Crocodile hunter

The full moon rises over the Ord River.

The talk in the taxi from Perth Airport inevitably turned to crocodiles. "It's only the salties you have to watch out for," the taxi driver said as we told him we were heading to the Outback.

Around the tiny town of Kununurra, gateway to the vast open spaces of Western Australia, it seems they have only freshies.

And freshies, freshwater crocs of the kind found in the inland waterways, don't tend to be interested in humans, he explained.

"Are you sure?" we asked, and "Anyway, they wouldn't let us swim if it was dangerous ... would they?"

"Where did you say you were from? Auckland ... oh yeah, ha ha ha ... "

Actually, the Kiwi jokes were scarce on the ground once we got to Kununurra in Kimberley country, ready for encounters with crocodiles and deadly snakes.

It turned out the taxi driver either did not know, or had failed to mention, that man-eating salties can and do travel in the wet season and live quite happily in fresh water.

From Perth we flew north for three-and-a-half hours over dusty, hardly changing scenery, touching down at Kununurra Airport and a sign saying we had reached the last frontier.

The flight gave the first glimpse of what was to become an ingrained impression of Western Australia - vast, ancient, wild, empty, raw.

And something indefinable, too. In the emptiness, with soft pinks and vibrant oranges changing rhythmically to the rise and fall of the sun, it's almost as if the land is vibrating.

First on the schedule in Kununurra is the Kimberley Moon Experience, a concert under the stars along the banks of the croc-infested Ord River.

As the sun goes down, Aborigines dance for the crowd. We don't get to interact with many Aborigines this trip, however. It's a shame, given half the Outback population are Aboriginal.

"This is my mother's country. Welcome to my country," says one in a group of women wearing bright yellow skirts and bras.

The concert is like a Christmas in the Park in Auckland but there are no city lights here, just the big full moon shimmering on the calm river.

There is a strong patriotism in the Outback. The song I Am Australian is sung twice. It begins: "I came from the dreamtime from the dusty red soil plains, I am the ancient heart, the keeper of the flame" and goes on to tell the story of how Australia was settled.

James Blundell is here too. This popular Aussie singer comes to compere the concert year after year. He is one of the people, and we are to meet quite a few, who have fallen under the spell of the Outback.

In between sets, Blundell tells me he first came to the Kimberley in the 1980s as a stockman. He had his swag, a saddle, a rifle and 100 rounds of ammunition. He rode a horse and chased cattle, slept on the ground and plugged into the Earth.

He stands by the Ord River with the moon high in the sky and says about 1000 stockmen are out there somewhere.

Wallabies for dinner night after night get a bit boring, so camps have cooks, he says, but they are often on the run from the law or are recovering alcoholics.

"We'd keep losing cooks," he says. "They'd need to go to town for a drink, and one of them got pregnant cause she was a chick."

So the stockmen took turns cooking, which meant getting up at 3.30am. By 5am the workers would be gone and a silence would fall. A total and enveloping quiet.

"That was when I realised you could actually hear the Earth humming. As much as it sounds fanciful and romantic, there's just this low kind of - hum. I think that's when I fell in love with the Kimberley.

"I realised that it's pulsing and alive and this is as close as you'll ever get to pure freedom. It's fantastic."

Blundell is interrupted by a drunk Australian who stumbles up to shake his hand, then relieves himself in the river.

"Mate, don't fall in," Blundell yells. He's not joking with the guy. We'd already had the discussion about crocodiles.

Blundell said the Ord River was full of them and the main thing was to use your common sense and definitely not get pissed and jump in at one o'clock in the morning.

Still no sightings, though. I thought I'd spotted one earlier, lying submerged in the twilight. But some of the boys from Kununurra District High School who were waiting to go on stage looked at me as if I was a moron and threw a rock at it. The log didn't move.

"No one's ever been eaten here," one of the boys said. "Well ... there was that lady who had her leg bitten off." Thanks, kid.

The next day Pete drives us to El Questro Wilderness Park, a million acres of rugged Outback and a working cattle station which makes most of its money from tourism.

It has accommodation to suit different pockets, from camping to a resort and the posh homestead where celebrities like Kylie Minogue stay.

I am intrigued to experience the Outback because people at the concert had repeatedly said things like: "It's hard to get here; it's harder to leave."

Pete is another one. He's from Nelson but went to Perth for the America's Cup, then went to the Outback and "forgot to leave".

The four-wheel-drive bumps along dirt roads which get washed away every year in what they call "the wet".

From November to March the Emma Gorge Resort - where we stay - is closed because of the wet, when the roads flood and gorges spill rocks and rushing water.

The fertile green of Kununurra gives way to the scrubby plains of the Outback ringed by jagged ranges streaked with vivid reds.

Pete brings up crocodiles. Salties travel miles inland after the wet. They can be anywhere, he says.

Suddenly some cattle hurtle across the road ahead. The station has about 6000 cattle, most of them further north. These ones are feral, says Pete. "You don't approach them; they will go you."

