No, this isn’t the title to a romantic novel or a celebration of the 50th anniversary of the NASA Lunar Landing, this is an unusual but entirely natural phenomenon here on the coast of Broome, Western Australia.

Cameras at the Ready

After the sun has passed beyond the horizon and the Milky Way is lighting-up the sky, a crowd can be found gathering along the coast with cameras in-hand eagerly waiting in anticipation of this 2-3 times a month event between March and October, which falls mostly, and conveniently, during the dry season.

At precisely the advertised time a dim glimmer on the black horizon begins to glow and camera shutters start to clatter. Within minutes a deep orange crescent begins to appear, slowly expanding into a glowing ball and casting bright streaks across the wet tide exposed mud flats. This isn’t a sunrise, though it could easily be mistaken for one, this is likely the strangest moonrise you’ll witness, this is the Staircase to the Moon.

Due to the extreme tides, which are among the largest in the world, and a shallow bay, the tide reaches out for several kilometres leaving the extensive mud flats high and dry during the low tide. As the moon begins to rise it’s white reflected light from the sun passes side-on through the Earth’s shallow atmosphere filtering the blue hues and leaving just the yellows and reds that create our orange moonrise. And as the moon continues to rise higher into the sky the moonlight takes a shorter path through the atmosphere and less colour is filtered rendering the moon its more familiar blue/white hue.

Photographing the moon is rarely easy. For one it is much smaller than it appears in your viewfinder but it is also extremely bright against the blackness of space, bright enough that it can be clearly seen during daylight hours. Secondly the dark sky misleads camera meters resulting in overexposure of the moon and only a very limited, and very expensive, number of cameras are able to record such extreme contrast.

Unfortunately on our visit it was sufficiently windy that, even with a sturdy tripod, the long lens moved enough to blur many of my attempts to photograph this phenomenon. Hopefully we may get a second chance later on our trip as we head further west.

Date and times for the Staircase to the Moon can be found on the Broome Visitor Centre website.

Pronounced ‘Der-bee’ not ‘Dar-bee’ as in the originating English town name, Derby is a small town on the Kimberley coast between Darwin and Broome. Sitting at the edge of an enormous estuary, Derby has the second highest tides in the world reaching as much as 11.8-metres during King tides. And that, unfortunately, is all it really has going for it apart from the sunsets over the Indian Ocean.

Loch Street is lined with Boab trees where the Tourist Information Centre is located. Very helpful staff unless you arrive 15-minutes from closing time when you can expect to be made to feel somewhat unwelcome.

Running parallel on Clarendon Street is Jila cafe where you can enjoy fresh cakes and pastries as well as Italian style meals in the evening as we did. There’s also an interesting collection of books to read while sipping an iced coffee and several Italian motorbikes on display for those with a two-wheel bent.

Sitting on the estuary means mud flats and here in Derby they are enormous, literally as far as you can see to the east, west and north. Our caravan site backed onto the western edge of the flats with very little to see but at least we were mostly sheltered from the wind with some well established trees.

A loading terminal at the jetty just north of Derby town centre can be reached along Jetty Road and is a popular spot to watch the sun set or fish for dinner, as long as the crocodiles don’t beat you to the catch.

Also by the jetty is the Derby Wharf Restaurant serving table meals as well as take-aways such as the local fish & chips. However, we made the mistake of eating here one evening and were served, after a very long wait, with over-cooked fish and chicken dishes. And add to that the elderly ‘entertainer’ who can neither sing or play his guitar too well through his distorted sound system. Normally an evening musician would get a clap or some form of applause after each tune but here you could hear a seagull fart several hundred metres away.

Things to do

Tourist points of interest are the Old Gaol and a little further away the Prison Tree where, supposedly, those not conforming to the rules of the time were held captive in the hollow of the Boab tree trunk. And secondly, not forgetting the longest cattle trough ‘south of the equator’ all 120-metres of it. Those with a pastoral background may find this a little more captivating than us.

One saving grace is the clever art form close to the Kimberley Entrance caravan park. It’s not immediate what it is or what it represents but wait until closer to sunset when people armed with cameras arrive and you’ll soon discover the hidden image. Impressive what can be created with a few discrete pieces of steel.

