{"id":903,"date":"2016-07-26T01:44:47","date_gmt":"2016-07-26T01:44:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.adventuretours.com.au\/australia-outback-yarns\/?p=903"},"modified":"2019-03-26T13:48:43","modified_gmt":"2019-03-26T02:48:43","slug":"reflections-road-no-one-passes-wa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.adventuretours.com.au\/australia-outback-yarns\/reflections-road-no-one-passes-wa\/","title":{"rendered":"Reflections from the road: ‘No one passes through WA’"},"content":{"rendered":"

ATA trip leader Damian Thornton has been leading trips through Western Australia and the Top End for the past 4 years. On a recent overland road trip from Broome to Perth<\/a> we asked him what it was about WA that he found so special.<\/p>\n

The age<\/h3>\n

\u2018Many people don\u2019t know this but Western Australia, and especially the Pilbara and Kimberley, is one seriously old place. For a start you\u2019ve got one of, if not the<\/em>, world\u2019s oldest continuing cultures in the Australian Indigenous people. You\u2019ve got a people who survived here for 40, 60, some say 70,000 years. Going back much further than that, you\u2019ve got sedimentary layers of rock in Karijini that are millions of years old. You\u2019ve got 130 million year old dinosaur footprints long the Dampier Peninsula and in Kalbarri arthropod prints that are 420 million years old. The North Pole stromatolites, which are 3.5 billion<\/em> years old, are the oldest known organisms on earth. Older than oxygen even. And then you\u2019ve also got the zircon crystals in Jack Hills, which are the oldest found material originating on earth. They\u2019re 4.39 billion year-old.<\/p>\n

\"IMG_8588\"To put all this into perspective for my group, when I\u2019m touring I often tell them to look at the landscape. WA\u2019s<\/strong><\/a> pretty flat, right, but there are bluffs and rises \u2013 some of which are hundreds of metres high. These peaks, I explain to them, were once the region\u2019s riverbeds.<\/p>\n

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They used to be the region\u2019s low point but, over time, the rivers dried up and the elements eroded the elevated peaks and scattered them across the terrain. So what was once at the top now lies strewn about the bottom and what was once at bottom now rests at the top. The Alps and Himalayas are young compared to WA\u2019s mountain ranges. That\u2019s why they\u2019re still there.\u2019<\/p>\n

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Indigenous culture<\/h3>\n

\u2018I believe that Australia\u2019s indigenous cultures should be something that we celebrate much more than we do. Travelling through regions as harsh as the Pilbara<\/a>, it\u2019s remarkable to think not only that people were able to survive here, but that they were able to for so long. And all without altering the land. It\u2019s been calculated that 1 billion indigenous people have lived in Australia, and in all that time all those people left their environment virtually unchanged.<\/p>\n

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One of the things the indigenous people understood was that they had to look after the land if the land was to look after them. Some places in the Pilbara and Kimberley used to sustain thousands of people, yet now there are only hundreds there and everything has to be imported in. The soil has nutrients, there is water \u2013 or at least there was \u2013 we just don\u2019t understand the land well enough to live off it. When Europeans first arrived here they just didn\u2019t think there was anything worth learning and that attitude has carried on way too long\u2019.<\/p>\n

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\u2018I spend a lot of time driving so I spend a lot of time thinking and I can\u2019t help but thinking at times that the \u2018Western way\u2019 of doing things is flawed. For a start, it\u2019d be nice to know where our food comes from; to dig something out of the ground or kill the meat we eat and acknowledge that it does actually come from an animal. We grow bananas in Canarvon, transport them down to Perth, and then transport them back to Canarvon to sell on supermarket shelves. It\u2019s crazy. Meanwhile, there\u2019s an edible plant called the gubinge \u2013 billygoat plum \u2013 that grows from north-western WA to eastern Arnhem Land. It\u2019s two centimetres big and has about 2,800 milligrams of vitamin C per 100 grams. An orange has 50. We\u2019re having bigger meals with fewer nutrients. We\u2019re increasingly connected through social media but are spending less time with actual people and disconnecting from nature. We\u2019ve got all this technology, so should be working less, and instead we\u2019re working more. It just doesn\u2019t make sense.\u2019<\/p>\n

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In harshness, beauty<\/h3>\n

\u2018The thing that always strikes me about north-western WA<\/a> is that any organism you find living here \u2013 be it plant, animal or people \u2013 is just so incredibly tough. Which does kinda make sense, you know? Because to survive in any environment you need to be tougher than it and the WA environment is so harsh and unforgiving. You know, you don\u2019t get cute little possums and lush meadows out here. You get camels and crocs and buffalos and dingoes and snakes and sharks and wedge-tailed eagles. You get chasms and desert and canyons and rugged coastlines and big fat boab trees.<\/p>\n

\"IMG_8943\"\"_DSC3716\"And yet, in amid all this harshness you come across little pockets of beauty. Little blooms of wildflowers. Gorgeous little swimming holes. Pristine beaches. In harshness you can find great beauty.<\/p>\n

The size & remoteness<\/h3>\n

\u2018This sounds like an oxymoron, I know, but one of the things I love so much about WA is its proximity to remoteness. WA is so huge that practically every town is practically an outpost. The cities too. If WA<\/strong><\/a> were a country it would be the world\u2019s 10th<\/sup> largest and its least densely populated. The Kimberley alone is larger than 75% of the world\u2019s countries.\u2019<\/p>\n