DARNGKU / Geikie Gorge

So right here at the end of our trip (almost!) we finally booked ourselves in for a tour.  We had read about the cultural tour on Geikie Gorge (read about it here, get the details here) and were keen to book in, not just for a boat trip on a beautiful gorge, but also to get some insight into the aboriginal culture around where we'd be living for the next 6 months.  Geikie Gorge is just out of Fitzroy Crossing, a town about 4 hours drive from Broome where Gav would be spending a bit of time doing some work.  The drive from Parry's Lagoon took us through some of the dramatic East Kimberley ranges, through Warmun (where we stopped at an amazing arts centre - you can now view a Warmun artwork from the Eiffel Tower!), and Halls Creek (where we stopped at the best visitor's centre we've seen, but missed the famous IGA), and finally into FX.  It's a bit of a unique town, hopefully some more on it some other time.  And after a day in FX, we headed out for our gorge tour, with our local Bunuba guide, Bill.

The gorge was formed by the Fitzroy river cutting through a limestone range that is actually an ancient fossilised reef, made by some distant ancestor of our modern corals back in Devonian period.  The river cutting through the limestone creates amazing rock formations, and the annual wet season floods keep the lower parts of the cliffs a pristine white.  Bill's tour took us through the natural history of the area as well as touching on some aspects of Bunuba culture.  He took us up the gorge in his boat, spotting freshwater crocs on the way, and for a bit of a climb up through a cleft to the top of the reef, pointing out bush foods and bush medicines.  Looking out across the reef was like gazing over some alien landscape - with all the jagged rocks, deep clefts and caves, it's easy to see how the Bunuba people were able to hold out against the European invaders back in the 1880s.

We camped out beside the Fitzroy river a couple of nights, then got up early on Saturday morning for our final dash into Broome!