Pretty much everything else was either closed, closing or closed down. The local swimming pool displayed its open swimming times but the gates were firmly locked and the IGA supermarket gave the impression of a store ransacked in a riot with largely empty shelves.

Derby, it’s a town not just asleep during the busy tourist season, it’s in a coma.

An early start today for an organised tour of El Questro Gorge, Zebedee Springs and an afternoon river cruise on the Chamberlain River.

Our guide, Emma, takes our group of four by 4WD 30-minutes along gravel roads and water crossings to reach the start of the El Questro Gorge trail. It’s only 8.30am and pleasantly cool as we start the rough track through savannah woodland towards the start of the gorge.

Like much of the surrounding 1-million acres of this remote wilderness park, El Questro Gorge is comprised of King Leopald Sandstone, 1.8 billion years old and predating multicellular life. It is an extremely hard form of stone, which splits easily into square blocks before tumbling down into ravines, gorges and valleys. It is responsible for much of the layered hills and escarpments typical of the Kimberley.

Here, over tens of thousands of years, water has penetrated cracks in the rock creating the gorge and its micro climate shaded from much of the intense sun. It is full of life. Towering Livistona trees line the creek that flows from the gorge backed by bright orange sandstone cliffs. Ferns thrive in the shade and provide habitat for small lizards, insects and frogs. Harmless Golden Tree Snakes are common but recent sightings of the highly venomous Death Adder means keeping a close eye on where you place your feet.

Emma showed us the unusual trick played by Spear Grass during the wet season. Water causes the seed spikes to twist around and dig into the soil. It’s a peculiar sight to see a plant moving of its own accord. But then this is a country of extremes and diversity and it takes this type of unusual action to survive.

A little further on Emma reached for three stones hidden among tree roots by a pool. She had collected samples of ochre used by aborigines for rock art and ceremonial body paint. Orange, yellow and white ochre are rubbed against stone to produce a fine powder, mixed with water and painted directly onto rock or their skin. Charcoal is the final ingredient and is used to produce a deep black completing the four colours used in the aboriginal flag.

Deeper into the gorge we came to an abrupt stop where an enormous boulder had fallen reaching out to both sides of the gorge wall and blocking any further progress. A small waterfall fed the clear pool where we stopped to take a few photographs before heading back the way we came.

It is definitely a walk requiring suitable shoes or boots for clambering over rocks and boulders and a walking pole is recommended.

Morning Tea

A short drive takes us to a pleasant riverside rest area where a few brave people were having a swim and the less brave took to the riverbank fishing for barramundi. Beside us stands, if that is the correct word, an enormous boab tree hit by lightning during the last wet season, which literally blew it apart. Boab trees store a lot of water and the lightning strike would have instantly turned the water to steam ripping the tree apart from the inside out. What remains is a mass of fibrous sheets, each being similar to the rings of a tree. An unusual feature of the boat’s survival technique – just beneath the bark of a living boab is a layer of green cells used by the tree allowing it to photosynthesise meaning it isn’t entirely reliant on its leaves – a good thing following a bush fire.

Morning Tea today is apple or orange juice and a tasty slice of cake. Too hot for anything but a refreshing cold drink.

Zebedee Springs

Another drive takes us to a series of thermal pools known as Zebedee Springs. Normally open until just midday with the afternoon reserved for guests, such as ourselves, of El Questro. We arrived as people were starting to leave, which meant we will have the place to just the four of us. Perfect. Now I may finally be able to get a photograph without the crowds.

Just a short walk with a couple of boardwalk water crossings and we’re surrounded by palms, rocks and orange cliffs within a narrow gorge. It’s spectacular. This is the kind of scenery we were hoping to see and Western Australia has excelled. Some have likened this gorge to a place you would expect to see dinosaurs roaming about, they are not wrong.

Running through the gorge is pure, clear water. But this water sits between 28 and 32C. Rising from deep within the earth the water brings warmth and minerals along with it providing nutrients to the rich flora that flourishes here. Much as I am apposed to using beautiful places like this to swim, at least the numbers are controlled and it isn’t a National Park.

Lunch Time

The day was still not over and Emma was driving us back to our camp for our lunch of grilled barramundi and beef, included in the full day’s tour. We were joined by a very tame, and probably very well rehearsed, visit by a Kookaburra happy to pose for photographs.

