4th September

A new month, and a new full moon! It seems like no time at all since I was sitting out enjoying the last full moon, but at the same time it feels like months ago... time does some funny tricks when you're travelling.

I've blasted out of Broome and now I'm quite a few hundred k's up the Great Northern Highway, retracing steps where I slept most of the way back in the tour truck. Last night I drove to a camp 10km north off the highway before the turnoff to Derby. A good, flat track led me to Langey Crossing at a tidal pool in the Fitzroy River. I used the camera timer to take this, trying to get Lally to turn round in time! It was a 95% perfect evening, the 5% being that my neighbours were the type of camper to stay inside their caravan all night with a generator loudly clattering and polluting the perfectly still evening air. The 95% comprised that evening air, the location next to the pool water, the moonlight, insects and birds making soft evening noise... I lit a small camp fire and sat playing my guitar trying to ignore the intrusive genny noise

I had intended waking at 4.30am and leaving at first light, but the noise kept me up til 9pm, so I snoozed my alarm until 5.30. We were away at 6.30 with the cool morning air. Driving through boab country was pretty featureless and I was getting dozy by 10am when the caffeine effect wore off. One feature of this country is the Willie-Willies - tiny tornados - which busy across the flat landscape and surprise you! Jason reckoned they're called that cos they're willie willie windy...

I pulled over at the 1000-year-old boab again, just for a quick walk, then carried on another 70 km or so to another rest area. I had a doze for an hour then took Lally for another quick walk. There was a BMW GS650 and a couple under a shade, so I asked "are you two-up"? Then the girl explained it was just hers; the guy was on a bicycle and they'd just met and been chatting at the rest stop! Cool! Biker chick! I happily tried to engage her into some kind of interesting conversation about her travels, but she was just not interested. Poor girl was far too hot in black leather and biker pants. She said in a rather jaded tone "I'm just doing this so I can say I've done it. Next time I'm driving in a skirt, flip-flops and with air conditioning"! I told her I had thought of going around by bike, but opted for creature comforts. She didn't seem to appreciate the comment. I noticed some damage to her faring and she said she'd done an off-roading course and dropped it soon after buying the bike from new in Sydney. She hadn't done any other off-roading since then. "I like the thought of it more than actually doing it - I'm actually worried about driving out of this rest area as there's bull dust down there", she explained. Poor girl. She'll be able to say what a miserable time she had when she gets home, I suppose. Anyway, I was proud of her when she blasted past me 20 minutes later on the highway.

Not so a blonde, leggy, lone hitchhiker who I passed. She was clearly insane, and I decided I didn't want her anywhere near my van!

Refreshed after my snooze, I drove towards Fitzroy Crossing to refuel. The temperature was already uncomfortable by about 9am, but I resisted putting the a/c on until we left the rest area around 11.30 am. Lally's panting rate reduced from 2000 rpm to something sensible. I didn't hang around and just continued straight out of the town. 94 km til the next free-camp, and a further 83 km to the one after that. It was around noon when we left FC and we'd already been driving 5 hours, but I wanted to stop somewhere with some shade. The first free-camp was described as Ngumban Cliff, "exposed to the winds", the one after described as "shady campsites along the river". Having been eaten alive by sandflies and mossies in Broome and Langey Crossing, I kinda thought the cliff sounded better than next to a river, plus it was closer, but who knew what shade would be there. I arrived at around 3.30pm and parked under the only shade available, next to a picnic table shade.

And here I am! What an amazing, beautiful spot! Who would swap this for a caravan park? I am just one of two camp groups here - the others are quietly enjoying a glass of wine in the sunset (no genny, so far). The full moon has just come up, it's totally quiet, the view is incredible, looking out over the cliffs in that favourite red colour . They seemed to glow like embers at sunset. I dozed until just before sunset and now the temperature is relaxing to something bearable. Bliss.

There's been a development on Lally's surprise farting! My bottle of coke made a sharp hiss when I opened it this afternoon, and Lally poinked her ears up and spun around to check if it was her other end that had made the noise! Heh heh, bless her - what great value!

7th September

Is it the 7th already?! Crikey! It was a couple of nights of extremes; the night on the cliff top was so pleasant to start with, with a beautiful, soft cool breeze and no mossies, but in the end it kept me awake because I was too cold! The following day I moved along about another 280 km to Spring Creek and there was hardly a breath of air and I was kept awake for being too hot! I met a really nice couple at the cliff and we chatted for an hour or so outside their van in the evening light. Because the area was sealed off by the cliff face and there seemed to be no other dogs I decided to let Lally off her lead to see what would happen. She was very well behaved and didn't go running off at all, but just stayed with me. I kept an eye on what she was sniffing in case she picked up any old bones. I always love letting her roam around a bit. We woke up before the dawn to catch the moon setting, pale red behind the cliffs. I caught a couple of photos but didn't have my camera for the grande finale There was an aboriginal family camped out in their swags, and I took Lally up to say g'day. I couldn't seem to engage them in a chat though - they seemed jaded too, like the biker chick.

