On the way we stopped in at King Edward River and had a swim in a little Waterfall which was great.
The drive into Kalumburu was good with the grader just going thru one section of the trip. As we were driving along approx. 30 kms out from the community of Kalumburu we noticed a land cruiser on the side of the road with a flat tyre. Michael said "I bet we are going to see some people walking along the road". Sure enough about 1 kilometer down the road we see 3 lady, 2 kids and 2 puppies in the distance. I said to Michael "lock your doors and we are not picking them up". He said "it's ok, we'll just stop and talk to them". The next minute we have 3 ladies hanging off the back of our car holding onto the cage on the roof with 2 dogs in their handbags and 2 kids on our backseat.... we obviously stopped and they were worried about the horses that were on the side of the road attacking them. I insisted that we would send help when we arrived into the town but it didn't go to plan.
The next thing we are driving and there are 2 more people a man and a women, so they jumped on too. We moved them onto the sides of the car and kept driving. The road was getting really bad with sharp rock and I kept thinking what if we do a tyre now we are screwed, we only have one spare. As they were holding on they said to us "There are more people up ahead". We came accross another 4 people but only picked up 1 more. He was a 14 year old boy. We asked them where they wanted to go and they said the creek which was about another 10 klms up the road. When we arrived at the creek there was no water, which they all knew so they asked us to drive them into town. So we travelled about another 15 klms with 6 adults hanging off the car.
When we arrived into the community and onto to bitumen I have never been so releived. It was really nice to talk to the locals. They took us past the nurses houses and the police officers houses. I said "I hope we don't get into trouble for this" and they said "don't worry about it". The next thing we turn the corner and who should it be the local police. We all jumped out and the locals jumped off and they ask what was going on. We told them the story and one policeman was ok and said "you were put in a hard position" and the other said "we are trying to stop that sort of thing happening in the community". We got a quick photo and got the hell out of there before they notice our badly cracked windscreen.
We couldn't stop laughing about the whole ordeal. We kept travelling onto Honeymoon Bay. It was late by the time we arrived and set up camp and had a relaxing night.
The next morning we were hoping to go on a fishing charter but Les the aboriginal owner of Honeymoon Bay was busy and said we could go out in the afternoon. Well it got too late to go fishing so Les showed the boys how to make spears. It took about 2 hours and there was many processes involved. They had to cut their own bamboo down, cut off all the branches, straighten it in the fire and then attach a metal point.
The boys loved making the spears and Les offered to take us crabbing at night so they could use them. I was abit worried about it as we weren't swimming in the bay for more than a few minutes at a time and I would only let the boys go in about a meter because they have seen crocs and sharks in the bay before.
So we headed off after dinner in the dark with our torches. We arrived at the next bay and got out of the car. I noticed a pair of red eyes straight away and said "is that a croc?". Les said "yes". He said stay in a line close to the short, we were only ankle deep in the water and he said they wouldn't come near us. About 90% of the time I had a torch pointed out to see and behind us. We walked a fair way and saw lots of small crabs, a stonefish and then the boys spotted a crab bigger enough to catch. They both got their spears out and speared it together. They were so proud of themselves. We then headed back to camp and cooked it the local way straight on the coals. I still can't believe that we did it and survived.
We got up early and watch the sunrise and went out fishing at 6am till 10am. We all caught heaps of fish by the end of it we were throwing them back as we had too many. I out fished the boys and got the biggest fish off the day at 73cm long. It was hard work as most of the time we were fishing with handlines.
As we had stayed on the Gibb for so much longer than we had planned we were running out of water so we drove back into the town and went to the supermarket and then filled up all our water bottles at the local mission.
We met some lovely people at Kalumburu. Alot of the people go there for 2-4 months every year to fish and relax. It's a little slice of paradise.
That night we hung with the other travellers and they packaged up all our fish for us so we could take it with us.
This place is definately a highlight of our trip and we would love to come back again some day.
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