Our Day With Brian

Today we booked a full day tour with Brian, a local Bardi from the Djarindjin community, and aboriginal guide, and his gorgeous dog Ginger, in the hope to learn a little about the area and local communities, as well as some aboriginal culture and legends. Our day started with a rather hairy drive to Hunter's Creek, where Brian's Great Grandfather, who it turns out was an Englishman, settled and began making boats. He used to invade Aboriginal villages, steal the men and sell them to Pearl Luggers as slaves, so a rather nice man! He then met an Aboriginal woman, and changed his ways! Hunter's Creek used to be accessible to Cape Leveque, but there are sacred burial grounds around the creek so they closed it off from tourists. We then travelled to the mangroves and went looking for mud crabs. This was hard work as firstly the mangroves were full of mozzies! Secondly it was very hard work getting through the thick mangrove roots! It was really hot in there!

Brian found the crab holes and both Troy and Ronan attempted unsuccessfully to pull out a mud crab using the long metal hook Brian had to get them out. He even had trouble, so it is obviously hard work! 

But we ended up with three big crabs, enough for a feast, and we finally made our way back out of the mangroves, Stella and I minus half a litre of blood that the mozzies had sucked out of us!!  We then travelled a little further on to the edge of the Dampier Peninsula, and from this point we could see some of the Buccaneer Archipelago Islands, which also belong to the Bardi people. William Dampier had mentioned seeing these people here in his memoirs, giving the Bardi people proof of existence in the region and thus they were granted ownership of the land.  While here we watched our own version of the horizontal falls as the tide was going out really quickly, creating great currents of water running between the main land and a nearby island.  

We continued on our way to a great little cove where we lit a fire to cook the crabs.

While the fire was settling in we went for a swim. The water was divine! 

When we got back, Brian put the crabs over the hot coals and we watched them slowly change to orange/red in colour, while chatting with Brian about pretty much everything! 

When the crabs were ready, Brian expertly cut them open and we had a delicious feast!! Once we were finished, we headed back to the water for a spot of spear fishing, much to Troy and Ronan's delight! Stella and I had a bit of a snorkel before settling in the shallows with Ginger. Troy came back with a fish on his spear, although he may have had a bit of help from Brian and his spear gun! 

Once we had dried off we then travelled back via a billabong. On the way here Brian stopped to show us some trees and plants that had edible berries and this cute bird looking plant that was full of nectar that you could drink. The billabong belonged to his family and only had water during the wet season.

 We drove back to Hunter's Creek that was now full of water at high tide, and took a group photo, true Contiki style! 

We then said our goodbyes and tiredly made our way back to our cabin. Troy got some foil from the chef at the restaurant and cooked up the fish. It was pretty good!