It was a cruisy short drive to Spring Creek, where we'd stopped for lunch on the tour truck. The East Kimberley is more hilly, so the roads are much more scenic I guess we arrived around 12.30, too hot to do much more than lay sprawled out in the shade - 37 degrees C. En route I had a revelation on keeping Lally in the shade, and rigged up the sun-shade so I could still see the wing mirror and out the window. It keeps the temperature down very nicely, and traps the a/c air under it when it's on . More dozing, walking and chatting with fellow campers. There was a lady whose father breeds greyhounds, so I chatted with her at length about that. Then I noticed some people coming back from a dip in the creek. I enquired if it was safe water, and they said "well we're still here!" So I took Lally down to the water to cool down. There was a sandy area with no underwater rocks, so I thought I'd try Lally out in it. I coaxed and encouraged in honeyed tones until she was standing on her hind legs, with me supporting her front legs. She looked nervously back to the shore, and I gently demonstrated that she would be able to keep her head easily above water. She seemed to get it but she was looking a bit wretched. She wasn't shaking though, so some improvement on the last attempt. Then I gently lowered her front paws down until she was on her own, and she swum back to the shore. With huge relief she shook herself to get all that horrid wet stuff off her, then started looking around for somewhere to rub herself down. She started in a tuft of grass but soon started frantically rolling in the sand and dust! This time I got her back in the water to wash it all off, then managed to get her back to the van before the rolling started again. I grabbed her towel and gently dried her off. She jumped onto her bed and rolled up her head, turning away from me in disgust. I wondered how long it would be before she forgave me... Anyway, it had exactly the desired effect of cooling us both down, and her coat is much cleaner too.

That night seemed to get no cooler than the day - Lally stayed up panting and I tossed and turned in the heat, wishing I was back up on the cliff-top. We left for Wyndham pretty early, without really much of a plan where to stay next. I'd read about a place called the "Grotto" - ok to free-camp, with steps cut out into a small gorge leading down to a pool. I headed for there and we arrived around 10.30am. There was no shade at all, so I put the a/c on for Lally and just peered over the edge of the gorge to check it out . With nowhere to leave Lally comfortably I decided not to stay. As well as worrying about the heat of the van, I've also been taking care she doesn't walk on burning-hot sand or rocks.

I drove on into Wyndham trying to find the Wyndham Caravan Park, according to my Lonely Planet located at "Seven Mile", and cheap at $13 for a powered site. We crawled through a place called Seven Mile, and another called Six Mile with no luck. I rolled up to Kimberley Motors, also the tourist information place and got a mud-map. He said the caravan park was just down the road - it's about the 3rd error I've discovered in my LP. $25 per night here, so I just parked for a bit in a shady spot and walked Lally. The notice board had a list of 16 "things to do in Wyndham". Clearly they were struggling towards the bottom of the list, as it started to include things to do in other towns! I checked out the "largest boab tree" in the campsite grounds - top of the things-to-do list and reputedly 1500-2000 years old, it was not as wide but possibly taller than the large boab at the rest area on the highway (woops! I lost the photo!). Then I followed the mud-map up the telegraph hill to check out the 5-rivers-lookout, Wyndham's main attraction. With the a/c on, the van struggled up the steep climb to the top. It was knocking badly (petrol detonation) and turning off the a/c helped a little. But it was certainly worth it! What a view! There can't be many places as high as this in WA: The view looks out over the confluence of the Ord, King, Pentecoste, Durack and Forrest rivers which flow into the Cambridge Gulf. The photo is looking north, towards the Gulf.

It was still only early by this point, and I was wondering what we were going to do with ourselves. Looking at my book of free-camps, I thought perhaps I'd drive through Kununurra and across the border, leaving WA for the first time in 21 months. I started out of town, and snapped the enormous model croc at the town entrance . Apparently they do get "salties" coming up to 70 km inland with tidal waters across the floodplains - I bloody hope none of them are this big!

Driving away from town I caught a sign saying "Parry Creek Tourist Resort". Ignoring the word "resort" which usually makes me want to avoid a place within a comfortable radius, I decided I'd check it out. The sign said "on the banks of a natural billabong", so I just had to! I arrived and started walking towards the reception. There stood in the pathway a large bird, about shoulder height, with a menacing beak which looked like it could make mincemeat out of anything alive. I stopped and stared, wondering what to do. It started towards me and then I wondered what it was going to do! I anxiously looked around, hoping somebody knew what its intentions were likely to be, but it started walking faster towards me! It looked very menacing indeed, and I just lost it with panic! What followed must have been utterly hilarious to watch - I ran, screaming, chased by the enormous bird, across the lawn back towards the van. It was right on my tail, lunging at me with that beak! Still screaming, hoping it couldn't run anything like as fast as an emu, I ran around the back of the van. I looked back and suddenly it was no longer behind me, so I ran around and jumped back into the driver's seat! Lally looked at me like I was insane, so I just sat, out of breath and panting and laughing for a couple of minutes.

When I was absolutely sure the coast was clear, I ventured out again, and ran into the reception office! I said, still panting "I just got chased by this enormous bird!" The lady gave me a wry smile and calmly said "yes, that's a Brolga. Don't run." Gawping at her, I managed to jabber to ask her how much for a powered site, and at $16.50 I decided to stay.

Here is Brolga, the female Brolga, marching off to terrorise something: .

So it turned out to be an eventful day. I watched Brolga suspiciously for a bit, chatted with neighbours, found the camp kitchen, walked Lally... the usual campsite routine. My stomach had been churning all day, and I'd had rather liquid number-2's since the stay at the Broome campsite. After sunset, I went to the ladies to relieve a sharp stomach pain and brush my teeth. Not feeling too hot, I was brushing my teeth and wondering if I might vomit. I walked back to a cubicle, and suddenly felt a rush of light-headedness. I managed to pull my pants up, re-open the locked door, emit a rather pathetic "woah shit, help!" and get myself into the recovery position before I completely passed out.

