El Questro by Isabella Tree

It would be, wouldn’t it? The first thing we saw after stepping out of the Toyota Landcruiser at El Questro, a million acre wilderness park in the beautiful Kimberley Range of Western Australia, was a crocodile. The children gazed at it from our vantage point above the river with eyes the size of dinner plates. As the croc lay there log-like in the water, glowing in the rays of the evening sun, its tail occasionally ruddering it back into prime waiting-for-dinner position, I could feel another of those awkward parental moments coming on.

"You said we wouldn’t see any crocodiles”, wailed my seven-year-old daughter Nancy in her I’m-never-going-to-believe-anything-you-say-again voice. Prizing her away from my legs, I tried to defend myself. "I said we probably wouldn’t see any”.

Truth is, after one too many Roald Dahl bedtime stories the idea of seeing a crocodile in the flesh – so to speak – had become the stuff of nightmares. Crocs were right up there with wolves, trolls, Night Riders and Fluffy the three-headed dog.

No amount of distraction – squadrons of cockatoos squabbling over their roosts in the paper-bark trees; fruit bats; a fingernail moon; an orchestra of frogs; the ink-black, refreshingly neon-less sky glittering with new constellations (the Saucepan, the Snake, the Southern Cross) – none of this could divert them from the thought of that menacing dinosaur lying in wait in the river.

I began to think we’d made a terrible mistake: that taking our children into the Australian outback was like asking Naomi Campbell to walk on the moon. Not that I considered our children were particularly unintrepid. They were just, well, British. The most dangerous creature they’d ever encountered before was a bull in a distant field; the most challenging terrain, an uneven pavement.

Not unexpectedly, our first venture - a mile hike up Emma Gorge, one of El Questro’s most dramatic of all its spectacular geological landmarks - was greeted with near mutiny. We were guided by Celia and Will Burrell, El Questro’s glamorous young owners, and their four year old daughter, Coco. Their Aussie friends, Serena and Steve Mitchell, had come along too, with four year old Jim-Jim, and two year old Jock in a back-pack.

They all looked remarkably cool and composed, like models from an RM Williams catalogue. We looked limp and pallid and shambolic by comparison. "My legs feel wobbly”, moaned Ned, our five-year-old, as we launched ourselves up a riverbed across an anarchy of rocks. If this was Survivor, I thought, we’d be voted off en bloc.

But, not for the first time, I’d underestimated the children’s resilience and adaptability; and their infrangible curiosity. Before long, they were following Coco into nooks and crannies and secret caves, looking for insects and Kimberley diamonds, dipping their hats into the stream, daubing their faces with clay. "This is like Indiana Jones”, said Ned, thrilled, pushing his way ahead of me through the undergrowth.

At the end of the gorge a spectacular fifty foot waterfall thundered into an icy, crystal clear rock-pool. The children shot in like missiles, the cliffs around echoing with squeals and splashes and Crocodile Dundee-style ‘coo-eees’.

When another hike was suggested the following day, this time up Amalia Gorge, the children were first off the blocks. Then there was El Questro Gorge, almost the most stunning of the three; cool and mysterious and with rock-pools deeply shaded by pandanus and ferns. And yet more swimming, this time in beautiful thermal Zebedee Springs, hidden in a grove of Livistonia palms. And then evening walks around the boabs looking for wallabies, amidst the liquid calls of currawongs and mocking kookaburras.

By the time we returned to the Chamberlain River for a spot of barramundi fishing, crocodiles had long ceased to be Public Enemy Number One. Nancy, recognising an expert when she saw one, made a bee-line for Will Burrell’s boat and sure enough, barely ten minutes after chugging off between the awesome 200ft cliffs of Chamberlain Gorge, there were shouts of triumph, and then more, and then more.... "I caught three barra”, beamed Nancy, reborn, when we finally landed to take a look at some of Australia’s oldest aboriginal rock art, "and a catty.”

"That’s a catfish”, she added for my benefit.

I only registered how totally tropo our children had gone in the matter of a week when Will and Celia took us down to the banks of the Pentecost for a cook-up. The rising moon was throwing shadows from the ghost gums across the river. Somewhere in the distance a Barking Owl was yowling like a dingo. From the camp-fire wafted smells of fried barramundi and fresh damper; while Ned, hot-foot from the Swing Arm Bar down at the Station Township and quite the little bar fly, was handing round tinnies from the eskie.

"Let’s go for a swim”, Nancy suggested.
"You can’t go in there”, I protested.
"Why?” she said.
"What about the..er...crocodiles?” I ventured hesitantly.
"Don’t be silly, Mummy. They’re in the Chamberlain not the Pentecost. Look, if you’re worried”, and she shined a torch over the water, "look for eyes. Red ones are salties and yellow ones are freshies. Freshies won’t hurt you – unless you go near their nest. And there won’t be salties up here because of the shallows further down. They’ve got very soft bellies and they don’t like crossing rocks. See – there’s nothing here. Let’s go in.”

And with that she pulled off her Blundies, wriggled out of her stubbies and splashed off into the darkness, calling for me to ‘hurry up and stop being such a wingeing pom’.