Bush Tucker Man (1987–1990): Season 2, Episode 3 - Kimberley - full transcript
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---
Three fingers.
I can just fit three fingers
between the bottom of the sun
and the horizon.
That's a bit of a rough method to tell me
that I've got roughly
about 45 minutes left of daylight
before that sun sets.
That being the case,
I'd better hit the track.
Oh, one day I might even buy a watch.
I'm heading off into one of the most
rugged and remote parts of Australia -
the Kimberley region
of Western Australia.
It's an area that I keep coming back to
because of its isolation
and its pure and natural beauty.
What many people don't realise
is that the Kimberleys are bigger than
both Victoria and
Tasmania put together.
And it's mostly
uninhabited.
So as a visitor,
you've got to be able
to look after yourself.
Only two fingers to go.
That's about half an hour.
I've got a campsite down here.
I'd like to make it tonight.
But I don't know whether I will or not.
It's a fair way away.
Well, the sun won that one.
I ran out of fingers in the end.
Doesn't matter, though.
This is the place I wanted to come to.
I'll just put a swag camp up for tonight
and tomorrow morning
put up a proper camp then.
That will do.
The best time to visit this part of
the world is just after the wet season.
All the rivers and the lagoons
have all been topped up
and the bush tracks
have dried out enough
to let you get into
the heart of the country.
Of course, up here in the Kimberleys,
your poor old motor car
can only take you so far.
I find it best to put up a bit
of a base camp like that
and then walk out each day,
radiating out on a daily basis.
That way you can have a real
good look around the place.
There's no doubt about it,
a lot of places in the Kimberleys
that are absolutely beautiful,
but you gotta make the effort
to get there.
The place over there...
That's a little rock shelter.
Not a little one. It's a big one,
by the look of it.
Trouble is, it's over that side of the river
and I'm over here.
That's what I want.
It's a thing called supplejack.
It's like a bush string or rope.
Aboriginal people used it
for all sorts of things -
making up fish baskets and canoes
and all sorts of things
that you'd use string or rope for.
Pretty tough.
A couple of feet,
I'm not going to make a canoe,
but it'll help me get across the river
down here when I get to it.
Now, there's that supplejack.
I've ripped a few of the leaves off there.
It's called supplejack
because it's very supple.
Just like this.
I'll tie a bit of a knot.
Hopefully this will turn out
to be waterproof.
I'm in trouble if it's not.
There aren't too many rivers
in northern Australia
where you can swim
and not be worried about crocodiles.
But this is one of them.
Or at least it is here, anyway, because
this spot is about 800ft above sea level.
And between me and the ocean
where the salties live,
there are a whole bunch of waterfalls
that they can't climb up.
So things are pretty safe round here.
To call this place interesting
is a real understatement
because it's absolutely amazing.
This whole rocky wall
extends right the way up there
and it's all an art gallery,
one big art gallery,
with all these paintings
and these wandginas here.
These wandginas
are the spirit people
that the Kimberley Aboriginal people
constantly painted, and still do,
throughout the Kimberleys, over
in the west and back over in the east.
So they're very, very important paintings.
And I doubt whether too many people
actually have been here on the ground
to look at this gallery.
I wonder how long it's been
since somebody stood here,
and looked around the place,
because it's so remote.
What a terrific old paperbark
this tree is.
A great big giant of a thing.
Been here for hundreds of years,
I suppose. I don't know.
If you look up there in the branches,
you can see that it's all
in flower at the moment.
It's got this smell to it
that's...well, it's absolutely super rich
and it really loads the air.
That's where the native bees
get their honey from.
It's also got a lot of other uses
as well.
And Aboriginal people used to
quite often take away bits of the bark
from the trunk
and use them back in the camp.
I'll show you.
This bark's pretty thick, actually.
Like padding.
Yeah, just cut it down there.
You can use it on the campfire
like sort of alfoil or something like that.
