The famous "beehives" at Purnululu
Here is just part of Van's latest adventures.... on his motorbike, through outback parts of Oz. I've left out some "dodgey" bits.
Well, the next day we trundled into Purnululu National Park….don’t you just LOVE that name…p-ur-n-u-lu-lu…a beautiful name which they buggered up by calling it Bungle Bungles. Have you heard anything so beautiful as puuurrrnn…oo…loo…looo…and anything so ugly as Bungle twice. To make things better, one of my favourite words – piccaninny – is the name of one of the major walks in the Bungles…that is, I did the Piccaninny Walk in the Purnululu National park….lovely stuff.
Well, we did other magic things too in Puuurrrrnn…ooo….loooo….looooo . Against my conviction of many years NEVER to ride in a single engined aircraft I was seduced by a combination of the harmlessly softish roundness of the parked helicopter bubble on the early morning green grassed tarmac with the anticipated beauty of Puuuurrr…noooo…loooooo…looooo from the air in the soft dawn light. So – with classic fickleness I allowed myself to be drawn to the seductress – sat in the soft FRONTNESS of the bubble and felt a comfortable satisfaction ooze over me as the glass balloon firstly enveloped me with snugness and warmth, and then gently levitated to a small distance above the grass with a smoothness that made my confidence rise. Oh….there is no fool like an Old Fool. Then she shot up into the air, hit the Jet Stream which wreaks hurricane havoc on the US mid-west, tumbled and bounced through the tumultuous air like a ping pong ball in a Chinese tournament, dipped her snout to the ground in defiance of the windy tempest and butted her way against the desert wind towards what is reputed to be a beautiful set of domes and gorges. Oh….Gawd…..the only thing that kept that chopper in the air for the next 30 minutes was the Herculean strength of my left arm as it gripped the glassy bubble and held it 2000 metres above the ground. I would have used my second arm [that’s the right one] except I needed it to take one-armed photos of the beautiful Bungle Bungles. Not a bad job I did either. I reckon I am the only fella who has held an helicopter in the air with only one arm while taking 56 photos – at least 2 of which are OK!!
Apart from the uninterrupted fear the 30 minutes produced a spectacularly interesting oversight of the 30 kms x 20 kms Purnululu “massif” [fucking big rock] with a [terrified] birdseye view of all the gorges and domes and walks – and most of all – the colours!!!
Now, this will not be easy cos the English language is my only tool and I aint so hot at it….but….try and imagine a “massif” which is carved in many places to a depth of 300 metres. Between the gorges there is sandstone which has “blocked” over the millennia which means that it has split into cubes [as rocks do]….these little cracks have then weathered in an accelerated way and the corners have weathered twice as quick as the sides….so domes start to form. That is one of the aspects. But the second is that each dome is made of several strata of rock…each different from the one above..the dominat colours being a sandy yellow, a burnished brown, and a reddish ochre, with several bands of stained [by bacteria – that is another story] blackish stata….so put it all together you get these “bee-hive” dome s…wonderful….!!!!
Now – think of the soft lights of dawn..the hues of greens and blues and lilacs on the horizon…and how it pervades the ether for several minutes…then to be splashed open by a sudden bloop of yellow…golden sun-yellow….well…as the helicopter ping-pongs its struggle with the now-insistently gusting wind…the multi-coloured domes are topped with a golden head…and a set of different colour variations all mixing it with the originals in indescribable patterns and wonder-colour! A heady cocktail, indeed!!! And, all this I was able to absorb from the pinging pong!!! Not bad, huh?
Once on the ground we went walking….Piccanninny Gorge and walking trail….Cathedral Gorge [where the guide, in a moment of true treachery, insisted I sing the National Anthem – hey….no wurries..got all the words right!!]. All the same ooohhhs and aahhhhh’s of previous emails….but something new and extraordinaire happened!!! What? I hear you say?
Well, as we returned to the boos, there in the shady shed, was a family of local Aboriginals. Two very old people…black as pitch…with huge ivory smiles..the fella with a big gap as wide as the Heads in the middle of his….then a swag of little’uns up to six-ish….and a little later appeared a young man [30’s] who had fathered most of this guggle-glicking-laugghing-rabbiting brood. The Oldies turn out to be The Owners of Puuuuuurrrrr…noooo….loooo……loooooo…and what are they doing there? Well, they are just starting out on a week long series of camp outs – in the “massif”. With what purpose? Well, they had with them a young University thesied woman by the name of Sue Donaldson who works for the Heritage Council and she had negotiated this event so she could “harvest” many of the original inhabitants’ spiritual and ownership and dreamtime stories…how about THAT!!! Because I am a little shy about approaching people I had to call on unknown depths of valour to introduce myself to these people and to have them tell me all this. When they reckoned I was interested in them and their stories, the old woman [Sheila…yep, Sheila no joking] points to a big rock behind me and away on a distant escarpment. She asks me what it looks like…and when I saw it for the first time I immediately saw that it looked like a dog. No mistake…VERY true likeness of a dog’s head. So – I says: A dog…..errr….how about a dingo? YES!! Sheila says..THAT is Dingo Rock!! OK….pretty cool, I reckon. But, that aint all…she goes on: and there is ANOTHER Dingo Rock down at Halls creek [120 kms away]….Cool, says I…
A bit of silence…..
And, says Sheila….they TALK to each other…..
Wow….now that is as cool as it gets….
She explained a bit more….and grinning Peter-with-the-gap…he reckons they are spirits which discipline the teenage boys…and that they start a-howling when things are crook with the young’uns and this requires the adults and elders to move against the undisciplined young. Ooooo—errrr…..so, we had a cup of tea…took a cuppla photies…shook hands and went our grinning ways. What a coup!!!! I couldn’t believe how lucky we had been.
Sorry about the photos. They don't do justice to the place. These were just some of the shots we took when there 3 years ago. You can see Fay in one of the photos if you look hard enough.
I am enclosing some comments from Marion and Gerard who have been in to visit Van during his first week at Royal North Shore Hospital. No doubt he'll be there for a bit longer yet. 
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