26 Aug 10 - Derby

By Lou: It’s a sign of the times now that when we enter a new town, instead of looking first for the information centre or a caravan park, we make a note of break down services. And so we were not disappointed when we pulled into Derby and the first businesses we saw, in a row and exactly in this order, were car hire, welder and auto electrician.

We arrived in Derby in the afternoon and considered pushing on to Windjana Gorge National Park but thought Derby had enough to offer to warrant an overnight stay. One of the town’s claims to fame is having Australia’s highest tides, with variations ranging as high as 11 meters.
We headed out to the jetty just after high tide and could see a really strong run out back to sea. Craig was tempted to throw a line in but it wasn’t an ideal fish catching time and it would have taken longer to get his gear together than to have it in the water so had to make do with just taking photos. Next day we came back at low tide and could see mudflats for miles where turgid waters had bubbled 17 hours ago.

There are two caravan parks in town, and I was surprised to learn one of them didn’t accept children. I had heard of ‘no pet’ parks before but not ‘no children’. Thank goodness we haven’t come across ‘no dirty trailers’ parks. Fortunately the remaining park welcomed children and we set up for an overnight stay. The owner had also given us a tip that we had a choice of 2 magnificent sunsets; one across the wharf and another behind a large boab tree. We chose the latter as we are quite taken by the boabs that predominate in the Kimberly.



As we were conscious this stop would be our last powered and internet connected spot for a fortnight or so, in the evening we knocked over a few more blog entries to bring us up to only one month behind. It was nice to be tapping the keys outside in the lovely mild evening after many other blog update sessions were held outside in the cold using frostbitten fingers.

Next morning I had hoped to join a 9am tour of the local School of the Air but we couldn’t get ourselves organised in time. God help me going back to full time work. By the time we’d run a few errands we had 30 minutes to wait until the bottle shop opened so we sat in the carpark with a strong gathering of locals after the same thing. It was every man for himself once the doors opened at noon and it reminded me of Melbourne's Boxing Day sales. At one point there were so many slab loaded trolleys it caused gridlock. It was only the second time I’d seen a security guard outside a bottle shop, the first time also in the Kimberley at Broome.



By Craig: Derby, big sunsets, big ant mounds, big tides and big Boab trees





The sunsets were like you were almost standing close enough to touch the sun, bright golden orange and magnificent as a backdrop to the Boab tree.







The tide, sometimes 11 meters and when you visit the peir at low tide you can’t fathom where all the water has gone as you look at local fishing boats high and dry.




















Although Sam was amused by the large fat ant mounds I was amused by the fact that in days well past, the authorities kept turning large Boabs into prisons and attempted to shove as many local crooks into them as possible, short term only of course.