I have no idea how long I was there, but the next thing I knew there was this almighty noise! It was so loud it sounded like I was in a building site. I was completely confused and lay with my eyes shut, trying to make sense of it. As I flicked through a library of sounds to try to match this one to anything familiar, it began to fade away and I slowly began to remember where I was. I opened my eyes and realised I was on my side where I'd left myself. I turned onto my back, feeling incredibly hot and sweaty, enjoying the cool of the stone floor. I wondered what to do, and really didn't feel like getting up. I heard some voices, but I was facing away from the entrance to the ladies. Then I heard someone come in and say "are you... no, you're not ok". She returned with a wet shirt and put it over my head. All the time I was feeling better, but simultaneously not wanting to get up but not wanting to worry anybody.

Luckily, the woman who found me - Kathy, I think her name was - is a nurse, and there was another nurse and first aider, Heather, on site who came over along with the owner, Anne, her husband, Kathy's husband Mark and 3 kids, and several other people. Between them all, they checked all my faculties (they thought I'd collapsed and banged my head), decided I was dehydrated, so gave me these ice-stick electrolyte things, bottles of fresh cold water, took care of Lally and gave her water, discussed ambulances and doctors and hospitals, offered me an air-conditioned room for the night... Wow, what amazing people. Kathy was incredibly kind - she explained one of her kids is epileptic, so hence she wondered if I'd had a seizure. She didn't make a fuss, just told me what I needed to know, made sure I had water, and as she and her family were camped next to me she said to call on them any time during the night if I needed anything.

During the night, after all that water, I got up twice to have a long pee. On the way back the first time I was feeling light-headed, but suddenly Brolga appeared in the moonlight! I desperately wanted to move quickly back to the van, but every time I moved away from her she thought the chase was on again. I managed to walk slowly back without being pecked or fainting, and back into bed. Lally had no idea what to make of this performance, and watched the whole thing with intense curiosity. In the morning, everyone trickled over to the van to ask how I was feeling. Kathy gave me some wholemeal crackers - bless her. They left before I could go into town to buy them some fruitcake as a thankyou.

Anne and Heather offered me the use of their air-conditioned first aid room/office, so Lally and I escaped the heat at about 10 am. Anne produced a couple of slices of dry toast and some jam, and I had a 2-hour sleep. I sat and wrote up a bit, and then she also produced an egg and lettuce sandwich and a pot of peppermint tea! She was going into town, so she gave me a lift to the hospital. I had a quick chat with a nurse, and explained everything that had been going on. She was great too - she was incredibly perceptive about the few things I told her. In the end I got a clean bill of health, but she said just to look after myself a bit better, stop scratching the mossie bites, chuck out my food a bit sooner, drink much, much more water, and "come back if it happens again".

I had a good chat with Anne on the way back, about how she and Terry run the farm and what it's like in the Wet. What a star. We stopped in at the supermarket and I bought some industrial-strength mossie repellant. She suggested also that I rig up the mossie net somehow.

So it's been an eventful couple of days. Anne rang the Kununurra tourist info place today to ask about the cane toad muster for me. Apparently they're full up til the 27th September!! What is it with volunteering around here?! Anyway, their motto is "if everyone was a toad-buster, the toads would be busted", so I'm going to rock up there anyway and bust some toads whether they like it or not!

9th September

Things seem to have come good again! I rang stopthetoad.org.au and they insisted they were full until the 27th September, as they were providing food and accommodation. I explained I was pretty self-sufficient, but they wouldn't have a bar of it. So I spent a frustrating and stressful day driving around with the a/c on, overheating the van, wondering what to do. I went back to the tourist info place and checked out the notice board there. There was an ad for another organisation, Kimberley Toad Busters, with a couple of phone numbers, so I rang them. At length, I managed to arrange to meet a guy the following morning.

I booked myself into the Hidden Valley Caravan Park, unpowered for $12, powered for $27! I asked for a discount, but they'd only go to $20, so I stuck with unpowered. I got chatting to a lovely woman, also in a pop-top camper. She'd stayed at the Warmun Community doing teacher training and teaching art to a class of up to 70 kids! I mercilessly grilled her about what it was like and the stuff I'd been reading in my book. She was great and fielded all questions pretty well. She had earned herself the privileged position of being trusted enough to join the community out to sacred sites at the Bungle Bungles. We chatted for hours after sunset over tea. It's a pretty amazing spot for a campsite, just not very much shade. Nestled between the rocks in the Mirima National Park and a rocky outcrop called Kelly's Knob, the scenery is stunning Here's a boab in the grounds - they sometimes grow in two like this, and can look like two good friends supporting each other back from the pub! The rocks in Mirima turn frosty white just after dusk. Faintly glowing in the last of the dusk light against the dark eastern sky it has the effect of looking like they're actually emitting light! Later on the camp site was busy with kangaroos which came out of Mirima. Lally thinks kangaroos are the most preposterous thing ever!

I went twitching one morning! Here's a snap I caught through my binoculars of a flock of red-collared lorikeets playing in the sprinklers at the campsite: and another of a rather majestic blue-winged kookaburra They were following the spray as it moved around its circle, flying up into the spray and splashing about. Here's another snap of a clinging tree at the top of Kelly's Knob Lookout

This morning I drove out to the toad busters' HQ, about 10 km out of town. It's like an army depot and arsenal, with torches and battery chargers, volunteers' kits, maps on the wall with arrows and lines. I half expected crates of grenades and rifles to be stacked up there. I had a long chat with Ben and his mother Lee who've been running the campaign since 2005. They're apparently getting someone who does have SAS training to come and help out with strategy!