Wrap your food up and cook it away.
Lots of uses for this stuff.
There we go.
I made myself a bit of a bark coolamon
from that tree down there.
But what I'm looking for around here
are the underground tubers
that these lilies produce in the mud.
You feel around, you can sometimes...
I've found three there so far.
You can sometimes find them.
You feel all the way
in the mud round the area.
Here's one.
Ooh, two.
Ah, there we go.
Bake them up on the hot coals,
those things.
Actually, the waterlily is
a very, very versatile bit of stuff
because you can eat
just about everything off it.
You can eat the seed pod,
you can eat the flowers themselves.
The whole works.
Very versatile thing.
When you can't find the bulbs,
what you can do is chew that.
Don't eat too much, though.
It tends to give you diarrhoea.
One of the great things
about the Kimberleys
is the fact that
so few people live here.
As you walk around the place,
you tend to feel like an early explorer.
Of course, the Aboriginal people
once lived all over this country
and if you looked around the caves
and under the rock overhangs,
there are lots of things
you can find.
Plenty of rock art here.
It's not the stuff I'm after, though.
This stuff is fairly recent.
Probably in the last 50 years or so.
That's more the style of thing I want.
That's not a very good example, though.
We'll see if we can get a better one.
Yeah. That's a better example up there.
There's some fairly modern stuff,
but it's these dark ones here, that's
the art that I'm really interested in.
That's called Bradshaw figures
or Bradshaw paintings.
They got that name because the first
white bloke to actually see these things
up in the Kimberleys
was a bloke called Bradshaw.
He was looking for land
about 100 years ago.
I find the most fascinating point
about these paintings
is the fact that the local Kimberley
Aboriginal people totally disown them.
They call them rubbish paintings.
Not theirs.
Don't know who did them.
They paint over the top of them too.
Let's see if we can find a better example
of the Bradshaws over here.
That's what I'm after.
That's one of your Bradshaws.
It's a good one too.
I'll just get this pack off.
These things really make me excited
every time I see one.
Look at the detail in them,
the headdress there and the arm things
around those elbows there
and the skirts and all the rest of it -
the whole lot's there.
There's plenty of Bradshaws
around the Kimberleys,
but the Aboriginal people,
they reckon they didn't do it,
which only poses the question,
who did?
I don't know, every time
I look at Bradshaws around the place,
I can't help but feel Africa.
That just reminds me
of African art style.
The only other thing round this part of
the world that reminds me of Africa
is a particular tree.
It's a really magnificent old tree,
this one.
The proper flash name's
Adansonia gregorii,
but to you and I it's just a baobab tree.
There's one of the nuts.
I'll talk about that in a minute.
But I reckon if this tree could talk,
it'd have a really interesting story to tell
because there are only
a few countries in the world
that actually have this tree
growing naturally.
One of them's Madagascar,
another one's South Africa,
I think India as well, and we've got it
here in the Kimberleys in Australia.
I look at it and again I think Africa.
But interestingly enough, the distribution
of this tree is almost identical
to the distribution
of the Bradshaw paintings.
They almost overlap like that.
Where you find one,
you tend to find the other.
Throughout the year
it produces this nut.
Hear it rattle away inside there.
Which you can eat.
The really interesting thing about it
though is that it keeps for ages and ages
providing you don't crack it or break it
or something like that.
It's a bit like a food time capsule.
Not just for weeks, but for months and
months you can go on eating this thing.
And it's an ideal thing to take with you
if you're going to go on a journey
or a voyage or something like that.
Once upon a time,
years and years ago,
they had a trading route
from Madagascar
all the way up through the Indonesian
archipelago, ending up in China.
Now, it sort of...
It wouldn't surprise me
if way back in those days
they used to stock up with these nuts.
They'd be terrific
for that sort of journey.
And maybe they'd picked up the odd
deckhand in Madagascar at the time.
