Day 3 Kununarra and Purnululu National Park

 Like the African guides, Damien sleeps on top of the truck.

My first tent... the wrong poles were in the bag.

The truck with all the compartments and stuff. Tents and swags go on the roof.

Kaopak tree, with flowers and fruit.

A red tailed black cockatoo.

My first successful construction of my tent, with the right poles.

Our group.

Monday, September 12^th

We were up early and had a cereal and toast breakfast before packing up the truck. This morning we drove to Kununurra. We all went into a grocery store for supplies where most of us bought snacks and drinks. Damien bought two grocery carts full of food for us. All meals are provided on this trip as there are very few other places to eat and most of the time we will be in remote camping areas. Lunch will be sandwiches and salad and Damien will cook a hot meal each night.

After leaving the town we drove out to two touristy spots. The first was the Hoochery, where they make world class rum from cane sugar. We had a few samples. The second stop was at a sandalwood factory. Sandalwood is a tropical tree growing in Asia but there is also a variety growing in the northern part of Australia. This was a large plantation that is harvested for a number of different uses. A lot gets used for incense, but it is also in a large number of cosmetics and oils.

Damien and I got talking about birds as we were driving along. I told him how I loved the natives birds here and how I was becoming a bit of a birder. He told me that tonight we would probably hear the barking owl at our camp. He said it sounds just like a dog.

From there we drove to Purnululu National Park which is famous for the Bungle Bungles. The road into the park was 52km of really rough corrugated red dirt. When we arrived we set up camp again, and this time I had a tent where the poles and tent matched, so I put my name on it for the rest of the trip. Then we drove to a lookout where we could watch the sunset on the Bungles. Damien set up a table with snacks and drinks and we had a social. There was another tour truck there that catered to the retired seniors crowd. They were sitting around sipping wine. Damien told us it was an up scale tour and cost three times as much as ours. I wandered off for a bit to see what they were having and met up with an Australian couple who were sitting in lounge chairs watching the sun. I struck up a conversation with them. They told me they were farmers who had leased their farm so it was taken care of, and they were driving around northern Australia and living in the bush for six months. They had a four wheel drive vehicle with a trailer on the back and a small aluminum boat on top of that. They were definitely living the life.

Our group wanted to take a group photo so we corralled another guide who obviously hated taking photos and since we gave him a few cameras, he just quickly took the shot without zooming in. Anyway the colour is nice with the Bungles in the distance.

We went to bed shortly after returning to camp. The night was dead quiet, except for a few bugs and the sky was clear and the half moon very bright, but the sky was still full of stars. Sure enough we heard the barking of the barking owl in the night, very cool.