Wyndham

the Afghan graveyard...noticeably, and perhaps not surprisingly, unmaintained and unrenovated compared to the Pioneers cemetery. Although the sign outside the gate here was in mint condition, which you might want to see as some kind of multicultural karmic payback. Was it easier/harder/similar for an Afghan camel-driver to emigrate than an Anglo-Irish labourer? Discuss, with particular regard to linguistic and cultural barriers.

Still, not forgotten.

More pioneers also came from China, and to the northern coastline for many years prior to the gold fields, in the fishing, pearling and trading businesses. This shop front is a curious artefact - unused for years (and the interior the apparent same) but with a paper lantern in excellent condition hanging outside. Who hung it? When? Why? Is it to puzzle tourists like me, or a gesture of respect to the past?

Wyndham is a place full of small questions. Like, why does it have such a good coffee shop? Where does the coffee shop get its extraordinarily good bread? How come the museum is both open (unlike, say, Kununurra) and interesting (unlike many rural museums, which tend to the worthy)? Why is the police station so big? (And so modern?)

Three views from the Five Rivers Lookout, one of the standout places we visited. To the north, massive tidal flats. To the south, rivers and semi-desert. To the west, stones - although it's a bit of a trick, really, because that's not a vista as such. That's the top of the hill the lookout is carved into the side of. In the middle of the picture to the right you can see the iron ore pile waiting to be loaded into the barges in the river and then subsequently on-loaded into the final transport vessel. The inlet/river is very shallow - the extent of the tidal flats would, I guess, suggest that to a geographer's mind. There used to be a crocodile farm just a bit north of the ore dump, but we discovered later that it is now closed.

We did see a large crocodile swimming in the river later in the day; the photographs don't do it justice at this scale. All I can say is that it was big (we were able to compare it to a large boat), and quick. Not quick when you were watching it, but quick when you looked away for 10 seconds and then saw how far it had moved when you looked back and tried to spot it again.