Likely looney,mostly merry.Petunia's adventures: Birdwood Downs to Derby

Dear Porky,

We had a lovely trip along on the last section of the Gibb River Road, all bitumen and less road kill.thanks to a nice couple we found a terrific camping area appr. 15km east of Derby called Birdwood Downs, manged by a Dutch man called Hans who arrived 5 years ago as a traveller and never left. He spends his spare time in the Simpson desert to be alone for a change. He loves the feeling to have nobody close within a radius of 300km. He finds a lot of people suffocating. His comparison was: imagine Utrecht at the centre and then clear the population of Holland, Belgium, part of West Germany and Skandinavia what a terrific feeling that would be, that is the space of the Simpson desert he loves, just him, plenty of water and fuel. We stayed with him 2 days and from there we visited the Mowanjum Art and Culture Centre. To the Worrorra, Ngarinyin and Wunumbul people of the Western Kimberly, the Wandjina is the supreme spirit being, the creator of all life. These people and their ancestors have been painting Wandjina and Gyorn Gyornn figures on rock walls, in river gorges and on barkformillennia. This u inquest style of Australian Indigenous Art is now available on canvas and paper, but it was out of THEIR league even though the spirit Wandjina looked a little like me.

In Derby we went to an enormous jetty and had lunch equally enormous,otherwise not much to tell about Derby. Bottle shops open at 12pm and close at 2pm. In that time only light beer is sold. At 11:30am. A crowd of indigenous people are already waiting in front of it. In the afternoon the bot telco reopens again, this time with the real thing and presto it starts all over again. We will now continue on to Broome and see what happens there. In Derby we saw the first 20m mobile villas including satellite, spare car and boat, none of those on the Gibb River Road (we wonder why! :) ). This is it for now. Cheers Petunia