It's really fascinating and very scary too. The map on the wall shows the advancing "front line" of the toads every year since they've been recording them. Every year they've extended their territory line about 100 km. The efforts do seem to be working though, as the distance the line advances does seem to be reducing in more recent years.

They've got about 3500 volunteers which I think includes quite a few communities and cattle stations in the toad-territory. They go out "busting" around 6 nights a week, targeting known corridors where the toads are moving. The line has now crossed over the border to WA from the top end of NT. Apparently the toads are actually evolving to deal with the pressure the "busters" are putting on them - becoming able to travel longer distances between water sources etc., and using small islands in the tidal floodplains to cross over to other areas.

Other activities they do include recording size, weight, gender, stomach contents etc. They've got a statistician in Perth who analyses some of it for them. They also record biodiversity to get "before and after" stats to back up their case when applying for funding. So I mentioned I can do data stuff and they were delighted! They have a bit of cash they might pay me to do that kind of work, which would be great. For now the plan is to place me out in the field and just get a feel for what toad-busting is actually like! Can't wait! So I'm off to Dingo Springs, an abandoned community a few kms south west of Kununurra. They're going to fully equip me with solar panel, chargers, food, water, CO2 to kill the toads, etc. etc. It's going to be a wild experience!

14th September

I confirm that yes, toad-busting really is a wild experience! Jeez I've got so much to catch up on after 5 days! Where to begin?

Thursday I rocked up to the Kimberley Toad-Busters (KTB) depot around 9am and had the place to myself all morning with a/c on and freely accessible wireless internet. I spent about 3 hours looking at the data that Lee had given me, trying to make sense of it and thinking about what to do with it. They've been fastidiously collecting data of the date, site and number of female and male toads collected since 2006. None of the place names meant anything to me but I spent a while figuring out how to plot the numbers on a map with the aim of seeing migration routes. I downloaded a report by a scientist written in 2007 which summarised the work of both the KTB and the Stop The Toad Foundation (STTF). It mentioned the stifling rivalry between the two groups and was a very interesting independent review, if slightly out of date.

Ruth turned up and introduced herself around noon - a stunningly beautiful and very gentle-natured woman, she's part volunteer, part employee, doing biodiversity surveys and the like. A little later Lee, Ben (Lee's son and Field Coordinator) and Kim (Lee's brother) turned up with another Kim (Ruth's partner). The conversation quickly turned to what I'd been reading about and very quickly turned a little heated. I managed to shut up in time before I really got everyone heated up, then decided to just sit back and listen. I thought of Caz and Emma, my friends from Edinburgh, who have loads of experience of this type of politics in the voluntary sector.

Ben kitted me out with a volunteer's kit box, torches, solar panels (no regulator), toad-catching paraphernalia and a map - you'd think I was going to Afghanistan, the amount of kit I had! I followed Ruth and Kim out to Dingo Springs, close to where they live, and arrived just at dusk. I crossed the border into the Northern Territory, en route! Hooray! At last I had set foot outside WA for the first time in nearly 2 years! Kim and Ruth left, and I found a relatively cow pat-free spot next to the creek and collected some firewood. It was unbelievably quiet, with the trickling creek and crickets the only sounds. I lit my fire and contemplated the universe for a while, then thought I'd wander down to the creek to have a quick look. Ben had explained that he and his uncle Kim had been there two nights previously and collected just 26 toads along the whole length of the creek between them. He didn't expect me to find very many at all - perhaps 15 at the most. I wandered over to a bend in the creek, and there on the bank was this huge toad! My first cane toad!

So I decided I'd do my own first "bust". I collected a bin-bag, splashed some dettol into it (the toads absorb moisture through their skin, so this is one method of dispatching them), got a net, gloves and a torch and went out toad-hunting. Feeling like some kind of eccentric explorer with my net, I wished I'd had a pith hat to make the scene complete! I wandered down to the bank and My First Toad was still there. I bagged her and went looking for more. After over an hour I hadn't found a single other toad, so I gave up. I must have just been lucky to find one straight away. Not so lucky for the toad!

I spent a thoroughly enjoyable evening with my fire and slept like a baby. In the morning there was no shade, so I moved to a different spot. Ruth turned up and showed me how to dissect a toad. WARNING: Do NOT click on this photo or read the following description if you're a bit squeamish! Clockwise from the left back foot; lower intestine, stomach contents (in this case ants, small stones and some grass), eggs (up to 30,000 per female, of which 5% are likely to survive - that's a LOT of toads!), upper intestine, kidneys, heart (under right foot), lungs (between the feet - these are in their deflated form, having been turned inside out on a finger to inspect for lungworm)

For an hour Ruth and I took a walk up the creek and noted the various birds, fish, insects etc. for a biodiversity report. They compare this data along the "front line" to see the devastating effect the toads have on the number of species at the site. It turns out that the quiet I'd enjoyed the previous night was a sad consequence of the infestation of toads and their effect on the food chain. We took her 4WD buggy with Lally in the back for a trip, looking for a place to cross the creek to go fossiking for "zebra rock". We couldn't find a crossing point, but we found a cool, deep pool and had a wallow. Lally was so hot she waded straight into the water to halfway up her legs! She wouldn't let me go anywhere near her, but I was encouraged that she at least got in!

Eventually Ruth left and then the sun had come round and again there was no more shade. I scouted around for another shady spot and moved yet again. Then Ben and his uncle Kim turned up with another guy, Darren. Ben showed me the way to a very shady spot under pandana palms a short way up the road. They left to do a reccy on a bust for the following night, and I moved to the new spot. Just a little way off the road I was in a forest of these palms, and the ground was covered in tinder-dry dead leaves. I chose a spot and hung out waiting for the dusk.

