A nice lunch spot along a walk in the Bungle Bungles. It was quite hot during the day, but down in these gorges, the temperature was very pleasant. Unfortunately, lunch wasn't so pleasant - it was leftover chicken satay rice from the night before, wrapped in a tortilla. Not awful, but the kind of thing you'd only eat on a camping trip.
The camp spot in the Bungles was really nice, in part because of the funny mix of people there. We came in quite late, well actually, we started down the 4-wheel drive road into the part about 1/2 hour before sunset. It's a 53km road, but it takes about 2 hours to drive it, and it really does require 4WD. We'd been warned about the first stream crossing - it was a bit deep because of the late season rains this year - but the guy neglected to tell us that under the 60cm of water were 30cm boulders you had to bounce over. At least we got to that crossing before dark. The rest were a bit more mild, but a lot more moon lit.
When we rocked up to the campground, we found a lot of people. In fact, the 'quiet' campground was full, so we had to go to the 'generator' campground, which was mostly empty. There was one group, which we met the next night, of 5 retired couples (5 vehicles) travelling around the Kimberley, along various 4WD tracks. Turns out that the Kimberley in the dry season is chockers with 'gray nomads' - those retired people who take their caravans on epic journeys into the wildest parts of Australia, camp there, and have a cup of Billy tea.
Turns out the 'generator' campground had a lot of advantages, including the lack of people - the tour groups all descended on the 'quiet' camp, making it about as quiet as an Aussie rules game at the MCG. Generators, it turns out, had to be shut down by 9pm. We also had fire rings (fires were prohibited in the 'quiet' camps), with wood supplied daily by the rangers. We even had our own toilet (just our group, the other folks had 2 or 3 of their own also). The only drawback was the bore water we had to boil (actually, the rangers told us later that it was really okay, bu I was the only one in our group brave enough to try it).
On the second night, we were more social, and joined the 'oldies' (that's what they called themselves) at the fire. One guy, Laurie, was an old bushman, and soon had the fire so big and hot that we had to sit several meters away or risk melting the soles of our shoes. This was much appreciated, as the temperatures were dropping to within a few degrees of freezing. We had a nice bit of conversation. It's really interesting seeing the difference between generations in how Americans are viewed. I've seen this several times now. People old enough to remember WWII still have a positive opinion of Americans, and the younger generation is fed up with them. It's very striking.
Anyway, the oldies proved to be much better prepared for camping than we were. We managed to run out of fuel for our stove, most food, and even boiled water. We did have some marshmallows left over for the final night's campfire. Somehow, we managed to cook some soup on the fire, and some leftover rice and tuna. The oldies whipped up a huge damper loaf. Although Laurie managed to make another blast furnace that burned the damper, we managed to rescue it with the last dregs of some maple syrup we had along.
