Barmaid: Are you staying in the motel?

Me: No, we’re in the caravan park.

Barmaid:  Ok, I need to breathalyse you.

Me: What?

Barmaid: I need to breathalyse you?

Me: Why? I have just arrived.

Barmaid: It’s to make sure you don’t arrive already drunk. It’s the rules. If you are both drinking I need to breathalyse you both. 

Me: What?

Barmaid: Welcome to the Kimberley.

We are in Fitzroy Crossing, about 400kms east of Broome. Stopping for fuel we find a sad state of affairs – a puncture in one of the caravan tyres. Luckily there is a repair business (there’s not much else in Fitzroy Crossing and generally travellers prefer to keep driving), but we end up staying the night. The “safest” place is the River Lodge and Campground, though there have been robberies and assaults.

I take a photo of the sign that instructs one drink per person. To get another drink bring back your glass/can/stubby.   I’ve never seen a sign like this before, I say. The local woman next to me smiles and says: Welcome to the Kimberley.

The liquor licensing law in the Kimberley is the most stark example of shutting the door after the horse has won the Melbourne Cup, the Grand National and the Kentucky Derby. The unwritten social laws suggest we may be in the U.S. South in the 50s, or South Africa during apartheid: everyone out on the verandah is local Aboriginal, everyone in the bar and eating in the restaurant is white.

In my blog on September 2018 I write about the area we are travelling, so I won’t repeat myself – follow that link for some of the interesting places we visit there.

Travelling east from Fitzroy Crossing is Halls Creek, or as people say Hell’s Crack. In 2018 I write: Halls Creek is fascinating in its nothingness – and that it’s the only town for 600kms.  As with all these small settlements in the middle of nowhere it’s a sad place. There are few shops, any there have shutters or wire gates protecting them from break-ins after hours, there’s usually two or three big petrol stations, a caravan park/camp ground or two, and a reasonably large supermarket to service travellers and anyone living within several hundred kilometres. And nothing has changed.

We know New Zealand is far from perfect in race relations but travelling through this area really makes you think about the decimation of a race and culture through colonisation: land grabbing, rape, murder, taking children from their families, lack of social and political recognition, and basic everyday prejudice. Intergenerational problems will take many generations to address.

Especially when, once again, I’m driven from the camp fire when some ignorant pig asks if its ok to tell Aborigine jokes. There’s nothing funny about what this country has done and continues to do to Aboriginal people – mate.

I promise the East Kimberley write up will be more uplifting. Thanks for reading.