Kununurra II

Vas and I went out for drinks at the Pump House with a couple of his buddies from work Sunday night. It was nice, except for the odd mosquitoe.

We sat outside and watched kids feed the cat fish in the water below us and the Black Flying Foxes flitting about in the twilight over our heads. There are Little Red Flying Foxes as well, but I’m not sure I have seen one, or could tell the difference if I did.

I first saw flying foxes in Cairns and so knew what they were when Vas and I saw them hanging in the trees on a bike ride by the golf course the other day. It was nice to see them in flight: playing and jabbering out over the water on Sunday.

They love the pollen and nectar from the eucalyptus and turpentine trees: lots of those around here. And, if they do run out, these big fruit bats can fill up at the mango orchards on the other side of town, where I found the pawpaw the other day.

Lake Kununurra, where the Pump House sits, is a part of the Orde River Irrigation System. Vas left for Kolumbaru on a Cessna this morning, so I decided to take a drive to Lake Argyle, the big lake part of the system.

It’s actually quite a drive to the big dam there: 25 K along the Victoria highway, and then another 35 on a smaller, but paved road.

Other than a busy campground about a kilometer from the water, the lake is relatively quiet. I saw a docked houseboat and floatplane, but that was about all.

The diversion dam that I crossed on my way to Wangkatjungka was built in 1963, and is when and where Kununurra sprang up. That dam paved the way for tropical agriculture, diamond mining (Argyle diamonds are pink!), and tourism.

But this bigger dam, completed south of the city in 1971, is responsible for the creation of a 1000 square kilometers of lake. And while I read that the plan was to grow rice, that obviously didn’t work. Magpie Geese apparently loved the tiny little shoots: hence my blog about Mango trees and the Sandalwood!

Today Kununurra really is a man-made oasis in the desert.

Besides the flying foxes and the Magpie Geese there are Green Pygmy Geese, and Pacific Black and Pink Eared Ducks. There are a lot of smaller birds too, and of course the parrots and cockatoos. The water rats around the Pump house are now called Rakali: it’s politically correct.

As well as the Boab and Indian Sandalwood, there are Broad Leaved Paperback trees, which are native to this area, and a wide varieties of crazy, Dr. Suessarian 'truffula' type trees and wild, prickly grasses.

There are around 800 varieties of Eucalyptus trees around the world and here you will find the Nauclea Orientalis, Sesbonia Formosa and Laphostenon, to name a few.

Sheesh.. you’d think the way they abbreviate everything else they could come up with names like Fir or Pine! I like 'Turpentine' though. You can smell it just by saying the word out loud!

I figure it may also interest Gabriel to know that besides the cane toads and crocs, there are 26 species of fish in these waters: Barramundi, Southern Saratoga, Archer Fish, Sleepy Cod, Cat Fish, to name a few!

Vas will be back Wednesday.

FYI