Day 36, August 6, 2009, Kununurra

We had contact with Dan, who kindly took off work to show us the way out to his house.

He's about 30 km out of Kununurra, at the edge of one of the plantations he oversees. The house has everything, including inground sprinklers. It's funny seeing sprinklers running in arid places, but with the Ord scheme, there's plenty of water around. It'd be nice to see some in Gippsland on our return, but I'm told that's unlikely.

Dan's house is about 18 squares, roofed and clad with Colourbond. He kindly offered his bedroom or the spare room with the single bed, but Pam and I are content with the caravan. Cooking is a kitchen is nice though.

Dan's job is as a senior manager of a company that grows sandalwood. I was surprised that there would be a large market for wooden sandals, but it turns out that the trees are grown for the oil which is worth a large fortune. It's chief use in making perfume. The tree's a parasite (like holly?) and has to be grown with other trees that it feeds off. It's tempermental and difficult to grow particularly in the soil around Kununarra. http://www.sandalwood.org.au/ has some interesting information about the stuff. (It must be important, to have its own web site.)

I really like the town of Kununurra. It's very relaxed and friendly. We had a nice shop at Woolies, Pam bought some sandals (rubber and velcro, not wooden) and we visited a gem shop to look, not buy.

Kununurra's at the eastern edge of the Kimberly Ranges and has, at various time and places, had iron, lead, zinc, gold, nickel and diamond mines. I'm pretty sure it's the only place where pink diamonds are found. We saw a nice ~1 carret pink diamond for $A125,000. That's more than the value of our house and all the cars we've ever owned, put together.

We finished the shopping jaunt with a coffee in a nice bookshop.

I've forgotten to mention one of the best things about the area west of Katherine:

Boab trees. As the photo shows, they're the ones with the bulbous trunks and twisted branches. While we were driving along and pointing them out to Pam every few minutes, she commented that they all seemed dead. They had no leaves.

"Maybe they're deciduous." I ventured. "There are no deciduous trees in Australia. They're dead." Pam pronounced with a librarian's authority.

Dan (who's a forester for those who don't know him) told us that, yes, they are deciduous.

During the next long drive I got to enjoy several choruses of Pam singing the "You were right and I was wrong " song. This trip has made me appreciate the simple pleasures of life.