Sizzling in Singapore

Nothing better than leaving the cold murky Northern Hemisphere winter for a long weekend in Singapore. I was lucky to do this over Easter, and spent a fab few days catching up with my folks and pigging out on the local food.

Not long after our respective planes from London and Brisbane had landed, we headed directly to Newton Food Centre (formally known as Newton Circus), one of the original Hawker food centres. This place to me, is the quintessential Singapore. Vast and bustling, the whole area smells like an enormous aromatic kitchen. Food here is great value and you're spoilt for choice!

Satays are sold in bulk, and we ploughed our way through 80 of the delectible little sticks of meat and peanut sauce by the time we downed the first bottle of Tiger Beer. Gotta keep the fluids up in the tropics!

Other memorable meals were the obligatory chili crab, which we had at a lovely riverside restaurant in Clarke Quay, and again on the final night out at East Coast Parkway - another fab eating precinct.



The final amazing food encounter was at the Swissotel's Equinox restaurant, which towers 70 floors above the city. The view at dusk was awesome - it really helped to put this compact city into perspective. The miso cod and dessert platter was delicious. And the cocktails up on the 71st floor were pretty good too!

As well as the usual lurch down Orchard Road, and a frenzied expedition to Lucky Plaza, where there are so many consumer electronics shops, your head spins, we spent a soggy afternoon out at Jurong Bird Park.

This is one of Singapore's most popular and well known attactions, and despite the big tropical rain storm, we checked out some amazing birds. The huge walk-through aviaries allow you to get up close and personal with the birds. The scarlet flamingos were my favourite! Check out the rest of the pictures here.



Finishing off the eat-a-thon, we met the lovely Ann for a local lunch in International Plaza, home to the Dow Jones Singapore office. Ann introduced us to claypot chicken and a yummy bean paste and ginko dessert.

It's true that Singapore is known for its obsession with eating and shopping...but hey...what a wonderful way to wile away the hours.

Show me the Souk!

I'm SO excited! Only a few sleeps to go before I head off on a two-week tour through Morocco.

I've previously spent one day in the Moroccan port town of Tangier, but two weeks of roaming round the imperial cities and out the Sahara desert will be something altogether unique.

I'm travelling once again with the good people at Explore. I liked the length of their tour, and that it covered all the imperial cities as well as the desert. Bring on the souks and the mint tea! The optional night's camping in a Bedouin tent in the Merzouga Sand Sea and the camel ride should be unforgettable.

The travel dossier warns me that it can get rather chilly out in them thar hills....freezing in fact...snowing in fact! Should be interesting.

I look forward to many blogs posts with amazing desert pics, and am most curious about what Christmas Day in Rabat will be like.

Whoohoo...not long to go!

Day 4: Meandering through German wine-country

We woke up to dark clouds and another hearty German breaky. I think I was consuming more bread, rolls and crackers than I do in an entire year, but the bread was fresh and seemed to be the thing to do. I was also getting into the cold meats and cheeses, ala continental breakfast.

Throughout the day, we climbed slowly in altitude and it was starting to get chilly.

We were driving through yet more green hills, and saw what looked to be a concorde perched on a building. Despite Betsy’s nagging and flashing, we detoured into a town called Sinsheim, and into the carpark of a huge open air aeronautical museum. There was indeed a concorde perched aloft the building, and all sorts of other planes held by huge metal struts in really interesting positions. Talk about a random place to build a plane museum!

We carried onwards to the town of Tubingen. By this stage it was pizzing down – our first real unpleasant weather of the trip. We finally found a parking spot and headed into the Old Town.

More quaintness, this time with a little river flowing underneath the front doors of a row of houses. They all had little bridges from the footpath to their front doors. Wouldn’t want to take a wrong step after a big night out…We eventually found the main piazza and the huge Rathouse (townhall). It was ornately decorated and like most places in Germany, sprouted little planter boxes of geraniums and other coloured flowers. Other buildings in the piazza had that characteristic Old Town lean about them. I loved the decorative signs and murals on the buildings. It’s just so much nicer than drab grey concrete.

