Editor’s note: This is part of Jack’s ongoing series (saga? odyssey? final reckoning?) about Western Australia and the Outback. Click here to read Jack’s previous entry, Western Australia: Halls Creek to Windjana Gorge.

Like a Don Juan of the Outback, astride a faithful steed and with loyal Pancho by my side, I stand and gaze out upon boundless joyful beauty. A rest for the eyes and drink for the soul, pausing amid a wild West Coast wander. There are moments like these when, much as my literary brother Cervantes, I reflect and realize that, in my frequent refuge to the Australian Outback vernacular, I neglect to render the landscapes wrought asunder by the tyre tracks of my mighty 4WD.

Riding camels along Cabel Beach, outside of Broome

I go, I see, I gape. And aloft as I am on the edge of broad expanses of beautiful Nothingness on the edge of Western Australia’s mighty Kimberleys, I could spare an adjective or two for the vista stretched out before me. It is magnificent as it is wide and brown, a truly vast scape of land and sand that unfurls like a freshly washed towel betwixt horizon and my wandering feet. The ground buckles and curves to meet the sky in vertiginous places and all the while never leaving footfall from its earthy roots, nary a rock unturned in its endless endlessness yawning on around range and plain.

And well, you see, given that these little pieces of pocket inspiration I’m penning are meant to clock in round the 1000 word mark, it’s usually quicker and more correct to mumble “strewth she was big, and hilly too – what a place, you should go there,” thereby saving valuable column space for talk of beer and irreverent tales that go faster and further than a sentence without a noun high on adjectives heading for a limitless frontier of descriptoratoramaness.

So, as they succinctly put it, where the “bloody hell are ya?” ‘Cos, sure as Lady Luck, boot-deep in the great broad expanse of Western Australia be I.

Western Australia: Breath out the top of your head

Like a sun-kissed Sheila, where you’ve dared a kiss on the cheek, then a furtive nip on the ear, and then suddenly discovered there’s a whole new world stretching further south, so too after Windjana Gorge and Tunnel Creek you realize you’ve just worked your way round to the side of the upper love, around that lobe if you’d continue the metaphor, and now she just goes on and on like some Swedish model in front of one of those bendy mirror-things. Fact is, if I h’aint said it before, Western Australia (WA) is huuuge, and the West Kimberleys are more than just the tip of the hot-as-hell iceberg that’s beckonin’ you on for more. But let’s drop the pretences grab the swag and get busy.

Derby at low tide

Once you’ve hit the heat – and come to think of it, once it was clipping 50 celsius (122F) in the shade and 65C (149F) on the tar, which is enough to more than wrinkle your hide – you’ll realize the importance of thinking like a dolphin: keep your skin wet and laugh a lot. And should you have the time and yogi-like inclinations, learn to breathe out the top of your head. More on that one later.

So, anyway, you might get the picture – when it’s hot, get swimming, when it’s bloody hot, stay swimming. To keep your supplies up perhaps it’s time for a coastal moment. Enter the towns of Derby and Broome.
Derby is home to some of the biggest bloody tides in the world – measuring 12 metres (39 feet) on the coastal yardstick, which is something like 6 vertical metres (19 feet) on high tide, and that’s for true. It’s the only place I’ve seen waves coming towards me on just the turn of tide and had me heading for higher ground for fear of needing a snorkel too soon. The mudflats out that side of town aren’t the most appealing in the world for a swim, so perhaps a better place to check-in for saltwater sedation could be Broome.

Broome, lovely place

Broome, Broome, lovely place, full of people. And as I say when there’s an empty sun-lit beer garden as you’re confronted with a crowded front bar at the pub, you’ve got an easy idea on where Jack might be – out back checking for a quiet moment among the gum trees. Broome, ja, great – sun sets over the water, camel rides along Cable Beach, like Byron Bay on the west coast without so many bongos, it’s plenty nice, but so’s a beer in the sun on a hot day.

Accident black spot, Broome-style

So then moving right along, as you’ll know every crown has its jewel and every rose has its thorn. The jewel round these parts could be Eighty Mile Beach, the name is economical on adjectives and short on proper nouns, but you’ll get the drift after 100 or so kilometres, of, well, beach. And after all that Staircase to Heaven carry-on and endless camel rides in Broome, some towns are going to have a little trouble competing. Well next stop on the stretched out map, Port Hedland, has got the right idea: why try.

It boasts one of Australia’s most aesthetically challenging camping grounds: green fly-netting on sand to pitch your tent on, in an area laden with sandflies, in a suburban nightmare of narrow ‘roads’ laid out like ready-made white-trash sprawl, all by the water of course, but opposite a processing plant and refinery. Bush camping never looked so good.

But if you never never go camping in PH, you’ll never never know. And some things you can live without I reckon. If that’s not enough, the pub down the wharf has an amazing soundtrack, courtesy of the strip joint across the road – had me thinking there was some strange rodeo going on all night til I took a wander and (even Jack reckons some things are a no-goer) was a little surprised at what I spied. But a beer’s a beer, and so on we ploughed at Bar #1 as the night grew older and we had an edge about 80 miles wide that we needed to take off.

Time to head inland

Although it was 500 km to Port Hedland, and stunned as you were by the sci-fi-sized mountains of salt in that town at the end of God’s Earth, the distances aren’t going to shrink in the heat, so you might as well fuel up and roll on while you can. Now’s the time to head inland, if you fancy Karrartha and Dampier, they are poised just down the road (and if it is monsoon time then give ‘em a miss for sure, as they’ve had more cyclones roar through there and flatten the place than you’ve had farts after lentils).

Milstream-Chichester National Park, Western Australia

The other truth is Marble Bar is inland from here too if you cut back east again. MB has the dubious honour of being the official hottest places in Australia, but with a bad cooling system in your 4WD you could be driving the hottest place too. Head a little south on the inland trail and never fear, freshwater relief is here – Millstream-Chichester National Park beckons like the witch in a children’s pantomime – a bit rugged on the surface but sooooo good when you get in.

Peel off that scale of salt from the coast, chuck it back a coupla gears again, and take your pick from the range of sleepy little creeks and rivers that wend their way through this idyllic paradise. Most people are off scrounging the endless coast for their classic retreats, but here you’ll find something with classic getaway charm and all the trimmings. (I didn’t really mean that bit about rugged, sometimes it’s a little hard to talk up rocks and trees, so better to go the quiet approach sometimes.)

So once your horse is watered, and you’ve had yourself a rest, it’s further down that great broad WA neck you can head – gorges, ranges, natural wonders and wandering nature. For now, splashing in your personal pool of love out Millstream way, I could get your wandering wonderings started – choices to choose from and choice cuts to check: how’s about back that coast-a-way for some squeaky dolphin action round Monkey Mia – although she’s a way yet?

Why not massive millennia-made carved worlds of rock that offer more than meets the eye (and that be a lot) like Karrajini National Park? Given we all know what dolphins are like, the cheeky little buggers, the nearest pub is more than miles away and its plenty cool in the water already, and that we’re still scarcely past the metaphorical shoulder, so to speak, in this great WA ramble-down, why not get settled-in an prepare to get intimate with a little time off the beaten track.

For now stay cool, sit tight and try not to think too much about hot summer nights and wayward glances – stay slow, keep cool and get to know your muse…

–Jack Brown

Planning a trip? We think Jack is suggesting you check out things to do in Perth, Broome and the splendor of Western Australia, including the Kimberley, Bungle Bungles and more. But you just never know with Jack.

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