But what happens
if one of those boats crashes
on the shore here
in the Kimberley country?
'Cause it's a pretty rugged shoreline.
Well, maybe that's how we got the
baobab tree and the Bradshaws as well.
One other thing too.
An old Aboriginal bloke
years and years ago told me
the Dreamtime legend for this tree.
He reckoned that once upon a time,
it was so proud and arrogant because
it reckoned it had the best foliage
and the best flowers,
it was the best tree on the landscape.
Well, the Dreamtime spirits
fixed that right up.
They came along and they grabbed it,
reefed it out of the ground
and dumped it back in upside down.
Those branches you see up there,
well, originally they were the roots.
Interesting story.
More interesting than that, though,
they've got the same yarn
over in Madagascar.
Whether Madagascan people
actually did come to the Kimberleys
is a bit difficult to prove these days.
But what we do know
is that the Malayan and the Dutch
and the French and the English ships
all sailed these waters
and most of them charted this coastline.
But it's the more recent visitors
that interest me in particular.
Not many Australians realise this,
but during WWII,
a party of Japanese soldiers
actually landed on Australian soil.
It happened at a place
called York Sound.
That was in January, 1944.
Their job was to find out
if this region was guarded
and if it could support
some sort of Japanese invasion.
They also wanted to find out
about an airfield
that was supposedly being built
somewhere in the Kimberleys.
The Japanese soldiers split up
into three groups
and they began to search
this whole area.
But climbing around here
in the middle of summer
wouldn't have been too much fun.
They would've been really hot
and uncomfortable.
It's terribly pretty to look at,
but let me tell you,
it's horrible country to walk around.
The whole area for miles and miles is
made up of all this sort of rock formation
and the gullies in between
are filled up with spinifex
that no matter which step you take
in what direction, you get spiked.
I find it amazing that the Japanese
came to this spot in Australia
looking for an allied airfield.
They'd heard it was being built
so they came to look for it
and do a reconnaissance.
Well, of course they didn't find one.
But for two days
they walked all around this area.
Only trouble was,
they were about two months too early
and they were about 100 miles
in the wrong direction.
This is what the Japanese
were looking for -
Truscott Air Base, just up near
Kalumburu in the northern Kimberley.
It took three months to build in 1944
and this air field allowed the Australian
aircraft to fly long-range missions
against the Japanese
in the islands up to the north.
Looking at these wartime relics
really makes you think about
the 500-odd people
who lived up at Truscott
during the final year of the war.
It must have seemed like
some sort of hell on earth up here.
So flat and dry
and totally isolated.
At that time,
there were no roads into Truscott
and all this gear had to come in by sea.
These days, Truscott sits
like a giant museum,
abandoned to the Australian bush.
This log's a real find.
I was over there
looking for a bit of firewood,
picked this one up, fell out of a tree,
had a look in the end there.
It's filled up with honey and wax
and that sort of thing.
In other words, it's a native bee's hive.
We'll just break it open on the rock
here and have a look inside.
If you look very, very closely
at the log,
you can see the small native bees
crawling round the place.
The interesting thing about them
is that they've got no sting.
In other words, you can raid their hives
and that sort of thing
and not get bitten by them.
This whole beehive is called
sugarbag by the Aboriginal people.
There we go. Terrific stuff.
Mmm.
For some reason, bush honey
is just so much sweeter
and stronger in flavour
than the stuff you buy out of the shop.
Maybe because it's got
all the wax with it or something
or it's pure and concentrated.
That's the wax that you're left with.
And that's the sort of thing
that Aboriginal people used to use
to make woomeras and spearheads
and things like that.
They used it like a glue and a resin.
One of the interesting things about
honey here in the Kimberleys
is the fact that it's very, very common.
All over the place.
More common here in the Kimberleys
than they'll find in Cape York
or Arnhem Land or anywhere else.
And as a survival resource,
it's got a lot going for it.