The rain continued to fall, so we headed back out of town to find a hotel. That was only because we couldn’t find one hotel near the centre of town. The “hotel route” signs seemed to take us round the town in loops, and Betsy was madly beeping and flashing. The Greek-family owned Meteora Hotel became our bed for the evening. They even ran a very large Greek-restaurant, which for some reason made me chuckle. The area – reasonably high in the German alps - did not have a particularly Mediterranean feel about it. Surprisingly, we saw a lot of Greek restaurants during the rest of our travels through Germany, Switzerland Italy.

For dinner, we passed on Greek food and set out to find something a bit more German. We came across what looked like a great restaurant – warm and cosy, full of people and a good atmosphere. They said they were full, but we were welcome to try their downstairs restaurant. So off we trotted – down what looked to be the first and only flight of stairs. There were bathrooms, and two other doors, one of which I gave a mighty push and barged into the kitchen. The other door didn’t seem to lead to anything substantial, so we poked around outside in case we had misunderstood. Again, there was another door right round the other side of the building, but with no markings.

We were slightly exasperated at this stage, and went back in to get clear on the instructions. The waitress ushered us out to the loos and insisted that the next door did in fact lead to steps, and to take them all the way to the bottom floor. Right. So…down we ventured…and down some more, and then the dining space appeared. It was completely underground, dimly lit, full of chairs and tables and a couple of patrons, and a huge collection of homely junk. There were old sewing machines, palm trees, barrows of mock fruit, paintings, kitchenware and quite randomly, a big plastic flying duck attached the ceiling. It was very bizarre – hilarious in fact!

The menu looked great – it featured Swabian food, which we discovered was the region we were in. They had the ever-desirable schweinhuxe, which Dad and I decided to have – again. The Swabian version of pork knuckle was different. They called it suckling pig, and instead of roasting the pork to make the fat crackly, they left it soft. While I probably didn’t need any more lard for the day, it was slightly disappointing that there was no crackle, but the pork was delicious and tender. There was sauerkraut galore – also a slightly different version to what we had been eating in the north of Germany. This version was more pureed. And of course, there was spetzle – German noodles that are sort of like long flat pasta, but more randomly shaped cos they’re homemade. All that was covered in rich gravy and washed down with some fine Swabian beer.

The guts and butts were growing by the day, but we were indeed enjoying the food!

Day 3: Here comes Heidelberg

A big hearty German breaky helped the inescapable hangover, although the bendy little roads did not. By about 11am and a few coffees though, we were starting to feel less shoddy. Ten points to Dad who had the unenviable pleasure of driving for the day – and negotiating with Betsy - with a pounding head.

Heidelberg was our destination, and we meandered through green rolling hills laden with vineyards and orchards. They looked to be mainly apples and stone fruits, and the squat trees were absolutely bulging with fruit. European drivers flew past us. We were doing a respectable 90-100kms/hour on secondary roads, but these guys had to be overtaking at speeds of 120-140kms. They do like to go fast!

Heidelberg finally came into view. The Neckar River runs straight down the middle of this predominantly student town, although the side which houses the Old Town and the huge old Schloss was definitely the side to see first. Parking was once again a nightmare, and we had to do a couple of laps of the town before we could find a space. It was interesting to hear a news report that morning that estimated that by next year, more of the world’s population would live in cities than in rural areas. God knows where we’re all going to park in the future.



Anyway…we eventually found a small gasthoff right in the old town – next to a sex shop I might add. The sex shop looked out of place amongst such grand old buildings. A big hot lunch helped to take the final edge off our Rudesheim heads, and we were then ready to tackle the 320-ish stairs to the top of the Schloss. Our guide book noted that this was one of the oldest castles in Germany.

The main castle was being restored, so unfortunately had scaffolding round some of the turrets. Nevertheless, it was immense and stunning. The grounds were lush green and very well kept, and the huge trees looked like they’d been there as long as the castle. The view over the city from the top of the hill was great – I love looking over Old Towns, with their uneven and colourful rooflines. A charming arched bridge crossed the river and Heidelberg’s cathedral seemed to stand out as the centre of town.

The castle had sustained some fairly major damage in the war, and they had left the remains of a huge chunk of turret where it h ad fallen. Amazingly, huge amounts of the castle remained intact, and while we didn’t go inside, people wandered round the turrets and walls. It would have been a historian’s paradise. I just like very old chunks of rock!



We admired yet more view, then made our way down the 320-ish stairs, headed straight for a café to rest the knees and ankles and pigged out on yet another strudel. We were on holidays after all!

