Through the Looking Glass
"Should we keep on going or should we try to stay here?"
"Well, we can make it to the national park, around 13-14ish, do the hike, and then find somewhere to camp, how does that sound? Although, we'll have to do a bit of night hike just so you know, I'm okay with that, as long as you are."
"Urgh. I don't know, you're the Driver, you decide, I'm okay with whatever."
"Then let's go and kick some ass on the mountain top!"
The two smelly travellers pull out of the Coles parking lot in Tom Price and start making their way out to Karijini National Park. This park is meant to be very special, because of it's gorges. That's pretty much the only thing the park is known for as far as two travellers know. One of them has a look in the information leaflet they picked up in the visitors center, and finds out that Australia's second tallest peak is located in the park, and you can climb it as well. The one, supposed, crazy traveller accepts the challenge that the leaflet has presented to him. His companion is a bit lost, because she never read anywhere in the leaflet a challenge or anything remotely close the her partners manhood being put into question. She asks him why he loves mountains so much, and he replies "I don't know. Mainly the challenge of getting up to the top, and getting some sort of adventure." She responds with a simple okay of I-will-never-understand-him.
After putting Voa through her paces one more time, the two companions reach the base of the mountain, Mt. Bruce. And one of them began to think about the name. Mt. Bruce. It didn't really look like a Bruce, just like a mountain. Did someone see the face of Bruce on a cliff face, if so, then poor Bruce is ugly as sin or nature has been pretty active with the weathering of the rock to form a good shape of Bruce's face. We'll never know. Or it was just some dude named Bruce who wanted a mountain named after him.
Once they got their gear sorted out, they begin the tramp up. The beginning of the track was the hardest, mainly because both of them hadn't really stretched prior to the hike, and were slowly getting warmed up.
After about half an hour into the hike, on the south side of the mountain about 5-6km away, they could see a mine going full speed a head. What kind of mine? Iron Ore! It was an open air mine, and you could see all the earth that they had moved out of the earth to get to this important mineral.
They pass one family and two other couples coming down the mountain, and it's pretty clear that the sun is setting, and that on the way down, it will be pretty dark. The track wasn't too technical, but only on some parts, where you had to keep your eye out for the cairns. However, one of the travellers just thought, if you loose track of the cairns, just keep on going up, and you'll find the summit at some point.
After a one hour and forty five minute hike, they reach the summit and feel pretty good about themselves. And on this summit, you had a full 360 view of your surrounds, which made the effort they put in that much more worth it.
The "photographer" of the two makes his way to the western most point of the summit, trying to find an unobstructed view of the sunset for some photos.
He finds one, and starts setting up his camera, trying to find all the right settings. But then realises he hasn't actually enjoyed a sunset for quite some time. And ignores his camera and decides to admire it more than trying to capture it. Which in turn, made the sunset even better for him.
Once the sun had set, and all the beautiful colours that follow after sun has disappeared over the horizon, and one of the two hikers begin to feel cold, they start to make their way down. As usual, one of them has a decent torch to light the way, and a spare one for emergencies or for some else to use. Which happened to be his mobile phone. They first use what remaining light there is from the sunset, and then have to turn on their lights to light the path a little bit better. After a while, they lose their way on one of the more technical parts, and the more able of the two goes a bit further off track in to find their way back again. As per usual, the two were only a few meters away from the track, so they just adjusted their course and kept on going. However, it didn't stop there. The two, now tired and bit hungry hikers, had now reached a cliff, something which they didn't really anticipate, nor did they climb up it in the first place. Standard practice for the two was to simply split up and find the route again, which wasn't too far off. They start to head straight down hill now, at more or less at a 30-40 degree decent, which was a bit trippy for the lead hiker, because when he looked straight out, all he saw was darkness, something which he had never experienced before. A feeling of fear and excitement welled up inside of him. For his imagination could sometimes take over him, and bring forth images of horrible creatures, monsters that belong in the depths of hell, lurking, and waiting for fresh meat. The excitement was there because he didn't know what was going to come next. Or when.