Because it's so easily obtained,
it's something you should look for
if you have to survive here.
To look at it, the Kimberley coastline
appears to be a daunting sort of a place,
but like anywhere
where the land and the ocean meet,
there are lots of survival resources.
Two blokes who had to come
to grips with this situation
were a couple of German aviators
by the name of Bertram and Klausman,
who in 1932 tried to fly
from Timor across to Darwin.
They got a bit lost along the way
and ended up being forced down
on the North Kimberley coast.
That's about 300 miles off-course.
From the minute they first arrived here
the odds were stacked against them.
As you can see, it's a pretty wild
and woolly coastline.
It's also one of the most isolated areas
on the Australian mainland.
Because they were Germans,
they had no idea of what the
Australian environment was all about.
Mind you, there's a whole bunch
of Australians don't know much either.
But when you get down
and look at it closely enough,
it's surprising what you can find.
Walking around this coastline,
I can't help but wonder
how the two of them must have felt
about their predicament.
Here they were, hopelessly lost,
and in a strange and hostile land.
For weeks they tried
to reach civilisation.
But each time, they were turned back
by the harsh country.
However, the one thing
they did find was shelter.
And for nearly six weeks, they ended up
living in this cave at Cape Boonia.
Here they were safe and dry.
They collected driftwood for a fire
and they drank the rainwater
that was caught in the rock holes.
But slowly,
they were dying of starvation.
What they didn't realise was that within
a couple of hundred metres of the cave,
there were bush foods
that could save them.
They could have eaten the young
leaves of this native hibiscus.
Or the shoots of this supplejack.
The fruit of this morinda
was also in season.
And the wild passionfruit can always
be found around the place.
And another good standby
is the sea purslane.
Looks a bit like a pigweed but it's not.
No relation at all.
You find this stuff growing all the way
beside the ocean
around this part of the world.
You can eat it raw or you can
cook it up just like a spinach.
It's got a bit of a salty taste to it
but...that's OK.
Bertram and Klausman didn't use
any of the plant life around this area.
You couldn't really expect them to
because they had no knowledge
about bush tucker.
But they did make use
of some of the local shellfish
and they found these in the rock pools
just outside the cave.
Those two Germans were actually living
in this cave for something like 40 days.
Even found a bit of a nickname for it.
They called it the cathedral cave.
I guess after that period of time
they knew it pretty well.
But the problem was that
they'd expended all their energy
trying to get out of here.
The coastal voyage and the trips inland
and all the rest of it.
They had just about had it.
Even these shellfish here
couldn't help them all that much.
Mind you, I reckon
they're probably some of the best
bush tucker you can get.
There we go.
They're just like a snail inside.
Oh, beauty!
They got to the stage where they
decided they were about to die.
They built themselves in here a couple
of beds made out of grass and lay down,
virtually accepting death
as being inevitable.
But it wasn't.
Because what happened was the fact
that some Aboriginals came along,
and they actually came down a hole
in the back of the cave here
and spied the two Germans.
Well, the Aboriginals went
and got them some food.
They got them some yams
and a bit of fish,
and a bit of sugarbag and they also
got them some kangaroo meat.
Unfortunately, though, the Germans
couldn't chew the stuff
because they were too weak.
So the Aboriginals did it for them
and then gave it to them.
For nearly two weeks,
the Aboriginals continued
to look after the Germans.
Once the news got out
that the men had been found,
a launch was sent to rescue them.
Those two pilots had survived
nearly seven weeks
in one of Australia's
most isolated regions.
It's almost 60 years
since Bertram and Klausman were in
the Kimberleys but nothing has changed.
The country is just as spectacular
and rugged and majestic
as it's always been.
And the rules that go with this country
will never change either,
be it 60 or 600 years.
If you want to come into the Kimberleys
and enjoy the place,
to experience that unique feeling
that goes with it,
you have to be properly prepared.
There are no short cuts.
