthwhile aim - I don't know how practical/useful it ultimately will be, but if it's possible then it has to be tried. Of course it's a highly complex project, because a language that is, in some sense, propped up, is a language acquiring some of the ethos of the propping process. But in the same way that a species remains a species, despite some subset of adaptation/mutation, a language can to.

This is one of the few lumps - Kelly's Knob is the only name I spotted for it. It's being slowly worn away by fig trees, erosion and grasses, but the fig trees make the best pictures. Looking at the stratification in the stone it's obviously been underwater for a long part of its life - and it turns right back into sand if walking around it is any kind of valid testimony - extraordinary evidence of a time when Australia was much smaller than it is today.

 Three views of Mt Cyril (sic), all taken with the same camera and within 20 minutes of each other. It's remarkable how the colours change so dramatically. We didn't go climbing here, because:

•  it was too hot
•  the rock is apparently very soft/breakable
•  it looked pretty easy to get lost, and 
•  it was too hot.

We proved point 3 by getting lost, all the while

 remaining on the road which appeared to be marked on the map. When I say "lost", it was more a case of ending up back in suburbia rather than in the middle of the "Hidden Valley", known locally as the mini-Bungles. We were able to tell from the air when leaving that mini-Bungles is a reasonable name - it's not so easy to tell from the ground, although if you got properly lost you might get the idea.

We proved points 1 and 4 by drinking abut 4 litres of water in 2 hours, as well as multiple ice-creams back in the caravan park.

The taxi driver who took ius home didn't understand what hwe were doing, walking around Kununurra. "Nothing to see", he said, "I only stay here for the fishing".