We then walked across the pedestrian bridge to the other side of the Neckar, to get some pics of the town and castle from a different perspective. It was quant and quintessentially German.



By dinner time, we were (surprisingly) up for a beer again, and tried more local lager – or pils as they say. We found a quaint little German restaurant full of old musical instruments used as decorations – violin and tuba light shades abounded!

The food, as it had all been, was hearty and yummy. I had a game-stuffed ravioli, although it looked more like a green lasagne. In any case, it was great.



We called in an early night after a final wander back over the bridge, and a peek of the backlit castle. Wunderbah!

Day 2: Get your motor running – driving down the Rhine

The Rhine beckoned and we were up and out early. Mum and Dad had previously been to a small town called Rudesheim, about 30kms north in the wrong direction, but said it was worth seeing. Lonely Planet chose to differ and said Rudesheim was kitsch, overpriced and a tourist drag. So..I was interested to see what it was like.

The satellite navigation system in the car, which had been nick-named “Betsy”, took us off the freeways and onto the little winding roads through small towns and villages. We weren’t in any screaming hurry, with a week to wind our way down to Stresa.

A little car-ferry punted us over the Rhine, straight into Rudesheim, which I loved straight away. Give me kitsch and quaint any day!



Rudesheim fronted the river, and yes, to be sure, a whole bunch of very touristy shops lined the streets. But the buildings were gorgeous and the cobbled little paths screamed to be explored. We had beaten the tourist buses, so got a good look at the place before it really started to heave.

The stunning Boosenburg Castle, which still touted its 12th Century tower, dominated the foreshore, while cruise boats and a train ferried tourists up and down the river. Old castles perched high on the green hills and vineyards – it was fairytale-esque.

Keen to sample the local fare, we decided an apple strudel was in order, and pottered back up the hill into the old town. With cream and icecream, the warm apple strudel was fab. It seemed a fitting early lunch in this gorgeous little town.

We decided at that stage that we liked it so much we’d stay the night, and found a quaint little guest-house right in the centre of town. They were also able to garage the car for the rest of the day and evening, which got it out of the way. We were noticing that parking in these joints was a complete nightmare!



So…free of car and with a bed for the evening, we set about sampling some of the local lager. After a gruelling search for the best pub, we lurched into a little open air biergarten where a band was just setting up.

There were table-loads of oldies boozing away, and then the band started its oom-pa-pa music. They really would have passed as a German band, but we later discovered they were Czech.

Anyway, one drink turned into a round after round, and our drinking buddies at neighbouring tables started to lean over and chat in broken Germanglish, Frenglish and Italinglish. Eventually we all resorted to the universal language of Slur and understood each other perfectly. Many hilarious things happened in that drinking session – much of it captured on blurry video. History will show a bunch of very drunk people singing very loudly for a long time, but for us it was one of those classic afternoons that you simply can’t plan or manufacture. Our fabulous (and cute) Czech oom-pa-pa band finished their 4-hour set and a “woman” (read, mutton dressed as Suzi-Quatro style lamb) and her two band buddies took the stage for the evening session.



How we managed to eat dinner that evening is beyond me. I do recall that it was great food, but I don’t recall how we managed to find our way home. People partied way into the early hours of the next morning, and sang the whole way home. Together with bells that chimed all evening, and raging hangovers, I can safely say that we had been well and truly Rudesheimed!

Day 1: My Big Fat German and Italian Road Trip

My parents are over, and we’ve just started a driving holiday through Western Europe. I shall declare it my Big Fat German and Italian Road Trip.

I arrived in Frankfurt on Thursday evening and met up with some colleagues in the Dow Jones Frankfurt office for lunch. Thanks to Matthias, Frank and Connie for giving me an introductory German lesson, and introducing me to hanuta – yummy chocolate wafer snacks. For Australians, they’re kinda like inside-out Tim Tams.

I caught the train back to Mainz, a sizeable town about 30kms south of central Frankfurt, and reunited with the folks after their 3-day drive through Frrance. We met at the Mainz Hauptbahnhoff, dumped our bags and set off for an afternoon stroll around the Aldstadt (Old Town).



German architecture is quite distinctive – I have no real clue about which period of architectural history it comes from, but it’s colourful and ornate, and really nice to look at.