You simply can't afford
to take the country lightly.
---
Three fingers.
I can just fit three fingers
between the bottom of the sun
and the horizon.
That's a bit of a rough method to tell me
that I've got roughly
about 45 minutes left of daylight
before that sun sets.
That being the case,
I'd better hit the track.
Oh, one day I might even buy a watch.
I'm heading off into one of the most
rugged and remote parts of Australia -
the Kimberley region
of Western Australia.
It's an area that I keep coming back to
because of its isolation
and its pure and natural beauty.
What many people don't realise
is that the Kimberleys are bigger than
both Victoria and
Tasmania put together.
And it's mostly
uninhabited.
So as a visitor,
you've got to be able
to look after yourself.
Only two fingers to go.
That's about half an hour.
I've got a campsite down here.
I'd like to make it tonight.
But I don't know whether I will or not.
It's a fair way away.
Well, the sun won that one.
I ran out of fingers in the end.
Doesn't matter, though.
This is the place I wanted to come to.
I'll just put a swag camp up for tonight
and tomorrow morning
put up a proper camp then.
That will do.
The best time to visit this part of
the world is just after the wet season.
All the rivers and the lagoons
have all been topped up
and the bush tracks
have dried out enough
to let you get into
the heart of the country.
Of course, up here in the Kimberleys,
your poor old motor car
can only take you so far.
I find it best to put up a bit
of a base camp like that
and then walk out each day,
radiating out on a daily basis.
That way you can have a real
good look around the place.
There's no doubt about it,
a lot of places in the Kimberleys
that are absolutely beautiful,
but you gotta make the effort
to get there.
The place over there...
That's a little rock shelter.
Not a little one. It's a big one,
by the look of it.
Trouble is, it's over that side of the river
and I'm over here.
That's what I want.
It's a thing called supplejack.
It's like a bush string or rope.
Aboriginal people used it
for all sorts of things -
making up fish baskets and canoes
and all sorts of things
that you'd use string or rope for.
Pretty tough.
A couple of feet,
I'm not going to make a canoe,
but it'll help me get across the river
down here when I get to it.
Now, there's that supplejack.
I've ripped a few of the leaves off there.
It's called supplejack
because it's very supple.
Just like this.
I'll tie a bit of a knot.
Hopefully this will turn out
to be waterproof.
I'm in trouble if it's not.
There aren't too many rivers
in northern Australia
where you can swim
and not be worried about crocodiles.
But this is one of them.
Or at least it is here, anyway, because
this spot is about 800ft above sea level.
And between me and the ocean
where the salties live,
there are a whole bunch of waterfalls
that they can't climb up.
So things are pretty safe round here.
To call this place interesting
is a real understatement
because it's absolutely amazing.
This whole rocky wall
extends right the way up there
and it's all an art gallery,
one big art gallery,
with all these paintings
and these wandginas here.
These wandginas
are the spirit people
that the Kimberley Aboriginal people
constantly painted, and still do,
throughout the Kimberleys, over
in the west and back over in the east.
So they're very, very important paintings.
And I doubt whether too many people
actually have been here on the ground
to look at this gallery.
I wonder how long it's been
since somebody stood here,
and looked around the place,
because it's so remote.
What a terrific old paperbark
this tree is.
A great big giant of a thing.
Been here for hundreds of years,
I suppose. I don't know.
If you look up there in the branches,
you can see that it's all
in flower at the moment.
It's got this smell to it
that's...well, it's absolutely super rich
and it really loads the air.
That's where the native bees
get their honey from.
It's also got a lot of other uses
as well.
And Aboriginal people used to
quite often take away bits of the bark
from the trunk
and use them back in the camp.
I'll show you.
This bark's pretty thick, actually.
Like padding.
Yeah, just cut it down there.
You can use it on the campfire
like sort of alfoil or something like that.
Wrap your food up and cook it away.
