Mitchell Plateau and Kalumburu

That morning we spent the majority of the time shaking, rattling and rolling our way north. A grader had recently gone from Drysdale station down to the Gibb, but only on one side of the road, so we chose to drive like Americans for a while, rather than have the Hulk shake apart. After the station however the road was not very well maintained and despite trying to drive on the road any and every way possible we could not avoid the corrugations. We did however find Miner’s Pool for a quick stop off and cool down – the water was freezing and the toilets were hilarious, a corrugated iron shed full of cobwebs and a dunny made of a 44 gallon drum huzzah! At least we were able to stop bumping around for a while.

Several hours later we found the turnoff for Mitchell Plateau. This is an unmaintained road that is said to be one of the roughest in the Kimberleys. Rumoured to take four hours to complete we decided that we would make camp at King Edward River, rather than drive into the night. The campsite was beautiful, beneath shady gums with the river in the background. We set up quickly, walked to the nearby waterfalls and then returned to the river for a well-earned swim! When we returned to camp we were greeted by Geoff and Jen who had also decided it was time for a break. We spent the night sitting around the fire until our eyes could barely stay open and the fire could no longer keep the chill at bay. We had a couple of visitors to the fire including two girls from Belgium hitch hiking along the Gibb River Road, with plans on reaching Kalumburu, as soon as someone had the space for them. Sadly we could not fit them in, but we wished them luck, people don’t generally drive this far and have spare space for anyone else (and their gear).

The first stop the next morning was an Indigenous art site that you could easily spend hours exploring the various paintings and petroglyphs. There were also several Bradshaw paintings (these artworks can be dated back to a very long time ago, however no one knows who painted them!) and wandjinas . The rest of the drive was fairly non-eventful, the speed was kept low by corrugations, corners, rocks, water crossings and looking out for several dingoes. We did however manage to complete the journey well under the allowed 4 hours! In this country the Landcruiser really does shine – Go Brucie!!!

Bradshaw Artwork.

The camp site at Mitchell Falls is simple yet effective, with several communal fire places and shady trees dotted around the area. We saw Richard and Karen’s camp nearby and decided to pull up – we knew they’d have some great stories of the adventure they had had that day. Not long after we pulled up Geoff and Jen arrived and the whole gang was back together again. We decided to celebrate our long journey with a swim in Little Merten’s Falls, which were beautiful. A last minute decision saw Michael, Geoff and I booking a helicopter flight over the falls for the next the day (sure this meant we wouldn’t have to walk the return journey, but when else would we have such a good opportunity to go in a helicopter and see such a beautiful sight?). We had another glorious night around the fire, this time Karen and Richard joined us and we shared stories and damper, easily talking the night away. Karen and Richard had made us very excited about our next day’s adventure and we couldn’t wait to get up in the morning to embark.

Little Mertens Falls...Pretty!!

With bags packed, our check in for the afternoon completed and hiking shoes done up nice and tight, it was time to go. The track turned out to be 4 and a half kilometres, a lot easier than fabled 10 kms + the story tellers (grey nomads) would have you believe. The track was well formed and before we knew it we’d reached the 500 metre left marker, which coincided with Big Merten’s Falls. Apparently someone fell off and died here last year, so Michael decided it was a good idea to climb some rocks and get pretty close to the edge, luckily Michael is part monkey and survived his gruelling climb (he also managed to get some good pictures of the falls). We then crossed the falls and tottered into Mitchell Falls. Instantly we were blown away by the beauty of the area, I don’t think there are enough words to be able to vividly describe the aura of this place. Water flowed from one platform to another to form wall after wall of cascading falls. The sound on the waterfalls up close was deafening, yet also tranquil, here was mother nature at play. With so many vantage points it was great that we had all day to explore and swim, as we had booked the last flight out.

Big Merten Falls

Various views of Mitchell Falls - Beautiful!

One of the places we were able to swim at the falls.

With so much to see our day flew by, and in no time we were sitting at the departures terminal (an aluminium bench seat under a shade cloth). We dug into the last of our supplies while we watched our chopper approach. Then we swiftly ducked our heads and hopped in. Although classified as the 6 minute ‘taxi flight’, this was our first opportunity to be in a helicopter and provided a whole new vantage point of Mitchell Falls and the surrounding plateau all the way to the ocean – this was far from just a taxi ride. The flight provided ample views of the falls, the fact the doors were open gave us unobstructed views whilst also adding to the thrill of being so high up.

Our "taxi"

A view from above!

That night we celebrated with a giant happy hour. Geoff, Jen, Michael and I had reached the peak of the Kimberleys – Mitchell Plateau.

Although remote Mitchell Falls is still a tourist destination with several tour buses making the journey every day, albeit 4x4 buses. Still wanting to get off the beaten track we decided to head back to the main road and head north instead of south, making for the community and shore line of Kalumburu. Often rated in adventure magazines as a must do, this rugged and remote track leads to Kalumburu. The community itself provided little in the way of highlights (except a laugh at the fuel price at $3 a litre), it’s the pristine coast line that everyone up here seeks. Granted the road from the community to Honeymoon Bay was rough and several choice words were muttered in amongst the shaking and rattling after such a long day on the dirt, but when we stood at the top of the rocks peering onto the unadulterated shoreline we knew we had come to the right place, this was paradise.