We made a bee-line for the Rhine – I didn’t realise it was such a wide river – and then mosied our way through narrow cobbled streets into the Aldstadt.

The Domstrasse (cathedral) dominates the square and there are heaps of little pubs and cafés around. The weather was good and heaps of people were out, having a quiet Friday afternoon drink. As we did too.

We were desperate to find somewhere to have schweinhuxe – roast pork knuckle with sauerkraut – which has long since been a favourite pig-out food in our family. Our recollection of pork knuckle from a little Bavarian restaurant in Sydney’s Beverly Hills brings back memories of hugely lardy, crackly pork, lots of gravy and cholesterol overload. But god it’s good!

A few beers into it, we set off in search of schweinhuxe, and our search ended successfully all of five minutes later, when we found a lovely traditional looking restaurant. We confirmed that they served this pork with attitude, and had ordered three before we’d even sat down. Our collective mouths watered.

Our three big shanks of pork arrived pretty quickly, complete with the symphony-inducing sauerkraut and a creamy horseradish dip, which I’d never seen or tasted. It was like white wasabi, and went fantastically well with the meal, although it had that wasabi-like tendency to nearly blow your head off.


























This pork knuckle seemed to be a healthier option – not so much dripping with lardy crackle, but there was a good slab of it, and the pork itself was very tasty. More beers, and we toasted many times to the first of what we knew would be a bunch of spectacular German meals.

The green, green grass of Wales

When Tom Jones sings about the green green grass of home, he's pretty bloody accurate about his beloved home country of Wales.

The Welsh countryside is indeed very very green. Which can mean only one thing...it gets very very wet there, very very often. Sobering thoughts as we embarked on a camping/socialising weekend in mid-Wales following the wettest June on record.

Heading out, cross-country from Oxford, our trip to the county of Powys and the mid-northern town of Rhayader (or a rural property just outside this village) took us through the rolling (green) English countryside and towns like Worcester and Hereford.

After a three-hour drive, we reached the property, a huge estate on which friends Nick and Rhian were based. Their cottage was nestled amongst vast green fields, some with sheep grazing, some with hilly forestland, and all by the River Wye. It was an idyllic setting.

Living in London, you get used to not seeing much wildlife, so after a few minutes in "the bush", it seemed that every sort of bird known to man called this place home. Ditto the sheep, who were to become the alarm clocks in the morning.

We spent a leisurely evening sitting around the fire (as you mid-Welsh summer), eating yummy vegetarian curries. Were it not for the copious amounts of alcohol we consumed, I'd have felt like I was at a health retreat.

Next morning, Rhian offered us some of her home-made elderflower champagne, which had been merrily bubbling away in the kitchen.

As Nick loosened the cork, the bottle practically exploded and elderflower champgne sprayed throughout the loungeroom. It was even fizzier than what appears to be the current craze of dipping mentos mints in coke bottles...

Most items in proximity copped an elderflower shower, including Nick, who dashed outside with the spewing bottle. It was pretty amusing.

Later, we set out for a drive through the (green) rolling hills in the heart of Wales, and into the Elan Valley. Sheep roam the roads in these parts, and we had to stop a number of times to let a little sheep family amble past. They don't seem to dock the sheep's tails here like they do in Australia, and it was really funny to see sheep with big woolly tails dangling behind them.

Out there, it's peaceful and the air is crisp and fresh. It was an unusually sunny day and it was so good to be able to look out to the horizon and not see people or buildings. We meandered round the little country roads, checked out a few quaint pubs and heard all about sacred geometry, which I intend to investigate in much more detail.

The weekend continued much in the same way, although I was feeling much less like I was at a health retreat when I awoke on Sunday morning to the sound of sweet little birds crapping sweetly on the side of the tent, and the all-the-more rather disturbing sound of my head about to explode. Pesky hangovers...at least I didn't have to resort to dunking my head in the River Wye, unlike one of us.

It was a very relaxing weekend - great company, food and scenery, and tainted only by the usual horror show drive back down the A40 to London.

I've discovered facebook - the travel addiction continues

As if I needed another distraction...but anyway. Everyone's been talking about the social networking site, facebook.

I decided to take a peak and it's thrown me into very, VERY large networks of travellers and people with similar interests.