Lots of uses for this stuff.
There we go.
I made myself a bit of a bark coolamon
from that tree down there.
But what I'm looking for around here
are the underground tubers
that these lilies produce in the mud.
You feel around, you can sometimes...
I've found three there so far.
You can sometimes find them.
You feel all the way
in the mud round the area.
Here's one.
Ooh, two.
Ah, there we go.
Bake them up on the hot coals,
those things.
Actually, the waterlily is
a very, very versatile bit of stuff
because you can eat
just about everything off it.
You can eat the seed pod,
you can eat the flowers themselves.
The whole works.
Very versatile thing.
When you can't find the bulbs,
what you can do is chew that.
Don't eat too much, though.
It tends to give you diarrhoea.
One of the great things
about the Kimberleys
is the fact that
so few people live here.
As you walk around the place,
you tend to feel like an early explorer.
Of course, the Aboriginal people
once lived all over this country
and if you looked around the caves
and under the rock overhangs,
there are lots of things
you can find.
Plenty of rock art here.
It's not the stuff I'm after, though.
This stuff is fairly recent.
Probably in the last 50 years or so.
That's more the style of thing I want.
That's not a very good example, though.
We'll see if we can get a better one.
Yeah. That's a better example up there.
There's some fairly modern stuff,
but it's these dark ones here, that's
the art that I'm really interested in.
That's called Bradshaw figures
or Bradshaw paintings.
They got that name because the first
white bloke to actually see these things
up in the Kimberleys
was a bloke called Bradshaw.
He was looking for land
about 100 years ago.
I find the most fascinating point
about these paintings
is the fact that the local Kimberley
Aboriginal people totally disown them.
They call them rubbish paintings.
Not theirs.
Don't know who did them.
They paint over the top of them too.
Let's see if we can find a better example
of the Bradshaws over here.
That's what I'm after.
That's one of your Bradshaws.
It's a good one too.
I'll just get this pack off.
These things really make me excited
every time I see one.
Look at the detail in them,
the headdress there and the arm things
around those elbows there
and the skirts and all the rest of it -
the whole lot's there.
There's plenty of Bradshaws
around the Kimberleys,
but the Aboriginal people,
they reckon they didn't do it,
which only poses the question,
who did?
I don't know, every time
I look at Bradshaws around the place,
I can't help but feel Africa.
That just reminds me
of African art style.
The only other thing round this part of
the world that reminds me of Africa
is a particular tree.
It's a really magnificent old tree,
this one.
The proper flash name's
Adansonia gregorii,
but to you and I it's just a baobab tree.
There's one of the nuts.
I'll talk about that in a minute.
But I reckon if this tree could talk,
it'd have a really interesting story to tell
because there are only
a few countries in the world
that actually have this tree
growing naturally.
One of them's Madagascar,
another one's South Africa,
I think India as well, and we've got it
here in the Kimberleys in Australia.
I look at it and again I think Africa.
But interestingly enough, the distribution
of this tree is almost identical
to the distribution
of the Bradshaw paintings.
They almost overlap like that.
Where you find one,
you tend to find the other.
Throughout the year
it produces this nut.
Hear it rattle away inside there.
Which you can eat.
The really interesting thing about it
though is that it keeps for ages and ages
providing you don't crack it or break it
or something like that.
It's a bit like a food time capsule.
Not just for weeks, but for months and
months you can go on eating this thing.
And it's an ideal thing to take with you
if you're going to go on a journey
or a voyage or something like that.
Once upon a time,
years and years ago,
they had a trading route
from Madagascar
all the way up through the Indonesian
archipelago, ending up in China.
Now, it sort of...
It wouldn't surprise me
if way back in those days
they used to stock up with these nuts.
They'd be terrific
for that sort of journey.
And maybe they'd picked up the odd
deckhand in Madagascar at the time.
But what happens
if one of those boats crashes
on the shore here
in the Kimberley country?
