Rugged canvas ... Kimberley Coastal Camp sits on the shores of Admiralty Gulf.
Belinda Jackson finds the fish elusive, the ancient rock art sensational and camp conditions suited to gourmet tastes.
"You'll be right at Mitchell Plateau airstrip," says an old Kimberley hand on hearing I'm flying up to the remote northern corner of Western Australia. "I hear they've upgraded the terminal."
Funny bugger. What he means is an eco-loo with a door has replaced nipping behind a tree, and someone's strung some green shade netting above a wooden log. Aaah, they've redecorated the departures lounge.
There's nothing else at this isolated plateau. Just two runways carved out of the bush, where light aircraft pull in from Broome and Kununurra, and helicopters take sightseers for a spin over the roaring Mitchell Falls or out to one of the remote tourism camps.
Good things don't come easily. So the Kimberley Coastal Camp (KCC for short) better be very good indeed. It has been a long trip crossing the continent from Melbourne in the south-east via Darwin and Kununurra to the Kimberley in the north-west, in three planes that have gotten progressively smaller on each leg. The last one, a little six-seat Cessna, has disappeared from sight and there's not another soul about. Just the crick of cicadas, the wind in the waist-high grass and the sound of my pale skin burning.
Soon, there should be a helicopter turning up for the last transfer to KCC. After 15 minutes of fanciful daydreams about being found in a coma, lipstick freshly applied as I lie clutching my empty orange juice carton to my breast, I hear a new noise. Hallelujah, salvation! It's a large charter plane from the south, which pulls up to deposit the camp's other visitors.
KCC lures all types, from keen artists to businesspeople seeking solitude, nature-loving couples and, in this case, seven hung-over builders from NSW. The party, it appears, has arrived.
Within moments, a large chopper has dropped from the sky. Instinctively, we all crouch and start talking about napalm and tours of dooty.
KCC is just 20 minutes by chopper from Mitchell Plateau and we cross a narrow harbour to get there, the perfect aquamarine water marred only by the dark shadows of notoriously bad-tempered saltwater crocodiles. They don't appear to be moving, just floating along the current, legs akimbo. In every paradise, there is a serpent. These just happen to be particularly large, bitey serpents.
"There's bigger in the Territory," says the owner of the KCC, Rocky Terry. Consolation, indeed.
The camp comprises just a handful of little sleeping gazebos, enough for 12 guests, and the large communal wall-less shed called ... the Shed. This is "spade is a spade" territory: no air-con, mobile phone reception or even windows, prompting recent guest and Lonely Planet co-founder Tony Wheeler to rave about its charms. KCC is run by Rocky and the elegant Bella, who came to cook and fell in love with everything, including Rocky.
KCC opens during the dry season. In the wet, the couple and their staff - usually a handful of fishing guides and helpers in the kitchen - leave the 40-plus-degree temperatures and knock-out humidity for the delights of pavement cafes, design shops and movies. That's not to say they go without during the dry. There are fresh herbs in the garden, the sky is the bathroom roof and there's internet for the patient. Bella's got an ear for chilled music, which is always playing in the Shed, and her designer's eye is the last word in coastal chic.
Rocky's one of those guys who seems to be able to do it all: fix a diesel engine, dig a pool, find water and haul barramundi. Oh yeah, the man can haul barra.
"Come on then, it's Barra Sunday!" he yells to the seven builders early the next morning. We fill our esky with water, ice, beer and slabs of hot, fresh focaccia from Bella's kitchen, then step into the dinghy that'll take us the few metres to the boat. Anywhere else in the world, you'd just wade out but there's a croc nosing about the bay as we load up the boats - in his haste, Matty drops his thongs overboard and no one's going after them till the fishing guide, Allan, salvages them safely with a long rod.
So here we are, sitting in the remote Admiralty Gulf, at the very top of Australia, doing fish psychology. The lesson? To get the fish, you gotta think like a fish. But despite Rocky's crash course in psychology, the barra aren't playing and the boys aren't pulling. It's time to shift personas from Professor Rocky to Personal Trainer Rocky.
"C'mon!" he yells, blowing my theory about loud voices spooking fish. "They're there waiting to be caught! Work the banks! Work the banks!"
The boys are casting like demons and I catch a nice log but Rocky goes easy on me.
"If you're not getting snagged, you're not fishing," he says kindly, as I'm untangled once again and cast along the mudline. He leaps about the boat energetically, changing lures and unsnagging lines in a freckled flash of shorts, grey beard and strawberry blonde ponytail, eyes always on the water.
He's been sailing these waters for nearly 20 years and knows the name of every little bend, which he should, considering he named half of them: Mackerel Point, Rail Creek and the romantic Land of Po, a guest's contribution upon reading the back of a Frangelico bottle.
At one point, we just drift downstream, mesmerised by the primordial landscape. We round a bend and there, on a long, sunny rock, lies a croc, its cavernous maw wide open. "It's a cooling mechanism," Rocky says of the dental display. "Sort of like dogs panting."