I'm finding it a useful place to store travel pics, cos it let's me arrange them easily in directories, that I can also let non-facebook friends and family see. I've been uploading pics by country - so far there are directories for Australia, Croatia, Slovenia and Iceland. I'll slowly build out the others - I wonder if I can create a directory for every letter of the alphabet...although not sure if there is a country starting with the letter X?

facebook also lets you join groups, and there are seemingly bwzillions about travel. I've joined the Explore the World and Addicted to Travelling groups (am loving the Explore the World logo over to the left).

In these groups, people share stuff like where they've been and where they want to go, and others use it as test-ground for travel related applications they've built, such as mapping features. There's lots of travel pics and recommendations, and a bunch of friendly people.

If you're addicted to travel, this is yet one more way to feed your addiction while you're not out there doing it!

A smattering of travel blogs

Time to do a quick scan of some of the funky travel blogs to see who's talking about what?

The Sydney Morning Herald's globe-trotting backpacker Ben Groundwater is discussing the backpacker's guide to being ripped off. His experiences remind me of having baby (dolls) chucked at me in Spain, as gypsies attempted to grab my bag, and a sneaky old english photographer in London who "volunteered" to take make photo outside Big Ben.

Mark Hayes over at the TimesOnline travel blog is discussing The Top 5 Cornish Pastries. Despite having spent last Christmas in Cornwall, and indeed, at the Lizard, where Mark is writing from, I am still yet to try an authentic Cornish pastry. It's on my to-do list!

The Guardian Unlimited's Katie Marsh is discussing her hilarious experience of Finland's Wife-Carrying World Championships. I also enjoyed Giulio Sica's post about Marrakech overtaking New York in Time Out's best selling city guide. I'm planning to be in Morocco this Christmas, so I might check it out.

And there's TravelBlog.org, which, with 371 updated blogs, 99 new bloggers, 3668 new photos and 38 forum posts in the past 24 hours....there's no shortage of new things to read.

Lonely Planet launches new city guide series

Lonely Planet recently launched a new range of city guides, called the Encounter Series.

The pocket-sized versions of their country guide counterparts aim to give an overview of 8 cities - Barcelona , Hong Kong , Istanbul , Las Vegas , London , New York , Paris and San Francisco.

They have organised the guides by neighbourhood, helping visitors to get to the "heart of the city".

Yahoo Travel is running a promotion where first prize is two Eurostar tickets from London to Paris, Lille or Brussels, and 10 runners up receive sets of the new Encounter Series.

I'm planning to visit Turkey next year, so I shall check out the Encounter Guide to Istanbul.

Pondering the point of travel

I came across a couple of quotes about travelling that reminded me why I love it so much:

"The World is a book, and those who do not travel read only a page." - Saint Augustine

"We must go beyond textbooks, go out into the bypaths and untrodden depths of the wilderness and travel and explore and tell the world the glories of our journey."- John Hope Franklin

"I have wandered all my life, and I have also traveled; the difference between the two being this, that we wander for distraction, but we travel for fulfillment." - Hilaire Belloc

Travel Writing advice from Lonely Planet

Lonely Planet's Guide to Travel Writing is a great resource for aspiring travel writers. They profile a bunch of seasoned, professional travel writers and give some practical advice about how to pitch and place travel articles in markets like the US, UK and Australia.

Like any books on writing, the main theme is to practice! Write. Lots! It's the only way to refine your craft.

And in the mean time, I shall keep blogging about travel and waiting for my dream travel writing/documentary production job to come flying through the door. *sigh*....must be time to book another trip!

Categories: Books

News.com.au's travel section

News.com.au's online travel section is one of my favourite travel resource sites. I like the way they incorporate "proper" travel articles, travel resources, and a travel blog, with all sorts of travelling tips and tricks.

I'm also loving the fact that they published two of my recent photos, one of the Plitvice Lakes in Croatia, and one of Split's Harbour in one of their Reader's Holiday Snaps galleries. My pics are #6 and #7 in this gallery. Well...I'm excited!

Around the World in 80 Dates

Ok - I'm on a bit of a roll with travel books! But one of the truly most enjoyable travel books I've ever read was Around the World in 80 Dates, by Jennifer Cox.

After a good dose of introspection, the former Head of PR for Lonely Planet, decided to embark on a global search for her perfect man. Jennifer composed a "soul mate job description" and farmed it out to her geographically scattered "date wranglers". Their mission was to set her up on dates with any suitable blokes they knew - anywhere in the world. Her mission was to get through 80 dates...