Honeymoon Bay

We went to the care taker to book in and the young bloke straight away shook our hands and took us inside his house (corrugated iron shed) to complete the formalities. At $15 a head its not exactly cheap, but with a location like this how could we argue? He also offered us a Honeymoon Bay special – Mud-crabbing at night, in croc and shark water, Heck Yes! We spent the afternoon chilling out, exploring the coast and surrounding camps. Once again we met up with Geoff and Jen who were also doing the mud-crabbing tour. Turns out the Belgium Girls had also made it here after a group of three cars could manoeuvre enough stuff to get them in, however were at the time umming and ahhing about how they would be returning to the “busy” Gibb River Road. Good luck to them (again). The afternoon flew by and in no time at all Troy and Maryanne (caretakers) in the old Landcruiser to pick us all up. I have to admit that I regretted asking about the crack in the windscreen – his brother had driven the car into a ditch chasing buffalo (for funsies) - the crack was from someone’s head hitting the window, Troy then regaled us with other stories of accidents that had happened. Well we made it to the beach and picked a good spot not too close to the mangroves to go searching. We were armed with torches and blunt spears and only had to obey a couple of simple rules – 1. Don’t shine the torches at each other because the crocs will know what’s behind the light, 2. If Troy said run RUN! We waded through knee high sea water watching fish swim by and having fun with the plankton that light up when you kick them or when they swim. We ended up finding two massive crabs and returned to camp where Troy and Geoff cleaned them up ready for the fire! Great Dinner!

our catch!

As Geoff and Jen were packing up the next morning we decided it looked like too much effort, so we returned to Troy to book in another night. We said our goodbyes to Geoff and Jen, not sure when we’d meet again but were sure we would cross paths again. We then headed down to the water’s edge and spent all morning fishing. We pulled in several fish, Michael had his first success on a lure and I had my first success with my $20 broken Kmart rod J Sadly everything was undersized, but we sure had fun pulling in all sorts of fish. We returned to camp empty handed, but this worked in our favour as a camp group had pulled in too many red snapper off the reef (cheaters using a boat!). There was more than enough to go around, so they offered us some pre-filleted fish and we were happy to take it off their hands. Turns out this is a common occurrence with his particular group spending three months here every year, eating three meals of fish a day in various concoctions. That afternoon we checked out some custom rigs and got chatting to a group of three couples from QLD. We ate our glorious fish that evening and went to bed well contented.

a couple of the fish we pulled in...

The next day it was time to leave paradise and retrace our steps along that very bumpy road. After all the horror stories of this road we felt pretty proud that our only casualty was a wing mirror, nothing a little duct tape and doodling couldn’t fix (the mirror is now called broken bob). As with many temporary repairs bob is still going strong! The road also saw us come across several massive cattle and a few herds of brumbies that were in the middle of the road and put on a bit of a show for us, running along the road in front of us until the bush petered out enough for them to get out of our way.

Brumbies

We made it to Drysdale Station by early afternoon and were greeted by some friendly faces at the bar - “It’s the slide out guys!!”. Our previous plans for a date night defeated us when the menu had changed from our previous visit, no longer sounding very enticing, and the backup plan for a nice counter top lunch defeated us when we rocked up at 2:05pm and the bar closes at 2:00pm. Oh well, we still had a couple of cold drinks and some chippies at camp to enjoy while chatting. We set up, enjoyed a luxurious hot shower then had a long and pleasant happy hour with Kathy and Neil.

A quick look at what the roads have looked like - check out the dust and the corrugations! 

The next morning saw us having another wonderful hot shower, followed by a quick pack up and we were on the road. We had planned to have a break at the Gibb River and were pleased to see the QLD group from Kalumburu sitting around a fire boiling the billy and beckoning for us to join. Our five minute stop extended a bit more, however we couldn’t complain with billy tea, home made cookies and great stories supplied. Eventually we had to face our inevitable drive, so we said goodbye once more and were off. The rest of the dirt was very non-eventful asides from one very nice lookout and constant chattering over the UHF – it sounded like some serious droving was going on. We had lunch on the Pentecost River, watching for crocs and being mystified by a large bird we later found out was a Jabiru. We then had to cross the mighty river, endure 20kms of road works (including a red light that we couldn’t believe was there!) and we found tar once more, leading us to Kununurra at the end of a long day, leaving us with little to do except book into the van park for the night.

This is what a Jabiru looks like - its not an alien pelican!

Sadly our time on the Gibb had come to a close. After passing all the big name stations we made an agreement that we would come back again and do all the big name expensive station stuff one day. We couldn’t believe it was over, but all good things must come to an end and hey we still had a lot more adventures and beautiful things to see!

Lesson of the week: Great goals make for great achievements!