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Eight days riding the 600km long Gibb River Road in Western Australia’s top end and my native wildlife count from the window of a speeding 4WD van was one wallaby, a dingo’s tail, six brolgas and a fleeing goanna. Weirdly, for a New Zealander at least, not one road-kill possum.

As for signs of human habitation on a road which takes you from Derby to Kununurra – well, coupla stores, coupla petrol pumps, otherwise nada.

Not much to show for staring out the window for nigh on six hours a day really.

But still I stared. We all did. As one old codger in a sweat-rimmed collapsing akubra put it “That’s the Gaba for you”. Gaba? “The Great Australian Bugger-all” he growled.

It’s a landscape that begs for mega-fauna but damn it, all the giant wombats and giant ‘roos are extinct. Perhaps we could install obese homo sapiens along the way I thought privately. It would be fun looking for mountains of flesh through the trees plus provide some fascinating photo stops.

I was pleased to see the long-horned cattle and Brahmins though, looking as majestic as anything bovine can and I reflected how odd it is that the Gibb River Road was originally used as a cattle transport route but now plies people in hot tin cans along its length. The trip itself is not unlike riding on one endless cattle grid.

The government has promised not to seal the road to keep out lesser comfort-seeking mortals which is just as well. The number of people desiring to shake and bake on a corrugated surface is growing all the time.

And hell it is an adventure. Suffering is involved and that’s always a must. People get heat stroke, faint and throw up. I did all three. Not as spectacularly as one person in our group however who almost literally filled her boots.

Punctures are not uncommon. Our van had a beauty. Left inside rear tyre. The very worst place. An enormous tear too which is what you get when you heave a 4WD van over a sharp stump.

Plus it rained. Even though the driver swore it never rained in the Kimberley. It was the end of ‘the wet’ which obviously hadn’t ended. It rained so much rivers swelled, roads were made impassable and we had to make an unscheduled stop at another cattle station and leave our intended camp with uneaten lasagna for 24. Crikey.

But here’s the thing. You change when nothing around you does. Much. You start seeing subtleties in the landscape. A more meditative type might call it mindfulness of vision.

Some eucalypts shimmer blue in the heat, others have bark as smooth and white as bone and the best called woolly butt has a trunk rising like an ivory hand out of a dark furry glove and bears orange fuzzy blooms. Then there are the grevilleas with their frond-like flowers, shrubby acacias and the strange jinggal trees with densely packed dark leaves looking like a cloud of black butterflies have landed.

Everyone’s favourite is the boab though. Not the prison boab at Derby where aborigines were said to have been tied up but the other fat tubular trees which dot the countryside. They’re as close to my obese megafauna as anything gets. In fact they look so human and bulbous I almost expect one to beckon me over and offer to walk me to another time and place.

And every day we hop from one glorious swimming hole to another. The water is always warm and clear and croc-free, pooled between rocks ranging in colour from apricot to ripe pawpaw. Gorges carved out of the land millennia ago offer shadow and scale in a land which looks mostly like a roller has been over it. The so-called ranges seen occasionally are just tabletops of land that haven’t yet eroded away. Such a dry, old world but so rich and I’m not talking minerals. Ancient rock art surprises us almost daily.

Some water holes come with campgrounds attached and are beginning to fill with holidaying Australians and their modified, carefully packed utes and trailers. Self-sufficiency takes on a whole new meaning on the Gibb River Road. There really is nowhere to go for extras.

What stores we do stop at have curious surprises. Here is the place to sell your September ‘95 copy of Better Homes & Gardens for anything from 50 cents to $2 or talk to the store owner about the local aborigine’s curious habit of buying something, sitting outside, then returning for something else over and over again.

At night we sleep in tents and proper beds and eat one of the two meals the camp hosts are allowed to cook all season. At some camps it’s chicken and pork, at others barramundi and beef. Starters and pud of astoundingly good quality top and tail each offering.

Night rustlings make the Australians nervous but they’re over-reacting. I’d be grateful to see a snake I tell them. Besides the sky is mysterious, star-filled and vast and I like seeing it as I stumble to the toilet at night.

On the last day we make for the famous El Questro camp. Famous because it houses an exclusive lodge, our pretend tents with ensuites, groomed grounds, a swimming pool and not far away magical hot springs cascading into little pools surrounded by palms and floating butterflies spoiled only by a sign which tells us swimming here is not permitted after midday. That’s when the lodge guests arrive. Someone suggests we pee in each pool before we leave.

Nearby is Emma Gorge where a large waterfall has filled a rock bowl of water big enough for both the lodge guests and hoi polloi to swim at the same time. It’s as breath-taking as the pictures promise, but that’s nothing compared to my thrill at seeing a lethal brown snake slither between the legs of the chap in front of me. I add that to my list of native wildlife spotted on walks which now includes water monitors, tiny frogs, freshwater crocs and lots of birds which gurgle and screech.

So the list grows and the memories stack up. There’s much more than Gaba on the Gibb River Road. The best swimming holes ever for a start. The rock art. The rollicking road. My teeth have never been the same. There’s so much I’ll never forget.

About the only thing I really have trouble remembering on a cold New Zealand winter’s day is the heat. Pity.

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