'Cause it's a pretty rugged shoreline.
Well, maybe that's how we got the
baobab tree and the Bradshaws as well.
One other thing too.
An old Aboriginal bloke
years and years ago told me
the Dreamtime legend for this tree.
He reckoned that once upon a time,
it was so proud and arrogant because
it reckoned it had the best foliage
and the best flowers,
it was the best tree on the landscape.
Well, the Dreamtime spirits
fixed that right up.
They came along and they grabbed it,
reefed it out of the ground
and dumped it back in upside down.
Those branches you see up there,
well, originally they were the roots.
Interesting story.
More interesting than that, though,
they've got the same yarn
over in Madagascar.
Whether Madagascan people
actually did come to the Kimberleys
is a bit difficult to prove these days.
But what we do know
is that the Malayan and the Dutch
and the French and the English ships
all sailed these waters
and most of them charted this coastline.
But it's the more recent visitors
that interest me in particular.
Not many Australians realise this,
but during WWII,
a party of Japanese soldiers
actually landed on Australian soil.
It happened at a place
called York Sound.
That was in January, 1944.
Their job was to find out
if this region was guarded
and if it could support
some sort of Japanese invasion.
They also wanted to find out
about an airfield
that was supposedly being built
somewhere in the Kimberleys.
The Japanese soldiers split up
into three groups
and they began to search
this whole area.
But climbing around here
in the middle of summer
wouldn't have been too much fun.
They would've been really hot
and uncomfortable.
It's terribly pretty to look at,
but let me tell you,
it's horrible country to walk around.
The whole area for miles and miles is
made up of all this sort of rock formation
and the gullies in between
are filled up with spinifex
that no matter which step you take
in what direction, you get spiked.
I find it amazing that the Japanese
came to this spot in Australia
looking for an allied airfield.
They'd heard it was being built
so they came to look for it
and do a reconnaissance.
Well, of course they didn't find one.
But for two days
they walked all around this area.
Only trouble was,
they were about two months too early
and they were about 100 miles
in the wrong direction.
This is what the Japanese
were looking for -
Truscott Air Base, just up near
Kalumburu in the northern Kimberley.
It took three months to build in 1944
and this air field allowed the Australian
aircraft to fly long-range missions
against the Japanese
in the islands up to the north.
Looking at these wartime relics
really makes you think about
the 500-odd people
who lived up at Truscott
during the final year of the war.
It must have seemed like
some sort of hell on earth up here.
So flat and dry
and totally isolated.
At that time,
there were no roads into Truscott
and all this gear had to come in by sea.
These days, Truscott sits
like a giant museum,
abandoned to the Australian bush.
This log's a real find.
I was over there
looking for a bit of firewood,
picked this one up, fell out of a tree,
had a look in the end there.
It's filled up with honey and wax
and that sort of thing.
In other words, it's a native bee's hive.
We'll just break it open on the rock
here and have a look inside.
If you look very, very closely
at the log,
you can see the small native bees
crawling round the place.
The interesting thing about them
is that they've got no sting.
In other words, you can raid their hives
and that sort of thing
and not get bitten by them.
This whole beehive is called
sugarbag by the Aboriginal people.
There we go. Terrific stuff.
Mmm.
For some reason, bush honey
is just so much sweeter
and stronger in flavour
than the stuff you buy out of the shop.
Maybe because it's got
all the wax with it or something
or it's pure and concentrated.
That's the wax that you're left with.
And that's the sort of thing
that Aboriginal people used to use
to make woomeras and spearheads
and things like that.
They used it like a glue and a resin.
One of the interesting things about
honey here in the Kimberleys
is the fact that it's very, very common.
All over the place.
More common here in the Kimberleys
than they'll find in Cape York
or Arnhem Land or anywhere else.
And as a survival resource,
it's got a lot going for it.
Because it's so easily obtained,
it's something you should look for
if you have to survive here.
