Fiddled about all morning going to a few art galleries, a rum distillery, a sandalwood 'factory' and a zebra rock sales place. Indian sandalwood is the current wonder-crop, going to make everyone rich beyond their wildest imaginations. The main advocates are TFS who reckon they saw the imminent demise of the native trees in India, as they have been randomly harvested to extinction. This year, or next, the world is going to turn to a new supplier, Australia, for this liquid gold that is used in cosmetics and perfume by all the major brands such as Chanel. So 12 years or so ago they bought up all the irrigation plains around Kununurra and started planting. Now this is bizarre: Indian sandalwood is a parasite, so you plant it in a row next to another row of 'donor' trees. Not one, but two types of donor tree, one that grows fast and last about 3 years, another which takes 3 years to get to be a reasonable size but which lasts 15 years. When they say 'lasts' they mean before the sandalwood, which attaches its roots underground to the donor trees roots, kills it stone dead. When its ready they harvest it rots and all, chip it, and distil the oil from the heartwood. This they sell for $2000 a litre. They bandy about figures like sandalwood being worth $200,000 a tone and the land here producing 12 tons to the acre or some such. I keep thinking of that old saying "If it's too good to be true, it probably is." Anyhow, they were supposed to harvest this year, but wait, maybe we'll harvest it the year after next to keep supply short and double the price. One thing they don't talk about is the environment, except how fabulous they are at sustainable ecology or some-such, and one wonders how much damage has been done by flooding an area half the size of Britain, making rivers that normally run dry each year run forever, bulldozing 10's thousands of acres dead flat and filling it with what is basically a noxious weed. But it's OK because the Government has Environmental Experts working with them. Think prickly pear, if you will. When will we ever learn?
Having decided that the whole area was going to hell in its own food basket, we adjourned to The Pump-house restaurant for luncheon, a very delicious serving of Barramundi and Smoked Salmon for me and Calamaris for Judy.The old pump-house sits on the banks of Lake Kununurra and has swarms of huge catfish swimming around its piers. It became redundant the moment they raised the level of the lake and stabilised it so that all irrigation became gravity fed. These enterprising folk took up the lease and built a pretty fine-dining restaurant around all the machinery giving it an immediate ambience and a spectacular location and view.
OK, here's you quiz.
Q. What goes "clunk, crash, scrape, clack clack....perlop?"
A. Brian's mobile dog 'n bone of course! It slid out of my pocket, off the seat, hit the leg of the chair, skidded across the concrete and fell gracefully into the cool, deep waters of the lake.
Oh well, what can you do?
Go for a drive into town to the shops. Go into a large corner store masquerading as a news agency and junk shop, up the stairs to A Retrovision store and to the desk behind which the harried youth sat surrounded by empty mobile phone shelves. No he didn't have any phones, well a couple of fancy looking ones at inflated prices, and what would I want with them? Feed them to the fish like the last one? Anyhow, I kept having visions of my endeavours to date trying to get the current ones activated and sorted by BigT and the thought of this part-time Telstra rep. and vacuum cleaner salesman out here in the boonies trying to get me set sent shivers up my spine. I can wait until we get to Darwin, bound to be able to get what we want there, apart from a fully functional BMW of course.
Gave up on on technology and went searching for Valentine Springs, which we found a few kilometres down the side of a side road on the way to Wyndham. It looked pretty small, muddy and still, so we turned to plan 'B', Middle Springs further down the side road, and then a bit more down a sandy track. What we found was the track taking an unexpected dive into more murky looking water of an unknown depth, and as we couldn't see the other side or where it would lead us, turned inevitably to plan 'C'. Back to the side road, more k's further along, dodging herds of Brahman bulls wandering about and other 4wd's roaring along at breakneck speeds and you come to another sandy dirt track at the end of which should be Black Rock Falls. What we found was a stagnant pond, replete with dead cane toads floating about, overawed by a towering rock face that was actually black. Thanks but no. We retraced our steps and took the shortcut back to town, except it comes to a halt at a locked gate at the Lower Ord River, that thanks to the constant water flow from the man made lakes is impassable all year round. U-Turn and take the long, safe way home. Not a complete loss, saw some great country, did some 4wding (yes, i actually engaged 4wd to get through the sand) and learnt that a Mitsubishi Pajero with 70kph on the clock rattles and shakes like a billycart. I could see the top of the drivers door flexing away from the body about a 1/2 cm! Cross that off the potential replacement vehicle list then.
Anyhow, we had some fun and are now all relaxed ready for the 550k drive back to Katherine tomorrow.
There are mores snaps at https://picasaweb.google.com/CapitalCityWriter/Day59KununurraWA
Snap of the day
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| Ivanhoe Crossing, Ord River, Kununurra, WA |
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