Wrong Way Round by Lorna Hendry

Author:Lorna Hendry
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: ebook
Publisher: Explore Australia Publishing
Published: 2015-03-29T16:00:00+00:00

After dropping Nannette in Broome with promises that we’d be in Darwin within a few weeks, we headed down one of the country’s classic 4WD routes. The Gibb River Road, originally a stock route, runs 700 kilometres from Derby to Kununurra through some of the Kimberley’s most beautiful and rugged country. Its notoriety had waned in recent years – mining exploration had led to major improvements to the road – but it still divided round-Australia travellers into those who did the Gibb and those who didn’t.

At Windjana Gorge we saw hundreds of freshwater crocodiles slide out of the murky dry-season waterhole to sunbake on the sandy riverbank. They were greenish brown, scaly and leathery, with long snouts that tapered at the end and identified them as freshwater crocodiles. Freshwater crocodiles, unlike their saltwater cousins, pose little threat to people. Although saltwater crocodiles can live in fresh water just as well as they can in the ocean, there was no way that they could navigate the waterfalls and escarpments to get this far inland. Nor could they survive the dry season, when many of the creeks and waterholes dried up. It was hard to believe so many of the freshwater crocodiles could survive in such a small body of water. At night we gathered a gang of kids from the communal campfire and took them into the gorge with torches. James had been spotlighting before and showed us how to look directly down the beam of their torch and see the crocodiles’ eyes reflect it back, shining like red Christmas lights. High-pitched squeals were soon echoing around the gorge.

Just past the Windjana Gorge turn-off, a sandwich board on the side of the road announced that a Snack Stop was open. A dirt track ran beside the Lennard River and a caravan was set up at the highest point of the bank. The man in the caravan was in his mid-sixties, small and compact with a grey beard that ended in a sharp point at his chin and drew my eye directly to the hole in his trachea.

He opened a sliding window to hand out my tea, placing the cup on a shelf attached to the outside of the van. On the shelf sat a sugar jar, a mug full of teaspoons and a tub of sweet biscuits that he picked up and rattled vigorously as if to say ‘help yourself’.

When everyone had been served, he came out of the van and walked over to a small telescope mounted on a tripod on the edge of the high river bank. He shifted his cigarette into his left hand and placed a stained finger firmly on the open hole in the centre of his throat.

‘Here, come and have a look at this’, he rasped. ‘There’s a young male croc on the bank over there.’

I bent to look through the telescope. There he was, perfectly framed in the centre of my gaze, lying on the sandy bank on the other side of the river.

‘How do you know it’s a male?’

He grinned at me.

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