We fall back into camp about lunchtime with a modest swag of barra and diamond-scale mullet and, after a meal of cold roasted chicken with preserved oranges, garden salad with pine nuts, roasted capsicums and sensational aioli, the guys disappear again to chase mud crabs. Me? I'm going to explore the camp's alter ego: as home to what is reportedly some of world's the best ancient art.
But first, a cool dip in the small pool and a cruise through the Shed, which is furnished with comfortable wicker chairs, old kerosene lamps, a turtle's shell and driftwood swirls. The floor underfoot is crushed shells, upon which delicate little hermit crabs scamper merrily.
Bella finishes in the kitchen, we fill bottles with fresh rainwater, grab our hats and head off into the bush. As we walk down a rough track, she chats about settling down in a region where there is only one person for every seven square kilometres. "I didn't know whether I should start wearing an Akubra," says the one-time city girl, who has instead adopted a uniform of gorgeous sarongs and singlets.
After about half an hour's walk, she ducks under a large rock overhang and I can hear her voice. "Hello, it's us! We've come to visit!"
But she's not talking to me. She's talking to the spirits in the living cave. "Look," she says, turning to me. "Isn't she beautiful?"
The low overhang above us is decorated with spirals and circles. Hundreds of them. And in an ante-chamber, we come face to face with an intimidating spirit that stares at us from wide, empty eyes. There's never a mouth: gods don't need to eat.
This is Wandjina art, a "recent" style dating back the past 1000 years. I've a healthy dose of scepticism but the cave pulses with a powerful force that sets my skin crawling and, we later learn, distorts all the photographs we take: flipping them back to front or revealing details unseen at the time, like a mischievous spirit has breathed into the camera.
And despite having permission from local Aboriginal groups to enter, and our friendly overtures to the female spirit, she's all but shoving us out the door.
The next afternoon, Rocky and I explore other Aboriginal art near the camp - this time it's Gwion Gwion art, also known as Bradshaw Art after the European pastoralist who became obsessed with these ancient religious paintings.
The most stunning is a gallery of Sash Bradshaws far out on a lonely headland that we boat to, then climb up the rocks to be faced with a circle of men in ceremonial dress, rendered in plant dyes and blood, high up on the rock faces.
"These are anthropological sensations," raves Rocky, who is as passionate about the art as he is about his fishing.
"If they were down south, they'd be mobbed every day!" Here, a handful of people see the stylised figures each year.
The pulse is older and more benevolent here, and we relish the magnificent views over the baby-blue Timor Sea. The elongated figures are painted in ceremonial dance: never any aggression, no weapons on display. During this time, Rocky opines, the food was easy to come by and the climate kind. Paintings of war and hunting come later, according to the self-taught Aboriginal art chronicler, Grahame Walsh, who visited here many times.
The art is so old, it's melded into the rock, so carbon dating is impossible, but experts say it could have been painted up to 40,000 years ago - making it a contemporary of such famous finds as France's Chauvet cave paintings.
That night, thanks to the hunters' skills, we dine on chilli crab and barbecued barramundi with wildly creative salads, freshly baked bread and a cheeky chilled white on the side. We talk about the massive sea eagles we saw fishing, the dingo that pokes its nose around the camp occasionally and the dugongs who mooch the warm waters by the camp. We discuss the old Aboriginal reserves nearby, tribal law and that art high on the headland. "It's so remote, you'd have needed instructions to find that site," Rocky says, "so I think this art was intended for the initiated, for the privileged few."
Lucky Rocky and Bella. Here on this lonely edge of the continent, they live among a wealth of beauty, nature and abundance. And they let us visit. We, in fact, are now the privileged few.
Belinda Jackson was a guest of Kimberley Coastal Camp and Outback Encounter.
TRIP NOTES
GETTING THERE
Virgin Blue flies from Sydney to Broome via Perth daily, twice daily after March 28, and has several flights a day from Sydney to Darwin. See virginblue.com.au.
Qantas flies from Sydney to Broome via Perth daily, with direct flights from Sydney to Broome from April-September. See qantas.com.au.
- Kimberley Coastal Camp can organise charter flights from Broome, Kununurra, or Mitchell Plateau airstrip, then a boat or helicopter ride to camp.
STAYING THERE
- Costs from $2290 a person for three days. Includes transfers from Mitchell Plateau, all meals and drinks (excluding alcohol), fully guided fishing, boat cruises and art walks.
- KCC is open during the Kimberley's dry season, April to mid-September.
- Bring as little as possible: the helicopter transfer imposes a 10-kilogram limit a person. Leave your pearls and evening gowns behind and replace with plenty of sunscreen and insect repellent.
FURTHER INFORMATION
-Kimberley Coastal Camp, phone 0417 902 006, see kimberleycoastalcamp.com.au.
- Outback Encounter, phone (08) 8354 4405, see outbackencounter.com.
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