They reached the point the part which the more experienced hiker was most concerned about. It was the part of track where something happened, he knew "it would suck if you fell," as he usually said. He wasn't too concerned about him, but more about his less experienced partner in crime, and simply decided to take the track as slowly as possible, to minimise the chances of anything happening. And while he was walking down, he figured that this would be an excellent opportunity to test a photography technique he's been wanting to try out, especially with his brand new flash!
He breaks down the plan to his partner, and she thinks it could be a pretty cool idea. So he leaves her where she was, and prepares the camera and flash for some fun photos. He's pretty excited now. He takes some test photos and decides that they can be in the photo now.
"Ok, we have 5 seconds to walk across ok, that should be long enough."
"Ok."
The flash goes off, the shutter opens, the two walk, and the flash goes off again, but brighter than the first time.
"Ok, cool, let's see what we got."
The photo wasn't too bad, but not what he had hoped for.
"Let's make it 8 seconds."
The two walk again, but still not what he was hoping for.
"Ok, walk behind the corner over there, and I'll press the button, and then I'll have 20 seconds to get where you are, when it flashes, we come around the corner, and walk towards the camera, yeah?"
"Sweet."
This was a little bit better, but not what he wanted. It took a few more tries to get what he wanted – more or less. The smaller of the two was getting cold and requested that they head back down the hill. The "photographer" says he just wants to get some night shots of the mine, and then they can go. He gets 2-3 shots, packs his gear, and the two start heading down.
"Do you see the lights over there?"
"What about them?"
"They haven't moved, do you think that's our car?"
"No, I'm pretty sure I turned off the lights, and besides, the car is facing the wrong way, it's not our car."
"Ok, but it's kind of weird that it's been there for so long."
"Yup."
Not to long afterwards, the get back to the car, seeing that the lights weren't turned off. That wasn't enough proof for one of them. He opens the driver door, and checks the light switch. He left it on for the whole time they were gone – they now had a flat battery, stuck in the middle of no-where. Sweet. This now gave them an excuse to camp there, where they weren't allowed to camp. There was another car parked next to them, containing a German couple which they had passed on the way up. They didn't have a legitimate excuse like having flat battery, and had planned to leave the site early in the morning to avoid confrontation with the ranger. Something all backpackers do.
However, the two weren't doomed if no one did show up to help them. To get the car started, all they would have to do is close the relay that is used for recharging second battery, making a solid parallel circuit. The German couple jump out to see what's happening and see if they need some assistance. The McGuyver Boyscout of the four tries to use his pocket knife to close the circuit, but with little success. So they decide to push the car. No luck there either. Now Plan C comes into effect: Disconnect the second battery and connect directly in the primary batteries place. After some fiddling and screaming, the car gets started. McGuyver poser boys partner in crime, who is sitting in the drivers seat is told to give it some revs, and keep the revs going. But by giving some revs, the partner floors it instead, making the man crap his pants, because he saw an explosion in the air filter. Something which just shouldn't happen. He screams at her again, and quickly reconnects the primary battery, and while doing so, breaks a wire. The car keeps on going, and ignores it. The German bystander reckons it's just an earth, and isn't too important. The comment is heard, and quickly dismissed.
"This guy doesn't know what the f#ck he's talking about."
Now, the one doing all the work with the battery isn't the worlds best mechanic and admits to know squat when it comes to cars. But having dealt with the electronics of his car for a while now, he has learned that the earth is on the negative terminal, and makes a note to fix the wire as soon as evening comes. He get the battery hooked up, chucks the second battery into the passenger seat well, and the two start heading down the road. The girl decides to put on the head lights to see if they'll work. Voa dies. The young man sighs and thinks "great."
He does it all over again, this time the car doesn't want to start. "Awesome," he thinks. The girl tells him she'll walk the three kilometers to the main road and see if she can't get some help.
Automatically he thinks about breakfast. However, he before he does that, he figures he should get everything reconnected, so when help does arrive, he's not standing there with his pants down, looking like a complete douche.