A while later I heard the gate opening and looked up to see a car-load of aboriginal people had arrived. Not knowing quite what to expect, I cheerfully marched over to say g'day. The group was Kenny, who I met first (animatedly drunk, swigging a stubby of Victoria Bitter), his wife, Elizabeth, I think, daughter, her partner, and one other daughter. Their car was spraying boiling coolant from a hose, so I gave them one of my empty 10L water bottles to collect water from the creek. Kenny said "you don't sound Australian, where are you from?"
"I'm from the UK."
"A Pom!? You stole our land!" he exclaimed, jabbing his finger at me.
"Well that wasn't me."
Elizabeth muttered something sharply and he backed off. I cheerfully chatted, asking how far they had to go - to my relief, 100 kms - and shook hands with everyone else in the car, produced Lally too and managed to keep it all friendly. I told them I was with the toad-busters, and that 50 other people were turning up later on. This was actually semi-true, as the STTF Great Toad Muster that I originally wanted to join was camped a few k's down the road at Lake Argyle. I helped them get some water, the younger guy thanked me with a smile and they left.

Ben, Kim and Darren turned up just after dark to deliver a frying pan! They'd given me a box full of groceries which included 4 chicken fillets which I wanted to cook on my fire. We chatted for a while and they checked I wasn't worried about my encounter with "the locals". Generally I'd noticed some muttered negativity about "bloody blackfellas", but they didn't say anything specific.

The evening's toad-bust was similarly slow. I walked up to the start of the creek and saw a toad immediately. I bagged her, then searched for another hour before finding one more. I continued back up the other side for a further 45 minutes and saw another one in the water but it got away! Bugger! After 2.5 hours I hadn't seen any more, so I gave up again. I had cleared a large area of the dry palm leaves for my fire - I had used one to light my fire the previous night and it went up like tissue paper. I was paranoid I'd set light to the lot, so very carefully I built up a high stone pit and kept a very watchful eye while it settled down to embers. I cooked my chicken and Lally inhaled two pieces for her second dinner.

The mossies were thick that night - OK while the fire was smoking, but I just knew I was going to be eaten alive overnight. I purged the van using a mossie coil and fly spray, then shut the doors leaving just the screens for ventilation. With not a breath of wind it got stifling hot and Lally panted the whole night. She was still panting and hot to touch in the morning when it was down to around 25 degrees C. She's warm anyway, but I worried she was feverish. Around 9am I left to return to the depot, leaving the a/c on all the way. At the depot Lally went straight inside and lay down under the air conditioner!

Kim, Ruth's partner, was at the depot and I casually mentioned to him about meeting the aboriginal people. That conversation became very heated incredibly quickly. He would barely let me get a word in and went off on a rant, writing off *all* blackfellas as inherently violent and lawless. He had some pretty gruesome and shocking stories about nefarious activity by aboriginal people, so I could see his frustration but not forgive his prejudice. Ignoring being shouted over and interrupted I asked him what about the aboriginal people who are trying to make a go of things and aren't drinking all the time? Wasn't it tough on them that they were faced with that kind of prejudice? He flew right off the handle saying "don't you come up here from the city and give us all that racist bullshit - they should work bloody hard to prove themselves before they get any respect". He was red-neck, through and through. A racist bigot who didn't like people who sympathised with the abos. I calmly told him I'd say what I liked and to calm down. Lee and Ruth jumped in to diffuse the situation, but he ranted on for a while more. I firmly told him I was ending the conversation and for the next hour or so he sat postured in his chair with his legs wide open, head back, smoking and drinking beer nonchalantly and trying his best to look intimidating. What an arsehole.

It was my first taste of the bad feeling towards aboriginals that I'd heard is especially strong in the NT. We have plenty of drunken, homeless, violent people in the UK, it's just that here those people are mainly aboriginal people. It's too easy to plonk all aboriginal people into a group. I have liberal views about the lawless people in the UK - I believe people do things for a reason; that if you're socially backed into a corner, through poverty or neglect, then you have no choice but to fight it out in the only way you know how. I believe society should take more responsibility for those people. Of course they are still responsible for their actions, but I don't think they are solely accountable for the things they do. If society brands people as inherently evil, they stand no hope of gaining the self-esteem they need to behave positively. If my past 200 years of ancestors had been systematically controlled, raped, labelled sub-human, killed off in genocidal acts and so on and on, I'm pretty sure I'd be hitting the bottle and dropping out too.

Anyway, that's my own rant and I'm quite sure I could continue on that theme ad nauseum!

With all the moving around at Dingo Springs, packing and unpacking kit, the van had built up an unprecedented level of filth! I spent 4 hours cleaning everything out and doing laundry. The "grey" water from the washing machine was more like a dark brown colour! More pindan dust.

Lee's dog, Storm - a mongrel mix of Dingo and Rottweiler, I think - turned up having had The Snip at the Kununurra vets. He's quite small and still puppy-like at 10 months old. Lally and he squared up to each other, with Storm's heckels up and Lally's tail and whole body rigid. Lee almost triggered a fight she was stressing so much, but eventually Lally was too hot to carry on posturing like she does with other dogs and they just relaxed around each other. It was a huge relief that Lally can get along with a slightly larger dog without getting into trouble.

