Week 6...First week in the Kimberleys

All stocked up with food, water and a couple of full jerry cans to last the next 15 days we head off to the Bungle Bungles.  2 and a half hours later we reach the beginning of the 53km track into the Purnululu National Park.  This track is our first serious off road bit and took us a tad over 2 hours to navigate in to the park ranger station and another 13kms to our campground.  We set up camp and set off to see the world famous orange and brown beehive domes.

We walked up to Cathedral Gorge and around the domes and I gotta say they were every bit as spectacular as the pictures looked.  Massive domes, orange and brown stripes at exactly the same height across all the domes, the sun setting and gleaming off them making the colours even more vibrant.  The creek itself had all but dried up but there was a peacefulness in just being amongst this amazing piece of nature.

The next day we went up to Echidna Chasm…a 180m walk into the chasm of the gorge.  The sides became narrower and narrower the further we zig zagged through the crack in the rockface.  Every now and then you thought it was the end of the walk but up and over some fallen rocks and the chasm kept going.  We did this walk in the middle of the day so the light shone down in to the chasm as early morning or late afternoon would have been dark within and I reckon that it was one of the most amazing walks I have ever done.

Our campsite was great, tucked away in some cleared grass.  A pit toilet was surprisingly useable and the solar shower hung over a big gum tree next to our tent made it almost 5 star!  The only downside was Lachie got an infection ad so back to Kununurra we went the next day to get him checked out before we disappeared up the Gibb River Road for the next 13 nights.

There are two observations I want to make about being out of the big smoke…firstly, everything seems to happen on Sundays.  Secondly, nothing is open!  So we find ourselves sitting in the emergency department of Kununurra Hospital waiting to get Lachie checked and a script filled….any other day of the week we could have been in and out of a chemist in no time flat!  Not to worry, 3 and a half hours later we are on our way again and thankfully still have time to reach Home Valley rather than stay in Kununurra and start the Gibb the next day.

So off we go. Some 50 odd kms later we turn on to the Gibb.  Tyre pressures down and expecting an offroad adventure, we actually hit more bitumen.  It turns out that sections of the Gibb are sealed and the first part has a bit of it.  Probably helped us from a time point of view given the sun was setting and we had 67kms to go.  The first river, the King River fast approached…and was dry.  The second river, the Durack River quickly followed….and was not much more than a puddle.  And then we reached the Pentacost River…a river famous on the Gibb River Road where fresh and salt water meets, crocodiles swim and is over 100m wide.

With the Cockburn Ranges shining in the sun behind us we drove across the river.   It was a rocky river stone crossing, about a foot or so deep and just amazing at it felt like we had started the Gibb River Road proper as we exited the river.  We stopped, I tried to convince Bron to go and stand in the river to take photos while I crossed it again but she wasn’t keen given crocs swim in it!  So a photo of the car at the exit with the sun setting on the ranges behind is now one of my favourite images of the trip so far.

20kms later we arrived at Home Valley.  A working cattle farm with lush grass camping area, the biggest kids playground I have ever seen and a paddock full of horses beside the camping area (and around the tents up the other end one morning).  Down at the river we watched the sunset with the Cockburn Ranges reflecting mirror perfect in the still water and it was easy to see why this property had been used in the shooting of some of the move Australia.  For us though, perhaps the best part of Home Valley was hot showers!

Moving on we headed to Drysdale Station.  A 59km drive up the Kalumburu Road (which runs off the Gibb a little less than half way along).  The Gibb so far had been good driving.  Corrugated in part but nothing too bad.  The Kalumbaru however was another story.  The corrugations were bigger and went for longer.  There were times where you couldn’t see the instrumentation on the dash from the vibrations and we couldn’t hear each other talk.  But we made it to Drysdale to be greeted by yet another contrast like only this country can provide.  From lush grass at Home Valley, to not a blade of grass at Drysdale.  From nice amenities, to old and cruddy amenities where the generator was turned off at 9pm and you had to go to the toilet by torch light.

But it was a means to an end and the next day we headed north along more corrugations for 101kms to the turn off to Mitchell Falls.  A slow, windy and very rough 12 kms along we stopped at our campsite for the next 3 nights, the King Edward River.  Originally we intended 2 nights, but this place was beautiful.  We swam in the deep fresh river each morning and night , we toasted marshmallows by the campfire, we swam in the rapids just upstream from the top of a small waterfall and just felt alive in a magic little part of the world.

Now for one of, if not the highlight of the trip…a day trip to Mitchell Falls.  Up and gone by 7am, the 76km drive took us a couple of hours to cover, the last 14kms the roughest road we had been on so far.  The walk was a 2 and a half hour walk and we surprised the boys by organizing a helicopter ride back…their first time in a whocker whocker!

Off we set.  After about 45mins we arrived at a place called Little Mertens.  From the top of the falls you could see down in to a plunge pool below where a few people were swimming.  We scrambled down and were rewarded with a refreshingly cool swim.  There was a rock at one end that Alex and Lachie climbed up and slid down in to the water like a slippery dip.  We swam up under the waterfall and let it cascade on our backs and shoulders.  Before we knew it an hour had passed and we needed to keep walking.

The next couple of hours saw us cross the top of Big Mertens (unbeknown to us a tourist had fallen to her death the week before as she lost her footing taking a photo and tumbled the 80m drop to the river below).  Needless to say we held the boys hands tightly, rock hopped across the top of the falls and several hundred metres later came out on top of Mitchell Falls itself.  This was a “can’t stop looking” moment with the river falling down to a curved platform below us before falling 2 more levels to the river below.  The volume of water, the closeness of it with us literally a step from the edge of the top, the sound of the water rushing and crashing below all combined for an exhilarating experience.

From here we seemed to lose the path a bit so rock hopped along the river to where we could see the markers indicating where to cross.  We got across the river and then walked down the other side where we now viewed the falls from in front and saw them in all their glory.  4 cascading levels of waterfall, 80metres from top to bottom and a real image of what I expected the Kimberleys to be.  Back for a quick dip in the river before our helicopter landed and took us on an 18 minute flight up over the falls, over the surrounding plateau and back to the carpark….getting out was far easier than getting in.

Week one of the Kimberleys…tick!