Australia with AAT Kings

A trip my husband, John, and I made to Australia was different from most tours as we spent most of our time in the western part of the country. Our one-month trip was planned by AAT Kings (Head Office, Level 4, 476 St. Kilda Road, Melbourne, Victoria, 3004, Australia; visit www.aatkings.com. . . with a U.S. office at 801 East Katella Ave., 3rd Floor, Anaheim, CA 92805; phone 800/353-4525). We booked the trip on their website.

The tour price of $5,043 each included air from San Francisco plus a Sydney-Darwin flight and four days and three nights on the Indian Pacific train.

We flew to Sydney on Aug. 22, ’04, and after spending the night flew to Darwin, where we started our tour. We headed out for Katherine, a very beautiful area where we took a boat ride and hike at Katherine Gorge.

The next day we crossed over into Western Australia and on to El Questro and the Emma Gorge Resort, located on an Outback cattle ranch of over one million acres. We had safari-style tents that were quite comfortable, and there was a lovely swimming pool. The meals were superb and the stargazing, spectacular. The resort is all on dirt roads, and we saw several gorges, waterfalls and some Aboriginal rock art.

One day we had an Aborigine guide who took us to a billibong (pond) and pointed out the birds and wildlife. The guide also accompanied us to Wyndham, where we went to a park to see large copper statues of Aborigines.

We spent an exciting day flying over the Bungles Bungles in Purnululu National Park. These are unique rock formations, and it was truly a thrilling flight. We took a really nice boat trip down the Ord River, where we saw many crocodiles, birds and lots of other interesting fauna and flora.

There were many things to see in Kununurra, including the Argyle diamond mine, the largest diamond mine in the world. We took an extensive tour of it and the village where the workers live. Most of the diamonds are commercial grade, but they do find the famous pink diamonds there.

We traveled all the next day without seeing another town or roadhouse until our destination at Fitzroy Crossing (usually, we stopped for breaks at roadhouses, spaced about four hours apart). We stopped twice along the way, for morning tea and for a picnic lunch, and that was fun.

Near Fitzroy Crossing we took a cruise on the Fitzroy River through Geikie Gorge. It was quite different from our other river crossings and we saw lots of crocodiles.

We had a long day of traveling to Broome, on the Indian Ocean, where we stayed at the absolutely fabulous Cable Beach Club Resort. Broome is the center of the pearling industry, and we found the area quite interesting. The water was warm and there weren’t any sharks. So many places are not suitable for swimming because of the sharks. Another beach we enjoyed was Eighty Mile Beach.

We took a tour at Tom Price of the Hamersley Basin iron ore mine — enormous and fascinating. A lot of the ore from this enormous mine goes to Japan and is shipped from Exmouth. Tom Price is a company town, but it is also the heart of Karaijini country. We spent a day exploring Karaijini National Park, seeing gorges and waterfalls; it was during the spring and lots of wildflowers were in bloom. We visited many national parks on this trip and found them well maintained, with nice visitor centers.

Heading back to the Indian Ocean and Coral Bay, we enjoyed a subsea boat ride, seeing Ningaloo Reef. Some say this is as good as the Barrier Reef, and we did see lots of nice tropical fish. We felt that the Barrier Reef had prettier coral.

We wound our way down the western coast and to our next stop at Monkey Mia, where our motel was right on the beach. The dolphins came right up to the beach, where we could feed them. We spent a very pleasant afternoon on a 60-foot sailboat on Shark Bay. This is the largest bay on the Indian Ocean and there was lots of wildlife to see. We also had a class there on stargazing in the Southern Hemisphere.

We consider Perth to be one of the most beautiful cities we have been in. It is on the Swan River, and Kings Park is extra special. We spent one day at Freemantle, the oldest settlement on the western coast, where many old buildings have been preserved; we toured the old jail. The new maritime museum there was most interesting.

The final leg of our journey was on the Indian Pacific, which goes clear across Australia from the Indian Ocean to the Pacific. It was a very nice train, and each roomette had its own bathroom with shower. We made four stops to take tours, and we went across the Nullarbor Plain, the longest straight stretch of tracks in the world. One of the tours was at Kalgoorlie to see the Superpit, at one time the richest gold mine in the world.

We went through the beautiful Blue Mountains before reaching Sydney for our flight home Sept. 22.

— BARBARA RAGLAND, Oroville, CA