The afternoon adventure was another drive but this time over to the Chamberlain River. Now we were starting to see the true extent of this property with countless group campgrounds leading from the dirt road into the bush. Our driver and guide, Silvia, took us to the jetty where we boarded our cruise boat and set-off down the river.

Before long we had spotted a rock wallaby well disguised on a ledge in the cliff and then a freshwater crocodile basking in the sun. There was plenty of life in the water too, as we later found out, and not what you would expect.

Attack of the Archers

At the midway point of the cruise where are path is blocked by rocks pushed downstream during the wet season, we stopped and were quickly surrounded by many species of fish. Large catfish, seven spotted archer fish and barramundi hiding somewhere just out of sight. Vinnie, our skipper, handed out fish food and suggested holding it over the water. Was he expecting the fish to jump out of the water or was he getting us to lose a limb to a crocodile?

All of a sudden spouts of water were shooting out of the water and all over us. These were archer fish and they had learnt to shoot a jet of water at insects hanging on to tree branches and knock them in to the water. They have an amazingly accurate aim even allowing for the diffraction of vision through water. It had everyone on the boat laughing as we continued to get wet, though that may have been helped by the sparkling wine!

As we made our way back our eyes were searching for more creatures and a bottle of bubbly was on offer for the first find – or $5 donation to the Royal Flying Doctor if it was the same animal we had spotted before.

Another great tour and a great introduction to the Kimberley. Again highly recommended. More details available at www.elquestro.com.au

We bought our Land Rover Discovery 5 for its ability to go off-road and to tow our Jayco Silverline Outback caravan. Today was the first time we put the combination to test on the gravel access road that leads from the notorious Gibb River Road to El Questro where we’re staying for the next three nights.

Now for those not familiar with the Kimberley and northern WA in general, this region of the country is often referred to as Australia’s last great wilderness and it has the remoteness and dirt roads to prove it. Our drive into El Questro was supposed to be on a relatively good road but here ‘good’ should be used only as a comparison to very bad roads. Severely rutted enough to shake fillings loose and scramble eggs, the road contained just as many loose rocks as a landslide.

Where’s the Grader?

According to a sign at the start of the 14KM track the road was in the process of being graded to flatten out the ruts. I can only assume the grader was taking a holiday elsewhere. But this car and caravan were designed to handle this kind of torture even if we, with our ageing backs, were not. Then added in to the mix were the inconsiderate drivers going in the opposite direction as fast as they could creating clouds of dust that forced us to slow even further until we were able to see again. The challenge of cornering on a loose surface with a large vehicle in tow was soon mastered and then came the first of two water crossings.

Water Crossings

Some person we had met earlier had advised us that the crossings were dry. Clearly they had been nowhere near here. It hadn’t rained for months but there was certainly a lot of water and loose, hidden boulders in the first crossing. Still, no problem, we have a high clearance caravan with independent suspension and a 4WD car that can handle a wading depth of 900mm. So, into 4-wheel drive, high clearance and auto traction control and off we went with ease until halfway across… and we stopped. For some reason the auto mode decided we were going downhill and switched to hill decent control. Never a good think to stop in water, I quickly switched to manual control, rock and gravel mode and off we went  again for the remainder of the crossing and up the ramp back onto dry land.

More rough road, more inconsiderate drivers and then the final water crossing. This one three times longer and looking twice as deep. In we went, still in the same 4WD mode and an oncoming driver decided he was going first. Eventually he realised he was in the wrong and backed-up, something we could not have done and the crossing was wide enough only for one vehicle. With a small wave in front and to the side of us and the sound of rushing water coming up the doors, we sailed through without issue and up the bank onto the final stretch of road into El Questro and the Black Cockatoo Camp Ground.

The car and caravan had proven their worth easily handling the challenging conditions even if they were both now coated in a layer of grey dust and about to get a covering of red dust at the camp.

El Questro is an enormous property covering 1-million acres and home to many outstanding natural features, gorges, rivers, fauna and flora – the very reason for our visit and the effort it took to get here.

Tonight is pizza night at the outdoor camp restaurant and after a beer or two, the rest of the day is set aside to relax and rest our aching joints ready for the adventures that lay ahead.