So Lally stayed at the depot in the a/c for the night and Storm came with us out to a place called Bubble Bubble; a cool water spring and wetland area about 30-40 km north from the highway, across Newry Station land, deeper into the NT. It took us about an hour to get there from the highway, crossing deep sand and very rocky dry river beds. We had four 4WD's, two quad-bikes on off-road trailers and a 4WD buggy that Ruth had used at Dingo Springs, also on a trailer.

There was interesting talk about Bubble Bubble - about 10 years ago, some aboriginal people won a land rights case for the area and were consulted on what help they wanted to re-establish themselves on the land. They requested housing to form a community, so the government spent $2m-$5m (estimates varied, depending who I spoke to) transporting materials and building around 5 houses, water supply, solar panels and generator. Just six months later the community collapsed and they abandoned it, possibly because a key person had died. Since then various nomads had passed through, sometimes burning the floorboards or taking other materials from the buildings. The water supply and electricity had long been cut off. Ben suggested I unscrew one of the solar panels for my van, but I couldn't bring myself to do it. There had been a bush-fire two weeks or so before we arrived, so the place looked rather uninviting even though the houses seemed to have escaped the fire You could imagine it would be a stunningly beautiful place to be, otherwise. Somebody made the dismissive comment "they've got no sense of ownership", as if that was of course a bad thing. The bitterness about the tax-payers' money that had been wasted was thick.

Ben put a huge stew on to cook slowly over the coals of the fire, and a lovely woman called Shelley and I went to the creek to collect water on the quads. Storm absolutely *loves* travelling, so he ran straight up to my quad and leapt onto the back just as I was heading off across the bush! He was snapping at tree branches as we were going on, and managed expertly to keep his balance as we negotiated the rough terrain! We collected four buckets of water and somehow managed to keep most of it in the buckets and Storm on the back on the bumpy journey back to the camp.

While the stew was stewing we went out to do our first bust of the evening. This was nothing like Dingo Springs - the whole place was alive with toads! I started out with a net, but there were so many of them it became too cumbersome to carry. I gave up on it and had to fight hard to get over the horrible feeling of picking up a wriggling toad! It wasn't the feel of them or the cold, but the way they jumped around in your hand - horrible! I never did get used to it over the course of the evening and several toads escaped into the water because I dropped them! Everyone else seemed to have no difficulty grabbing them by the head or feet and plopping them into the writhing, jumping mass of toads in their bin bags. Still I didn't do too badly - I reckoned I collected about 50-70 toads over the evening.

We went back to camp after an hour and a half to have the stew. My appetite was zero after the toad-hunt. They're such disgusting creatures, really. There were dozens of little frogs, jumping around and wetly hitting my legs. They weren't so bad, rather cute actually, but the toads are large, puffy, slow-moving beings which ooze white poison from their glands. Having dissected 3 by this point also did nothing to endear me to them! I managed to swallow some stew and damper without throwing up, and then we went out hunting for another few hours. We hit a different spot where there were vastly more frogs leaping about and calling - this area had not been infested so much, so we must have been right on the front line. The difference was really marked and it really brought home the effect the toads are having. Because we weren't catching many toads we gave up on the site after an hour and moved back to carry on where we'd been before. We scanned over where we'd already been, then headed further along the creek.

My knowledge of toad behaviour is growing rapidly! During the day, they go onto dry land and into burrows and various hiding places. At dusk they come out and travel vast distances across the land. They can go without moisture for up to 6 days, and can use anything from cow dung to flowing creeks for their moisture which they absorb through their skin. I caught several toads like this, sitting atop a fresh pile of cow poo!

So we weren't doing very well and a couple of the volunteers were slightly older folk, so we stopped the hunt at around 11pm. Darren told me they usually go on until way after midnight and sometimes til dawn! The most they've ever caught in one night was 6,000 toads! Our count, between 7 volunteers, was 438.

Back at the camp, Ben gassed the bags of toads with CO2 - a much more humane death than by drinking bleach, I would think! We stayed up for an hour or so finishing off the chocolate cake someone had brought. Then we all camped on the veranda of one of the abandoned buildings on swags and under mossie domes. We woke at dawn and had eggs and bacon while Ben dissected the 10 largest toads Again rather difficult to enjoy food while there's talk of cancerous cysts, lungworm, stomach contents and the like going on. Lungworm is looking like a promising natural solution to the cane toad problem. This is a naturally occurring parasite, particular to the cane toad which doesn't affect the native frogs at all. It kills very young toads and slows down larger toads dramatically. It apparently isn't spreading as fast as the toads are spreading across the land, so the KTB's culling activity is in part to allow the lungworms to "catch up". Other solutions under research include an alarm call that someone has identified, which repels young toads from an area.

We broke camp and made the journey back to the depot. Lally was beside herself to see me. I have no idea why, but when she's excited to see me she does a lot of stretching her front legs! It's very bizarre behaviour, and I can't imagine why she does it. When she's *really* excited, the stretching is so frenetic that it can't possibly be actually stretching her muscles at all. It's almost like she's showing off! Who knows!? Another strange thing she does is she seems frightened when I offer her her water bowl. It's very frustrating, as all I want her to do is drink and rehydrate, but guaranteed, when I produce the water bowl she backs right off and won't take a drink for all the coaxing in the world. But it's not consistent - occasionally she does drink and I make a point of administering oodles of love.