The story sequentially diarises the dates and cities and the inevitable adventures and horror shows that ensue. As our intrepid heroin churns her way through the 10th, 20th, 30th and 50th dates, you start to wonder if she's actually going to meet the ideal man.

Around the World in 80 Dates is a fantastic travel adventure, and an inspiration to chics everywhere who are on the search for Mr Right.

Tales of a Female Nomad

While I'm on the subject of great travel books, Rita Golden Gelman's Tales of a Female Nomad, was a book I read some 5 years ago.

It tells the story of Gelman, who, despite having lived a privileged existance, felt trapped in an unhappy marriage. She courageously decided to follow her dream and take off to see the world by herself. Little did she know far she would travel, or that she would continue to be travelling some 20 years later.

Gelman's inspiring journey through places like Mexico, Guatemala, Israel, Indonesia, and the US provides close-up glimpses of everyday life in other cultures, while inspiring readers to question their notions of "freedom" and the fear that most often holds them back from being "free".

Thirteen luxury hotels, five months...no money

Travel books are a great way of killing time on long-haul flights. Absolutely Faking It, by Tiana Templeman, is an hilarious story about a couple who won what was billed as "the trip of a lifetime".

Tiana and her husband set off on a five month adventure through fourteen countries, incorporating their prize of a three-night stay at each of 15 of the world's most luxurious hotels.

From the Ritz in Paris to the Peninsula in Hong Kong, Tiana recounts amusing anecdotes about how two self-confessed backpackers "faked" their way through a world of enormous suites, Chanel toiletries and ultra-discreet butlers.

Sunset Dreaming - a road trip through the Kimberley

* This article was first published in Australian Video Camera Magazine in 2004, when I wrote a series of freelance articles about travelling with video cameras.

Crocs, rocks and red dust were just some of the sights the spectacular Kimberley region offered on a recent road trip from Broome to Darwin. Melanie Surplice reports on her dusty drive though one of the world’s great wilderness areas.

“We’re going to drive from Broome to Darwin,” my friend announced. “Wanna come?”

It was an offer too good to refuse. After six months of planning, our motley crew of twelve – all friends of friends - congregated on Broome’s spectacular Cable Beach. Kilometres of white sand lay before us, a fiery orange sunset hinting at the beauty we would witness over the next ten days.

Our three hired Land Cruisers were parked in formation. Equipped with two car-top tents, walkie talkies, cooking and sleeping gear, each car doubled as a mobile home for four people. From the start, we knew that space in the cars would be limited, but when it came to actually packing ourselves, our luggage, and the requisite food and alcohol supplies, the cars bulged at the seams.

We didn’t have a definite itinerary, but there was general consensus that we would take about five days to drive the Gibb River Road, then head to Wyndham to re-stock supplies. Then we would take the Great Northern Highway south to Purnululu National Park, explore the Bungles Bungles and return the cars in Darwin.

Camera and camcorder considerations
It was always going to be a trip where the potential for fantastic photos and video footage was infinite.

One issue to contend with was the lack of power. The digital camera owners didn’t think it was worth buying car charger adaptors, but instead chanced it, and charged their batteries in roadhouses and wherever else they could find standard power points. They also came perilously close to running out of memory – spare memory cards would have been well worth taking! I bought the car charger kit for my Panasonic camcorder, and took what I hoped would be enough film and batteries for my Canon Elph (non-digital) camera.

Dust was a constant companion, and despite our best attempts at keeping the equipment clean, it all seemed to end up coated with a light film of red dust each day. A brush stored in a snap-lock plastic bag was a useful addition to the camera kit.

The other issue was that no matter how grotty we became, or no matter how ghastly we looked in the morning – there were always another eleven cameras to capture the moment.

Hit the road Jack
As Boab’s I, II and III (our nicknames for the cars) rolled out of Broome and onto the highway on Day One, the itinerary was thrown out the window. It was decided that we would take a detour to Fitzroy Crossing, and visit what the guidebook told us were some of the highlights of the Kimberley. We would then backtrack up to the Gibb River Road the following day.

The 400km drive along the sealed road of the Great Northern Highway gave the drivers a chance to familiarise themselves with the vehicles. The backseat drivers familiarised themselves with the walkie talkies, and I familiarised myself with filming scenery at 80 kilometres/hour.

