Day 61 | Jimba Jimba Station: somewhere out on the Carnarvon Mullewa Road

102 km | zzOz total: 3,210 km

I’d been following those GJ signs for days and suddenly I arrived: Gascoyne Junction.

This had been etched somewhere on my memory as having been “wiped out” in last year’s pre-Christmas, later forgotten by the Queensland, floods. The Gascoyne is the longest river in WA, occasionally flowing, sometimes just as series of waterholes, draining an area between Meekatharra and Newman, ie, 780 km from the mouth, and then it all funnels past GJ.

The “town” which is only slightly larger than Murchison, but also has it’s own shire, not to be competitive, has maybe 20 houses max, no shop and no mobile phone coverage, sits on a ridge just above the river, you could see deposited silt, bowled trees, scattered debris close by.

The pub, more than 100 years old, had been swept downstream much to the locals’ consternation.

I’d met a few road workers, not locals, repairing the flood damaged roads, graders, dump trucks etc still dealing with creeks and road edges 8 months on.

I sat in the local information shelter, almost new but with some strange ventilation holes ripped in the roof, at a picnic table, finding the lack of an internet connection, and found myself enduring a point of view from a stray traveller who pulled up. His argument, an assertion actually, unsupported by any evidence: mechanised transportation is far superior.

Wish I’d known that before embarking on my travels.

I don’t argue, I’m an agreeable type now, just let him ramble on until he exhausted himself.

Later I walked on down to the Gascoyne, a small flow still running over the causeway. Below was a mass of small black fish, the enthusiastic among them attempting to swim up the flowing water, maybe quarter to half an inch deep. They’d get most of the way but would invariably be defeated by the last, steeper, half yard. I watched maybe hundreds attempt the climb, sometime swimming right out of the water before wriggling back to the pool below.

Maybe they realise their stretch of river will dry out all too soon, but the fish were too small, 50 mm, to get up the 800 mm rise, despite enormous effort.

Futile effort.

Patching flood prone roads. Riding bikes. Slithering fish.

The strange aspect is that none of us quite realise how futile our efforts are: just an inherent instinct to expend our energy in a way that makes sense, if only to us.