To look at it, the Kimberley coastline
appears to be a daunting sort of a place,
but like anywhere
where the land and the ocean meet,
there are lots of survival resources.
Two blokes who had to come
to grips with this situation
were a couple of German aviators
by the name of Bertram and Klausman,
who in 1932 tried to fly
from Timor across to Darwin.
They got a bit lost along the way
and ended up being forced down
on the North Kimberley coast.
That's about 300 miles off-course.
From the minute they first arrived here
the odds were stacked against them.
As you can see, it's a pretty wild
and woolly coastline.
It's also one of the most isolated areas
on the Australian mainland.
Because they were Germans,
they had no idea of what the
Australian environment was all about.
Mind you, there's a whole bunch
of Australians don't know much either.
But when you get down
and look at it closely enough,
it's surprising what you can find.
Walking around this coastline,
I can't help but wonder
how the two of them must have felt
about their predicament.
Here they were, hopelessly lost,
and in a strange and hostile land.
For weeks they tried
to reach civilisation.
But each time, they were turned back
by the harsh country.
However, the one thing
they did find was shelter.
And for nearly six weeks, they ended up
living in this cave at Cape Boonia.
Here they were safe and dry.
They collected driftwood for a fire
and they drank the rainwater
that was caught in the rock holes.
But slowly,
they were dying of starvation.
What they didn't realise was that within
a couple of hundred metres of the cave,
there were bush foods
that could save them.
They could have eaten the young
leaves of this native hibiscus.
Or the shoots of this supplejack.
The fruit of this morinda
was also in season.
And the wild passionfruit can always
be found around the place.
And another good standby
is the sea purslane.
Looks a bit like a pigweed but it's not.
No relation at all.
You find this stuff growing all the way
beside the ocean
around this part of the world.
You can eat it raw or you can
cook it up just like a spinach.
It's got a bit of a salty taste to it
but...that's OK.
Bertram and Klausman didn't use
any of the plant life around this area.
You couldn't really expect them to
because they had no knowledge
about bush tucker.
But they did make use
of some of the local shellfish
and they found these in the rock pools
just outside the cave.
Those two Germans were actually living
in this cave for something like 40 days.
Even found a bit of a nickname for it.
They called it the cathedral cave.
I guess after that period of time
they knew it pretty well.
But the problem was that
they'd expended all their energy
trying to get out of here.
The coastal voyage and the trips inland
and all the rest of it.
They had just about had it.
Even these shellfish here
couldn't help them all that much.
Mind you, I reckon
they're probably some of the best
bush tucker you can get.
There we go.
They're just like a snail inside.
Oh, beauty!
They got to the stage where they
decided they were about to die.
They built themselves in here a couple
of beds made out of grass and lay down,
virtually accepting death
as being inevitable.
But it wasn't.
Because what happened was the fact
that some Aboriginals came along,
and they actually came down a hole
in the back of the cave here
and spied the two Germans.
Well, the Aboriginals went
and got them some food.
They got them some yams
and a bit of fish,
and a bit of sugarbag and they also
got them some kangaroo meat.
Unfortunately, though, the Germans
couldn't chew the stuff
because they were too weak.
So the Aboriginals did it for them
and then gave it to them.
For nearly two weeks,
the Aboriginals continued
to look after the Germans.
Once the news got out
that the men had been found,
a launch was sent to rescue them.
Those two pilots had survived
nearly seven weeks
in one of Australia's
most isolated regions.
It's almost 60 years
since Bertram and Klausman were in
the Kimberleys but nothing has changed.
The country is just as spectacular
and rugged and majestic
as it's always been.
And the rules that go with this country
will never change either,
be it 60 or 600 years.
If you want to come into the Kimberleys
and enjoy the place,
to experience that unique feeling
that goes with it,
you have to be properly prepared.
There are no short cuts.
You simply can't afford
to take the country lightly.