For a place that you might expect to be barren, the scenery was ever-changing and fascinating to film. Thousands of boab trees dotted the landscape, their unique, sometimes human-like shapes giving us much to talk about.

Gorgeous gorges
Our main dose of sightseeing that day was at Geikie Gorge. This area forms part of an ancient coral reef, and the contrasting orange, black and white cliffs set against the clear blue sky were spectacular. The best way to view this gorge is by water, and the barge cruise was a relaxing way to spend a few hours. Here we saw our first collection of fresh water crocodiles and promptly pulled all hands inside the boat.

Locals at the Fitzroy Crossing Tourist Centre had mentioned a nearby deserted quarry. This, we decided, would be fitting campsite for our first night. It was already quite late and our instructions for the campsite were vague. The further we drove, the darker it got, and fog started to descend. The boab trees appeared to float amongst the mist – it was quite eerie.

We eventually found the quarry just as the setting sun plunged us into complete darkness. This gave us the extra challenge of setting up camp for the first time in the dark. Fortunately, ‘pitching the tent’ involved undoing a few straps and pulling the ladder down to the ground. In what became a finely honed routine, each car delegated camp builders, fire makers and cooks, and dinner was prepared under the twinkling Kimberley sky.

The next day began with a freezing early morning swim in croc-free water. Despite the fact that temperatures hit 30 degrees during the day, the mornings and evenings were chilly.

Tunnel Creek was the first stop for the day. Equipped with old sneakers and torches, we walked through the frequently pitch black 750-metre long cave that runs through the Napier Range. At times, we waded through waist-deep water, unsure whether it would get deeper – the bags containing our camera equipment held high above our heads.

About 30 kilometres down the track, we pulled onto the Gibb River Road and into Windjana Gorge National Park. This entire area is famous for its gorges, and Windjana Gorge didn’t disappoint.

Never smile at a crocodile
Freshwater crocodiles floated ominously in the water, and we practically tripped over a smallish one on our afternoon walk. The croc was so still it didn’t look real, and four of my travel buddies decided to play chicken with it, seeing who could get closest to it. I captured the scene safely from about 100 metres using the digital zoom. I was expecting to use the footage either as coronary evidence or for Funniest Home Videos. Fortunately, the croc didn’t move.

The next few days followed a similar routine of getting up with the sun, exploring gorges and bashing our way down the dusty Gibb River Road. At times the drive was so bumpy, the corrugations so deep, that we could barely hear ourselves think. I frequently filmed the scenery out of the window, and I didn’t mind that the camera was jumping all over the place – it captured the sights and sounds of the trip. Even when I watch the footage now, I can still feel every jolt.

El Questro Station, a million acre property, was one of my favourite places on the Gibb River Road. Home to the El Questro, Emma and Moonshine Gorges and the Zebedee thermal springs, there are ample natural attractions, and a heap of activities such as swimming, fishing, boating and hiking.

Domed shaped rocks
Surprisingly, we followed the planned itinerary for the remaining five days. Highlights on this part of the trip included camping by the crocodile-infested Ord River, the crocodile farm at Wyndham and the Bungle Bungles.

Purnululu National Park, home to the Bungle Bungles recently received a World Heritage listing. The huge black and orange striped domes lived in relative isolation until a film crew broadcast aerial shots of the amazing site in 1982. Apparently twice as many people now see the Bungle Bungles by air than those that visit by road. This is not surprising, because even though it’s only a 55 kilometre drive in from the Great Northern Highway turnoff, the road is so treacherous that it took more than three hours to travel.

As my 11 weary, grotty travel buddies and I sat in a pub in Darwin on the final day, we reflected on the beauty of the two states we had driven through.

The Kimberley is one of those places that everyone should see at least once. This adventure took place in the dry season – but seeing it in the wet is meant to be just as awesome. It is a place of contrasts – wet and dry; welcoming and at times, dangerous; blue skies and red earth.

The cars were fantastic, and well worth investigating if you’re travelling with a group or family. As for the friendships – even after ten days of fairly close living and – we managed not to kill each other, and would possibly consider doing another road trip together. And, as for my camcorder and camera – I’m still finding specks of Kimberley dust in kit. It was worth every second.