A Kimberley escape

With all the busyness of life and madness of rushing from one thing to another, I hankered  to breathe clean air and be part of the soul of our incredible Australian island.  This is a story of a different picnic, one which whisked me away from the noise and bustle of other people and dropped me, light as a feather, into another world. I was in the Kimberley , in the far north west of Western Australia, a place where diamonds are found, like the other Kimberley in South Africa. Here they find pink diamonds, ones worn by J Lo and the lady with the violet eyes – Liz Taylor. But I digress, I didn’t end up with a pink diamond, but something far better. I came away from this wild nature experience feeling at one with myself again, with a knowledge that this earth and landscape is worth protecting and that we are so very lucky to live in this free country of endless outback.

We lifted off from the helipad at Lake Argyle and after the initial thrill of feeling like a bird, I took in the incredible vastness of Lake Argyle, a lake held back by a little wall – well that’s what it looks like from the air in comparison to this sea it protects with its very clever engineering. Flying over all the islands, you could expect to see holiday homes, resorts and big Greek yachts, but luckily it is untouched. There was a crocodile sunbaking on the edge of one island , but he didn’t like the helicopter and flicked his saurine tail at us and glided into his fresh water  sanctuary. Flocks of cormorants and other water birds spotted the edges of the islands like freckles on a sun kissed face.

We left the water’s edge to explore the rugged mountains holding back the water and once over land I could feel our relevance more in relation to the earth’s surface. I hadn’t expected to have so much to see and to feel so close. This is the beauty of a helicopter, it’s not too fast and you can get close to the land.

After landing next to a clear tumbling stream and the rotor blades drew to a halt, the noise of the wilderness took over; trickling water, insects rubbing their wings together and birdlife in their natural element. What an escape, what a beautiful place. It was a perfect day.