tier gorge was a little crocodile free river crushed between two boulderous mountains in the middle of no-where. the water was fresh and full of fish, and provided the perfect place to sleep and have a morning splash!
we had our usual glorious breakfast while watching the sunrise, then indulged in some affectionate behaviour with the local baobabs.
does anyone remember the film 'cocoon'? an american film in which a bunch of old people find a swimming pool filled with alien cocoons and life force that rejuvenates them and reverses the aging process? our next destination - zebedee hot springs - evoked 'cocoon', or at least the desperation of the elderly to reclaim a lost youth. a short walk through palm trees and swampy mudflats led to a luke-warm river with rockpools cram-packed with the elderly. the squeals of delight and the occasional excited geriatric face-planting in the mud on losing his footing didn't seem to be appropriate for what was, after all, just a luke-warm stream. certainly not in the context of the other gorges that dotted the surroundings. we lasted about 5 minutes.
one good thing did happen there, though: we met the gays. have you ever felt like you're from another planet? or at least that the planet you come from has somehow been swapped for another one while you've been sleeping? apart from a weird old fag that we had met on the beach in broome, for our entire voyage up to that point we had been the only male-male couple among the hundreds of people that we had passed, and certainly the only men with any dress sense. i'm sure there were gays out there somewhere - the outback is after all the world's biggest closet - but there was no-one around who was just normal. not only was it statistically improbable, but it got to the stage where even i started feeling a bit weird holding g's hand in public as we passed through areas of beauty, as if the internalised homophobia of my childhood was trying to reanimate itself after a good decade or so of having flatlined. at one stage i even shocked myself by pushing g away as he tried to cuddle me in public, arguing that i didn't want to cause an unnecessary scene. as if loving somebody is anyone else's business. turning up at zebedee springs, we finally met our first wholesome, true-blue, out and proud, card-carrying cocksuckers, and it was a revelation. like i said, we were only there for 5 minutes, so the young couple from brisbane that we met there took this photo of us and we did the same for them and pretty much left, but the grins on all four of our faces were those of strangers meeting on an alien planet, or at least those of men feasting after a prolonged fast. i don't know about the old people in the rockpools upstream, but i was rejuvenated, and it gave me back the fuck-off attitude that i hold so dear to my heart.
g drove jasper up a mammoth sandy mountain marked 'experienced 4wd only' and we took in the view from saddleback ridge. here's a shot of my superhero after he conquered the mountain!
on the way back down, g's hausfrau impulses got the better of him during a river crossing, and despite the fact that the river was not crocodile-safe and that we had hundreds of kilometres of dusty road ahead of us, g was unable to stop himself from giving jasper 'a quick clean'.
and eventually turned up at amalia gorge - our last stop before leaving el questro disneyland wilderness area. unlike el questro gorge, amalia gorge was more open, with the sun beating down at all times and wide open, hot flat boulders to traverse on the way up. like el questro gorge, however, the action was half-way down, where there was a glorious plunge pool, as the waterfall and pool at the top were so cold that it took our breath away.
g even met his first goanna close up!
as for myself, perched on this rock for a photo, i decided that my clothes were hideously dirty, and decided to leap into the waters shortly afterwards to clean myself up. a tribe of geriatrics were passing at the time and wouldn't even say hello. they seemed unimpressed by fun, so i gave them something even funner to be unimpressed about.
we began our speed-demoning down the savannah way (great northern highway) towards the turnoff to purnululu national park. we had thought that the gerries were bad on the gibb river road, but once we got onto gravel, the grey brigade were out in force and they were fierce! we stopped for couscous at a rest-stop, and found something that we would later find to be typical of all rest stops: ancient couples all parked in their own little corners of the rest area, usually there by 1pm to secure a spot, with their solar panels and satellite dishes pointing to the heavens, mosquito nets and portable showers strung from trees and massive, massive caravans containing everything that you could possibly need to ensure that your camping holiday is as far removed from camping as it can be. while we were there, a few other gerries turned up, and they each did the same thing: parked their vehicles, then took a few steps out to look around and make sure they had the biggest and best satellite dish/solar panel/caravan, before confirming that this was the case, puffing their chests out, and getting on with the business of setting up their TV so they wouldn't miss that evening's episode of 'who wants to be a millionaire'. we tried to interact but no-one said hello - no-one even looked out way. it was sickening. like a latter-day jesus christ, i decided that i needed to save these people by tipping them out of their rut. what better way than to shake things up with a bit of FKK?
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