Thursday 6 November 2014

Australia 2014 - (26) Kununurra to Katherine

Well, the 200 Top Rides book was wrong – Kununurra to Katherine is not, in my view, anywhere close to one of the best motorcycle rides in Australia. It has its moments, but I’d say Halls Creek to Kununurra was way better.

One of the highlights though was Lake Argyll, the largest man-made lake in Australia. It meant a 70 km round trip to see it, but you never know when you’ll pass that way again, so I did the detour. And I’m so glad I did. What a beautiful ride up through the Kimberleys to the lake. And the lake itself was breathtaking and, at 6 am, there was no-one else to spoil the view.

Unfortunately the rest of the journey wasn’t quite so interesting. More flat bushlands for miles and only a brief bit of excitement when passing through the Gregory National Park when the Victoria River came into view.

One strange incident did brighten things up a bit. I stopped for a break at the junction with the Buntine Highway where there’s a memorial. As I stood there, a ute full of aboriginals drew up. Four adults, a toddler and a baby all piled out. One of the women took an already peeled onion out and sliced the end off it with a knife. They then all piled back in again and one of them shouted over to me to see if I had some sort of paper. “What, newspaper?” I queried. “Naw,” she replied. “Toilet paper?” I continued. “Naw, for cigarettes,” she said. “Oh, no, I haven’t got any rolling paper,” I replied. With that they all shot off into the yonder.

About 50 km out of Katherine I stopped to use the toilet in a rest area. No sooner had I got off the bike and taken my helmet off, than a small camper pulled in. It was Ian and Anne from the Fitzroy Crossing campsite. They gave me a glass of cold water and I recounted the strange event with the aboriginals and the onion. “Oh,” said Anne, “they were probably using the onion skin as a cigarette paper.” Mystery solved.