Our first destination was the Bungle Bungle's. Knowing nothing of them prior and being given no clue by their name, we arrived with few expectations. Good thing too as it was night time when we finally made it. I was driving by then and ploughing through river crossings Leyland Brothers style trying to get to camp. I'd had enough 'travelers' and wanted to compare the experience to the stationary consumption of beer. Big belly laughs aside, it was a quiet night eating a non potato based curry and playing the board game trouble, coincidentally symbolic of the bad luck bullet we had dodged earlier. Bullets obviously move faster outside the Matrix and we woke to a beautiful sunrise but a flat tyre. A crafty degree of forethought had furnished our Prado (Spanish for wanker apparently!) with two spare tyres for our assault on the Gibb River Road. All crafty plans came to absolutely fuck all when Spratty when rally king on a river crossing like I had, and like me blew out the other spare tyre. Puncture repair was beyond our capabilities or care factor, but another high speed semi submersion was going to cost us more than our freshly aborted return along the Gibb River Road.
With no time to spare, we decided to spare a few hours taking a stroll through the heart of the Bungle Bungle's. Perhaps 'Bungle' is an aboriginal word meaning 'super fucking amazingly awesome natural phenomena'. It was the back room of God's sculpting studio. Working with a red rock substrate, the dome like formations have enough abstractions to prove that the Big Guy wanted to exhaust every possibility of bungle sculpting. Words or photos would do it no justice, nor would any be found in the short time we spent there. If similar sweeping escarpments didn't spread out for 100's km's in every direction, I would call this specific place rather unique. Instead I'll say that the general Kimberley area is freakishly awe inspiring.
Now we had to gun it to Kununurra in a speed limit abiding way. Stray cows tried to hamper progress with their aimless dawdling and the blissful ignorance of a speeding 4WD's killing potential. A pack of dingoes were an unusual spectacle as were the occasional pairs of brolgas. As one of Australia's 2 representatives of the crane family, they captivated me with their serenely majestic composure. They were enacting every crane idiosyncrasy by doing bugger all other than just standing there looking good like a nude supermodel advertising life in general.
By 2pm we had completed the 1,000km trip. Five minutes later two dodgy tents were erect, a swag had been laid and sexual analogies were turning into actual discussion about the logistics of girls becoming a part of our 'boys' weekend. Spratty tried feeding his fingers to an overly friendly freshwater croc, the setting sun painted awesomeness on the surrounding hills and it was time to go to the Kimberley Moon Experience 2009.
Lady luck had taken a shine to us like she was on heat and we found a spot to spread out some blankets close enough to the stage to spit on the musicians. We needed a herbal retox so the four of us wandered right past some cops, across an open, empty and flood lit field to share a joint in blissful stoner anonymity. Our ingenious attempt at blending in couldn't have gone worse unless we had worn pink cowboy hats and arseless chaps. Within minutes a fat security guard earned his free pies by waddling over to warn us the cops were slowly losing their lazy ignorance of our 'ganja smoking'. His long rambling approach had given us enough time to smoke most of it anyway.
We settled in and started to get comfortable with a few amber filled phallic symbols. Jimmy chose to forgo symbolism and started getting comfortable with a nearby hotty battling bravely against the urge to get swept up in our awesomeness. Jimmy was trying to get back on the horse after seeing a sweetheart depart recently and he picked quite a filly to try it out on. Jimmy had laid enough foundation to build a shrine to blue balls before Blue Shady hit the stage and redefined awesomeness. Before we knew it, but long after it actually happened, we were animated in an energetic dance routine above what is normally associated with being stoned. Blue Shady's sensual assault had so much going on my feet didn't know what to do.
The pulsing heart of the band was the harmonica player. His random dance convulsions made me feel a lot more comfortable with my own spasmodic movements. The crowd was whipped into a sweating frenzy of waving limbs, alcohol and dreams of playing the harmonica. The Hoodoo Gurus needed to put in a career saving performance or hand out free drugs to top their opening act. They ripped through their classics with appropriate aplomb, but it was like a hand job after hot sex. It could never reach the same heights no matter how silky smooth the administrations.
Jimmy was sufficiently fired up to suggest giving a bout of silky smooth administrations to his hot filly. She had lost an unwinnable fight and got sucked into our continually escalating awesomeness. She had a pumpkin morphing curfew that Jimmy dutifully kept to and we were able to return to camp at a time appropriate for four 30 something year olds. An interesting fact for the night, provided by one of the many interesting people we met, Boab trees only grow in soil that also generates diamonds. There is no specific connection between the two as many people like me discovered by trying to dig up a diamond fortune in the roots of a tree. The trip could now be deemed as educational as well.