Back at the depot we unpacked everything, and I carried on where I'd left off, sorting out things in the van. Storm and Lally continued to tolerate each other's presence - Lally sprawled out in the cool of the laundry room. Around 2pm Ben announced that Lee's other female dog, Rain, was coming home from the vets having also been spayed. The stress of having Lally around was too much, especially as their landlord wasn't keen on dogs, so I had to leave. I was a bit annoyed they hadn't decided this earlier and given me time to organise myself and decide where to go. But Ben did say they would pay me $200 to look at their data, estimated on 10 hours' work at $20 per hour. I packed everything up, had a quick chat about what they wanted to get out of the data and good spots to camp, and headed off. Ben's parting advice was that in some of the camps, aboriginal people would go there to drink. "These scars on my head are from me stepping in to help white females who have got in trouble with black guys". He suggested producing Lally and bigging her up as vaguely threatening if I got myself into a situation. I thought about her wagging her tail and smiling whenever she meets new people and wondered how good that would be if it came to it. I had thought about heading back into the NT and driving beyond Dingo Springs to a free-camp mentioned in my book - "shady and with wonderful bird life". In the end it was late so I decided to drive back to the Grotto to camp. It was nearly dusk so the lack of shade wouldn't be so worrying and it would be about an hour's drive so I could recharge the laptop battery.

I arrived and set myself up for the night. About an hour later an Aussie couple arrived with Queensland plates on their 4WD. They walked down to see the gorge for 20 minutes, then as they were leaving they stopped for a brief chat. The woman enquired if I was on my own, and wasn't I worried? I asked what I should be worried about and she flapped a bit and then muttered about drinking "locals". Then she muttered that she supposed we were quite far from where they were. I think she was talking about Fitzroy Crossing which has apparently had a lot of trouble with drinking. So much so that I think drinking is only allowed in bars which have a dress code and a no-carry-out policy. They left and I spent the evening just thinking and trying to make sense of everything. I was feeling a bit overwhelmed by it all, and very tired anyway after not much sleep the night before.

I went to bed fairly soon after dark. It turned out to be a great spot, fairly high up so we had a breeze and were relatively free of mossies. I left the rear door open so we had a lovely cooling through-draft. I woke just before dawn at 4.30 and got up twenty minutes later, not wanting to waste the cool air and solitude. Somehow, through chatting with the various visitors who turned up, reading, writing blog, having breakfast etc. it wasn't til 11.30 that we left to return to Kununurra. on the way I saw a sign for "Zebra Rock" so turned off and detoured for 9 km to visit the rock gallery there. I parked and walked Lally through the shady mango plantation there. I had fun walking her through the sprinklers! I picked up a great piece of rock just lying on the ground - perfectly striped like a zebra, just not cut and polished like the gallery exhibits. One piece - a 10-bottle wine rack - was on sale for $15,000!! It certainly is beautiful when it's carved and polished up, but none of it was worth the expensive prices. I left Lally in the shade and walked around the back where the workshop is and some caged talkative cockatoos. These were allegedly able to speak French, German and Aussie slang. I experimented with all three but could only coax a "hello" out of one bird!

The gallery was right on the lake created by the Ord dam and they had a small jetty set up for fish feeding. I wandered down and saw three beautiful red-breasted finches down there. In the water were hundreds of large catfish and other large fish. Two rather rich, clean-looking aboriginal women turned up with a few children and I made a bit of small-talk. Back in town I did a bit of shopping, bought some dog nail-clippers and bumped into Lee at the shopping centre coffee shop. We had a very quick chat about her data and she asked if I'd had a look at it yet. I wondered how she thought I was going to use a laptop with no access to power, and decided I'd better book myself back into a caravan park.

And here I am - back at the Hidden Valley CP. I've got little joeys jumping past me as I type, and those cliffs still glowing ghost-white in the backdrop. I have a patchy internet connection here - happy days! Lally is still panting, even when it's down to 22 degrees C in the mornings. But she's not off her food or water (she hoovers plenty of it when she does drink), so I'm pretty sure she's OK. I've paid up front for 3 nights. I'll try to add some photos to the very long post above!! Great to get email from people when I can collect it. If you've read all the above, thanks!!

19th September

Sheesh I really must stop leaving it so long between posts! Now I've got heaps to write about again! I'm currently 10km West of a lush, shady, tiny town called Batchelor. Feeling like I should fit in to a place called Batchelor...

Back in Kununurra, Lally spent the morning lazing in a neighbour's travelling bus, complete with a/c and fitted out by a yacht builder. She looked so comfortable and was so reluctant to move I left her there while I carried on working on toad data. Earlier in the day she'd taken to digging herself a large hole to lie in under some pandan palm trees in the camp grounds. I checked she hadn't unearthed some treasured floral arrangement and watched with fascination as she created her cool pit. It was a highly detailed design!

On schedule I returned to KTB to see what was next. Ben explained their landlord had told them to get their dogs off the premises, so Lally was a no-go. Plus I couldn't take her with me on that evening's toad-bust, as it was station land with 16 working kelpie dogs roaming free. We hummed and ha'd about possibilities for stationing me out somewhere, but in the end I decided just to head off towards Darwin.

In the two days I'd been working on their data I found some pretty interesting stuff, and I gave Lee, Ben and Ruth a mini presentation of what I'd done. Lee was really pleased with it and offered to contract me for another couple of days' work. I'd spent the morning trying to get two of their solar panels and a regulator to work so I could station myself somewhere. When I decided to leave I asked her if I could exchange work to take the two panels for my van and she agreed. How satisfying doing work to get something I need rather than just cash!?