Once Humpdy-Dumpdy is back together again, he tries one last thing before eating his breakie. He takes some steel wire and connects the positive terminal inside the relay box, just to see what would happens. He figured if his all metal pocket knife didn't work, this definitely wouldn't, but he just had to make sure. With the two connected, and the circuit formed, and he pumps the engine, pulls out the choke, and turns the keys. The steel wire goes bright red from all the heat, and he quickly yanks it off before it does some serious damage.
"I. Am. F#cking. Awesome," he thinks. With a big smile on his face, he jumps into the car, and begins honking the horn like crazy, hoping that his partner will be able to hear him from where she's standing.
The closer he gets, the bigger the smile becomes. His partner jumps into the car, and they make their way onto their next adventure: Harmesley Gorge.
The End
Actually, that's far from the end. The end is when I'm dead. So, hopefully, we'll have a lot time to enjoy together before that horrible day.
You've endured quite enough pain for one evening, so I'll just quickly break down my time in Karijini.
Go.
It is an amazing place. Pretty much scenes out of movies, photos, travel ads, etc. The rock formations were insane, and you get a real sense of adventure when walking through the gorges. For the whole national park, they have a class system for rating the difficulties of the different gorges, and in the Hancock and Waeno gorge, you have a class 6 section for both of them, both of which are at the end of the gorge. What does that mean? You either need a lot of safety gear, or some balls and skills to pull it off. At first I didn't want to go, because if something happened, then we'd be fucked. But, a younger, more ballsier boy than I went before us, and made it look pretty simple, as long as you went slowly, and as usual, I accepted the challenge. After first having scouted ahead, making sure I wouldn't be putting my camera at risk, because I can handle breaking my leg, but I can't handle breaking my camera. FUBAR, I know. Amy had to do it all a bit slower, which was good, because that put my nerves at ease a bit. We both had an amazing time going through there, and you have to check out the photos. We had to wade through water quite a bit, or swim, it varied. Anyway, I could of spend a week in the national park I think, longer if I had more gear and people with some more experience than me when it comes to canyoning. The place was surreal, and quite something. Later on, we made our way to Broome, which took two days, and stopping off in Port Hedland, which in my opinion is a dump. It's a mining town, and definitely booming, but it doesn't look like it at all. If you were to compare it with say Tom Price, another mining town, but smaller, Port Hedland look like the projects you see in American gangster movies, like hardcore ghettos.
We left Broome today, with a heavy heart, because Broome is one laid back place man, and a somewhere I could imagine settling down for a while. We checked out the worlds oldest open air cinema and watched "Bran Nue Dae." A locally shot movie, which was pretty entertaining and worth the money. It was sort of like a musical, actually, it probably would be classified as one. Not going to say what it's about, but check it out. I guess I liked it because it was so simple, and had some famous actors in there too. Well, famous-ish. You would recognise them from other movies you've seen before. The day we left, we went to the local market, which was well, by hippies, and for well...whomever. Not all of it was hippy based, but easily the majority of it. It was awesome.
Now we're heading up to Darwin, and that's probably when you'll be reading this, when I get there. Hopefully I'll of had uploaded some photos for you guys too, because I have a lot now. Like...heaps. So many photos I had to buy another external hard drive. But that's partly due to the other media I've been collecting along the way.
UPDATED:
In Darwin now, and it is hot and pretty scary to sleep in my car. If I'm not worried about the ranger waking me up, then I'm worried about not waking up at all since it's border line like sleeping in a sauna that has just be turned off. I'm drinking probably the minimum of liquids I need to be doing, so I'm trying to get better at that. And I'm looking for a job now as well.
So here is the current plan: Work for two months, then the three weeks in October drive up to Cairns and down the East Coast to Bellingen, celebrate my birthday there, go to the Blue Mountains out side of Sydney and do some canyoning. And here is the tricky bit, what afterwards? A part of me says go to Canada and spend a season on the ski slopes, become a good snow boarder, and then in the summer just play paintball and do some mountain biking. But then I think about doing the nursing. And then I think about doing a Krav Maga course in Thailand....too many ideas.
