20 July 2016

We are still in the Kununurra area, enjoying the weather, scenery and a tour by air of the surrounding country and the diamond mine of course. Our discoveries over the past few days:

• We stayed at the El Questro resort for a couple of days and discovered there are two types of people who visit El Questro.  There are those who pay $3000 per person per night and those who pay $20 per person a night.  One group camps, the other, well we don’t know what the other group does. Guess which group we were part of.  When you visit the many walks, gorges or lookouts at El Questro you discover there is only place on the entire resort where you get a distant glimpse of where the $3000 people stay.  Seems the $3000 people don’t want to be seen.
• El Questro means nothing it just sounds like it might be Spanish.
• We drove to the Pentecost River crossing which is a renowned location on the Gibb River Road with a stunning backdrop of ancient sandstone ridges. A number of vehicles arrived and some drove across the ford to get that special picture.  The cars and trucks took their turn to get a picture without anyone else intruding.   Enter the drone.  A new vehicle arrived and the passenger got out to set his drone flying over the crossing to get action shots of their car driving through the river.  I fear in years to come we will see drone wars at locations that attract large numbers of megapixel collectors.  Will someone create an app that creates a force field around your drone thereby keeping others at bay?
• Many readers of this stream of consciousness would have at some time in their life experienced the shock of seeing a snake at their feet or maybe under their feet or maybe a spider just too close for comfort, generally a huge man-eating spider.   It is at these times that we break into a dance that is very ancient and part of our DNA.  You can’t stop the dance; its involuntary.  Along with the dance we utter a set of again very ancient words that just spew forth.  This is the context of my next story.
• We were collecting fire wood off the side of the road in some long grass, middle of the day and the sun is high.  Great snake time I hear you say.  I was in the long grass and I picked up a piece of perfectly weathered wood and threw it to Russ; it landed at his feet.  He was on the road loading wood into the car.  I called out ‘At your feet’, meaning there is a piece of fire wood at your feet.  He heard ‘At your feet’, meaning there is a snake at your feet.  And so the ancient dance was invoked and Russ did a jig on the road in response to fire wood.  We all enjoyed great merriment at Russ’s expense.  His last words were something to the effect that this won’t be forgotten and he will get revenge, suggesting if a crocodile is approaching I would be on my own!
• The Argyle diamond mine is pretty impressive.  The mining company aren’t too happy about tourists visiting the place but the local traditional owners of the land insisted on the tourists.  It’s hard to get to and only two companies offer the tours.  Security is super tight and if you drop something don’t think you can just bend down and pick it up.  If you do you can expect a full body search before leaving the property.  On a good day they were achieving 20kgs of diamonds in a day!
• This is the only source of rare pink diamonds which are cut and polished in Perth.  They thought pink sounded better than brown diamonds.  I guess it’s all about the marketing
• Yes, in answer to your unspoken question; we did get a sample.  It was so small my macro lens could not focus on it.
• The fascinating thing is that the old gold prospectors were finding diamonds in the creeks nearby back in the 1890s but nobody explored any further until the late 1980s when a group of young geologists found diamonds all along this old creek bed.  Further exploration and they found the source of the diamonds which is where the mine is now.
• Speaking of recently discovered treasures in the Australian outback there is more to tell.  We have all heard about the last aborigines to have no contact with white people who were found in the remote desert back in the 1970s.  Then there is one of the biggest diamond mines in the world and it was only established in the 1990s.  And last but not least the Bungle Bungles were only ‘discovered’ as a tourist destination in the early 1980s after a TV crew who were making a doco about the Kimberleys were invited by a local helicopter pilot to come with him for a flight over the Bungles.  After that footage hit the TV suddenly people wanted to visit this amazing location.  Makes you wonder what else is out there.  Bill Bryson mentioned in his book about Australia a story about Japanese terrorists exploding an atom bomb in outback Australia and nobody noticed.  Not sure how true this is but it gives you an idea of the emptiness of the place.
• Sandalwood is grown in large plantations up here.  Sandalwood was one of the crops introduced because of all the water in Lake Argyle which is so large it is defined as an inland sea.  I thought, irrigation system to grow fire wood you have to be joking but alas when you look at the number of incense sticks burnt in South and SE Asia on a daily basis and it’s in the billions and the fact there is very little wild sandalwood left this is probably a good investment.   Sandalwood currently sells for $100,000 a tonne which means Mahatma Gandhi’s funeral pyre would now cost $300,000.  And this is just for the wood, the oil is even more expensive.  Sandalwood takes 15 years to be ready for harvest and since it’s a parasitic plant growing this stuff is not easy.  I will be watching the value of sandalwood stocks in the next few years.
• Speaking of irrigation systems; I think its Stage Five of the Ord River systems that has just been sold off for development.  This stage is massive covering thousands and thousands of acres and you guessed it we sold it to the Chinese.  They are going to grow sugar cane to make ethanol.  No comment.

We are heading north towards Darwin but there will be stops on the way.  Tonight we are at Keep River National Park.  The reference to river is questionable but there are crocodiles in the water holes.  Freshwater crocs of course and they don’t eat you or so they say.