He drops us at the Emma Gorge Resort which was totalled in a cyclone in 2004 and has just reopened.

New paths have been laid out, new roads dug and new access ways to magnificent gorges forged. They do this every season, year in, year out.

Meg Hornabrook, a ranger who works here, takes us on a nature trail and ignites a passion for the ancient land we are standing on.

The first footfall was 60,000 years ago, she reckons. She tells of the ancient artwork we will see when we cruise the Chamberlain River the following day. The rock art is estimated to be much older than the Pyramids of Egypt.

The land is more ancient still. Kimberley was once a separate tectonic plate which collided with the rest of Australia and mountains were pushed up.

About 18 million years ago the mountains started to erode and the region's gorges, with fantastic-swimming water holes, were carved out.

It is so old here no fossils have been found, says Meg. The Kimberley, it seems, predates life on earth.

Over time, crocodiles emerged and, funnily enough, they are the first thing Philby Slade talks about.

His little boat takes us down the picturesque Chamberlain River with its towering cliff walls made of slabs of 1.8 billion-year-old rock.

He asks if everyone knows how to put on a life jacket. Everyone says yes. "But do you know what to do with life jackets in crocodile-infested waters?" he asks next.

Crocodiles love things bobbing around in the water, especially if they're a pretty colour. "My advice is to throw the life jacket one way and swim like hell the other."

We're laughing, but he's fair dinkum. On the cruise there are buoys in the water with crocodile-teeth marks.

There are mainly freshies here but only a few weeks ago a huge saltwater crocodile was spotted, says Philby.

Since professional shooting of crocodiles finished, more are turning up inland, in places they have never been seen before.

Of course, today all the crocodiles choose to keep their heads down. Sigh.

Still, the cruise is a highlight. Philby points out melaleuca trees and tells how the Aborigines used the bark as tin foil, a great way to cook fish in their own juices.

The amazing red colour all around us is not the natural colour of the rock, it's from iron inside the rock leaching through and staining the outside.

We see a crocodile! "No. That's a rockodile," says Philby. Damn.

We roll our eyes a bit when he tells us we are going to stop so we can talk about the fish in the river.

But then we meet the archer fish, the coolest fish ever. They look like regular sprat-size fish and swim just under the surface. Nothing special.

Then you realise they're looking at you and you can see their little faces as they suck in water - then they spit at you. Their spit spurts more than 1m. This is how they catch their prey, by spitting at insects and knocking them out of the sky. They're incredibly accurate and we're all covered in fish spit.

We get out of the boat and climb up staircase-shaped slabs of rock.

Philby leads us to some ancient rock art, but he can't talk about it unless we ask. There are politics here in the Kimberley, between Aborigines and descendants of white settlers, over who owns the art.

Two types of rock art are in the Kimberley; the ancient art which dates back more than 17,000 years, and the more recent and quite different Aboriginal art of up to several thousand years, known in this area as wandjina art.

The ancient art is called Bradshaw art, named after Joseph Bradshaw, said to have discovered the paintings when lost in the Kimberley in the 1800s.

Some of the long, lithe Bradshaw figures with elaborate hair dos are on the rock face in front of us.

We ask Philby the correct question - "What's that behind you?" - and he starts talking. The art cannot be carbon dated because of the politics, but mud wasp nests - he points some out - covering some of the art have been dated at 17,500 years old.

This means the art hidden behind the nests is older still "and we talk of 20, 30, 40, 50,000 years old".

Bradshaw art is different from rock art in other parts of the world which has evolved and become more complex over time. The Bradshaw art just suddenly appeared in full complex form.

Some say this indicates a sophisticated early culture was here. The figures have head dresses, jewellery, sashes, skirts and anklets.

Aborigines say the Bradshaw people were their ancestors but some theories reckon an advanced race of people, perhaps Egyptians, made their way to the Kimberley a long time ago and were wiped out or bred out by another people, because about 12,000 years ago the art simply stopped.

There is a gap of about 8,000 to 10,000 years when no artwork was done. Then wandjina rock art emerged. It depicts how the world was created; the myths and legends of the Aborigines.

There is some here showing a child lying down and, to its right, little stick figures with outstretched arms. They are guardians and this is a burial site.

A long time ago Aborigines pulled rocks out of a crevice, put the body of a child inside and covered the entrance.

We gaze up, thinking about an ancient child buried high in the rocks. The art sure takes the sting out of not seeing any crocodiles and awakens what Meg Hornabrook described as a "stirring of the soul".

Checklist

Getting there
Air New Zealand flies directly between Auckland and Perth six times a week.

Accommodation
El Questro Wilderness Park.

Prices for the Homestead range from $1075 twin-share to $1400 sole use.

Emma Gorge Resort provides cabin tents (with ensuites) for one to four people for $300 a night.

Station township bungalows for one to four people are $350 a night. Camping by the river is $18 an adult.

Further information
Western Australia Tourism is on the web. See link below.

* Catherine Masters travelled to the Outback courtesy of Tourism Western Australia.