A Kimberley Experience By Kester Baines #4468

Having been invited to address the Rotary Club of Kununurra, last October I headed north from my home town of Geelong and Melbourne Airport, Tullamarine, to Darwin with Ansett. So much for my Qantas frequent flyer points! – the big Q doesn’t service Kununurra, my destination the next day. Getting there is a two-day affair as the flight Darwin-Kununurra leaves very early in the morning. Chris Henggeler, manager of Kachana Station, Flying Rotarian and member of the Rotary Club of Kununurra, had kindly offered to meet me at Kununurra and ferry me out to Kachana in his Cessna 206.
Now, a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. I had read in an aviation magazine that Air North was operating the flights to Kununurra for Ansett using Embraer Brasilias which had been in desert storage in Roswell, New Mexico, for several years. As I pondered the likelihood of several of the famous Roswell extraterrestrials having stowed away on the aircraft, I duly turned up at the Air North terminal at Darwin in plenty of time for an 0645 departure. The desk hadn’t yet opened and carried a sign that it would not do so until 30 minutes before departure time. I settled down with a book. After a while, I noticed that a number of passengers had proceeded past the desk through a doorway, so, being now a little con-cerned about the time, I followed them, and, sure enough, they were checking in. Obviously, I thought, they don’t use the main desk so early in the morning.

I stood in the queue for a few minutes, listening to the other passengers, some in military uniform and others wearing Medecins Sans Frontiers tee-shirts, chattering away in, French. It became obvious that these people were about to board the Dili Express (it was at the height of the East Timor crisis). I pushed my way through to the head of the queue to explain my plight to one of the check-in staff, as it was now very close to departure time. “Oh, no”, she said, “the Kununurra service is an Ansett flight! You have to check in with them.” I scuttled out feeling really dumb. Yes, the ticket said nothing about Air North, even though Air North does operate the service.

The Ansett people were glad to see me, if somewhat peeved that 1 was so late. It didn't help that sometime between v hen I booked the flight and the actual day, they’d changed the departure time from 0645 to 0620 but hadn’t let me know! The upshot of all that drama was that I made it onto the plane but my luggage didn’t. I had the clothes I stood up in and had the foresight to grab my shaving gear etc. out of the suitcase before it disappeared on the conveyor.

There were numerous Hercules and a C5-A Galaxy on the tarmac as we rotated into the early morning Darwin haze. After a noisy but otherwise uneventful flight we put down at the neatly manicured Kununurra Airport in the far north-east of W.A. Chris was there to meet me as promised, and we loaded the C206 Stationair (VH-EKJ) with provisions and several dozen steel star pickets.
Being more accustomed to 152’s, I was impressed by the acceleration of this outback workhorse as it ate up the runway and we lifted off into the south-west for our 35-minute flight to Kachana, some 125 km away.

The patchwork fields of the Kununurra irrigation area were left behind and the timeless Kimberley landscape soon had me reaching for the camera. Chris pointed out a patch of remnant rainforest which has shrunk by about 50% in the ten years or so that he has been flying out to Kachana.

Landing at Kachana is not for the faint-hearted. We overflew the camp and strip, and followed the valley south with the cliffs of the Durack Range glowing red in the morning light above us and seemingly just off our starboard wing. A 180 degree turn to the left put us on final approach for the short, rough, slightly up-hill strip, with no provision for a go-around once committed. I was glad Chris had done this a few hundred times before!

Chris and Jacqui Henggeler have been living out at Kachana for seven years now. The camp is in a spectacular setting – an almost oasis-like valley with crystal-clear creeks lined with paperbarks, river figs and pandanus. Ancient boab trees dot the rising scree slopes, above which jut the red sand-stone cliffs of the Durack Range and other north-south ridges. Chris and Jacqui’s three children seem very at home in this remote but inspiring environment. It was so refreshing to meet children unspoiled by television and technological overload, and who take such pleasure in the delights and discoveries of the natural world. Chris and Jacqui are doing something very special with their management of Kachana.

They are applying a philosophy called Holistic Management, a concept developed by Zimbabwean wildlife biologist and dry-land farmer and grazier Allan Savory. Much of the land degradation in the Kimberley and other : “brittle” environments has been caused by uncontrolled broad-scale cattle grazing, but Holistic Management actually uses cattle contained by solar-powered electric fencing in a way which mimics their herding behaviour as it would have been in past times of natural predator threat. This means that the cattle’s impact on an area of ground is intensive but only for a short period, followed by a recovery phase free of grazing pressure, and this results in a profound rejuvenating effect on the land.

Chris is documenting progress over the past decade and the results are very impressive. Certainly the northern and inland areas of Australia need such techniques to reverse the damage done by a century of inappropriate grazing management. Holistic Management is in fact a decision-making process applicable to any business or endeavour, not just land management. If you want to know more, go to www.holisticmanagement.org After three days of living in some of Chris’ spare clothes and shoes, helping with the cattle work, swimming in cool creek pools adorned with water lilies, enjoying tasty home-cooked meals, noble company and a few glasses of “Kachana Gold” (Jacqui’s superb home brew), it was time to head back to Kununurra. My talk at the Rotary meeting, on the subject of holistic health care and why we as a community cannot afford not to take a more natural and preventative approach to medicine and health, was well received and hopefully mo-tivated a few people to make some positive changes in their own lives. I also mentioned my dream of using my interest in aviation to make natural therapies more accessible to the people of the outback in years to come.

I left Kununurra the next morning on the Brasilia again, complete with a box of luscious mangos courtesy of Rotarian Geoff Johns and his wife Sharon, Geoff even arranged a quarantine certificate so the Ag Department people in Melbourne wouldn’t be tempted to confiscate them! Once in Darwin I was glad I was on Ansett after all as the Qantas flight was cancelled due to some damage which had occurred to their 737 on the ground at Alice Springs.

Outbound from Alice Springs, the rare sight of a rainbow over the desert capped off a brief but magnificent trip. In a contemplative mood as the Boeing sliced through the now dark South Australian sky, I reflected on the courage and dedication of Chris and Jacqui and all of the other people who live and raise families in the remote and difficult conditions of the outback. Nothing happens without first a dream.

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