I said my goodbyes to everyone there, and as a parting comment Lee mentioned the conversation I'd had with Kim, Ruth's partner. She explained a very complicated family connection, but I think Kim is actually part aboriginal himself! Certainly he has a strong, productive and mutually respectful working relationship with several aboriginal people. She explained his frustration is with the young blokes causing trouble. I explained my frustration with prejudice and we left it at that.

I crossed the WA/NT border just before dusk, leaving WA behind me at last. The East Kimberley scenery was stunning in the sunset light and I ducked in to Dingo Springs to camp under the pandana palms again. I lit a fire and watched the wildlife - several frogs fell out of the tree above my head, and a couple landed wetly on my arms! I almost picked up a couple of hitchhikers too - check out this little guy in my van . I decided not to worry so much about the mossies. As a consequence I woke several times in the night with furious itching - the bastards got me on the soles of my feet and my toes; two places which are extremely difficult to scratch in any kind of satifactory way.

In the morning I had a visitor. Ben's uncle Kim dropped in for a cup of tea on his way back from the night's bust. It turns out he is the guy with SAS training which I mentioned the KTB were using! He's been in the army for 40 years or so, mainly stationed in Perth. A very gently spoken chap with a very deep voice I could listen to forever. Nice to have friends round for tea in such a remote and temporary location!

20th September

Something I've forgotten to mention is the names of creeks we've crossed on our way across the Kimberley and on into the NT. These include such intriguing names as Cheese Tin Creek, Dead Horse Creek, Moonshine Creek, Brandy Bottle Creek, etc. Apparently Cheese Tin Creek is so named because a Muslim family were travelling with several tins of what they thought was cheese, only to discover they were full of corned beef! They dumped the lot on the creek bed on religious grounds.

On my way to the next free-camp there were loads more willie-willies, mainly right in the middle of the road. It's quite exciting driving straight into the eye of a mini tornado (OK, perhaps I should just get more of a life!). The van just gets bustled about momentarily and the disturbance has no effect on the willie-willie which carries right on spinning down the road.

I stopped in on one free-camp just to let Lally out for a walk. There were some information boards describing the leader of the first group of westerners to strike out this deep into the NT - a guy named Gregory. I was reading away when I noticed some other text superimposed on the top; "POM SCUM"; "BRITISH PIGS"; "KILL POMS". Highly informative, and I pondered this new information for quite a while as I drove along the Victoria Highway. Were the writers referring to Gregory himself (already dead 100 years), or modern-day poms, I wondered? Lally and I discussed it at length, til I got bored and changed the subject.

I called in at Timber Creek, but as they had no LPG and my petrol tanks were still full to bursting I drove straight on, switching the van to petrol fuel. Next stop was the Victoria River Roadhouse; "Under New Wife" Still no LPG but a nice young American chap checked my tyre pressure. We'd been folowing the Victoria River - full and flowing, unlike most of the waterways in the more Westerly Kimberley - and more frequent World War II sites and memorials I followed a sign towards the Old Victoria River Crossing, only to be faced with this amusing signpost Finally, after a long day driving, I pulled in to a free-camp about 100 km short of Katherine. A dream spot, I had evening shade, and would be getting morning shade from a large gum tree. We had a wonderful cool breeze all night; mossie-free and cool enough for a blanket!

En route to Katherine the Kimberley finally faded out. The boab trees became scarcer, the bush slowly got taller, greener and more dense, the humidity notably increased, the cliff-tops gave way to lush tropical forest. I pulled in to Katherine to restock. The proximity of a major city was felt in the price of fuel - down to 85c per litre of LPG, and $1.30 a litre of petrol - the presence of overtaking lanes, and 2WD *cars*, which have been extremely rare since Broome or even Geraldton.

By now I'd decided just to get myself to Darwin and strike out from there at leisure to see the NT. I called in briefly at Pine Creek to walk Lally on a shady green and stopped to consult my new Camps Australia book. I made a beeline for the town of Batchelor, taking a very bumpy detour signposted "scenic route". Well I just had to! Poor Lally actually left her seat at one especially spirited section, and looked at me pleadingly to slow down. Halfway along the road there was a large sign nailed to a tree; "NO SHOOTING". Immediately after it was a typical Australian yellow diamond-shaped signpost, which actually did not have a single bullet hole in it for a change! Amazing!

There were no less than 4 of us single, female, independent travellers at the Banyan Tree Caravan Park, 13 miles West of Batchelor and a stone's throw from Litchfield National Park. Those batchelors clearly aren't working hard enough! We all had a long chat this morning over coffee and went collecting mangos from the trees in the grounds. It was a shady spot and with only 85 km to go to Darwin I was in no rush to leave. I finally rolled out around 9.30, ignoring the park and heading straight for the highway. Being Sunday (and probably being Darwin), the traffic was nice and dozy, and allowed me to drive straight into the city centre, find a free, shady spot to park and take a very quick walk through the very heart of the city with Lally. So far, so good! I rang round a couple of caravan parks and used the GPS to take me right up north to Lee Point - the only CP to allow dogs.

And this is the venue for this evening's write-up. The bird life is incredible, just here in this caravan park! There are ducks, honey-eaters with blue heads, large birds with long beaks which make a sort of burping/grunting noise, korellas, lorikeets in all sorts of different colours, and at least another 5 species I have no idea what the name is. All very fitting for a place called Darwin! I set up the solar panels on the roof when I got here, so we'll see what effect it has on the state of the battery in the morning. It's humid, but actually a bit cooler than Kununurra at around 32 degrees C.

The woman at the reception desk gave me a newspaper with free-ads for accommodation, so I'm off to check out a place tomorrow morning. Who knows what'll happen next!

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