From Miners Pool, we crossed the Drysdale River the next
morning, and continued north on the Kalumburu road. The condition of the road hadn’t magically
improved any overnight (like having that well timed grader go past whilst we
slept!!), so the bouncing and rattling continued. We reached the turnoff to the Mitchell
Plateau and travelled the short distance to cross the King Edward River.
The Mitchell Plateau and the Mitchell Falls are a popular
destination for those Kimberley travellers capable of handling the rough roads. Interestingly, we saw a lot of those higher
Britz 4wd’s making the trip. The saying
‘a hire car can go anywhere’ is never truer, but it did amaze us. This is reasonably remote stuff, and if you
break down, help is not that close by, although does exist. We figured that they were putting a lot of
faith in how well the hire 4wd was maintained, and given all Glenn’s checks and
tightens on our vehicle, it’s a wonder these bash and crash hire jobs stay
together.
The Mitchell Falls provide the highlight of a 1.5 – 2 hour
walk, passing though some varied bush, the smaller Merton falls, and past a
number of rock art sites. The Mitchell
falls are huge, three tier waterfalls that can be viewed on the gorge walls, or
by air via the many helicopters offering a 5-7 minute flight back from the
falls instead of doing the return walk.
On our last trip, without kids, we had done Mitchell Falls,
and thoroughly loved it. This time
however, with the kids, we didn’t feel that we would get the value out of
it. They are becoming great bushwalkers,
but that might be a little bit too much to ask.
Instead, we had decided to make for the camp and King Edward River. This was a camp spot that we were going to
stay one night at last time, and had stayed four. There was ample firewood, good camping, and
most significantly, extensive swimming!!!
We had been a little worried that the King Edward would be
dry this late in the season, but thankfully there was plenty of water, and the
kids were looking forward to satisfying their obsession, to swim, swim more,
and then just keep swimming.
The Toomey’s had not seen Mitchell Falls, so after a quick
snack at the campground, sadly they left us and drove out to camp near the
falls for a couple of days. We had
definitely got use to travelling together, and were enjoying their
company. If you are reading this though
Matt and Deb, we weren’t sad at all, nope, not one bit!!!! “Thank god they are gone” we said as we
settled down for a rare early night instead of blah blah blahing till
late!!!!
We set up the camper after taking an amazingly horrendous
length of time to pick our site, sheesh, you’d think we were going to be there
for months! We then quickly walked the
short distance down to the King Edward River.
Standing on the banks, looking at the beautiful cool water, we did stop
and look at each other. “There are no
crocs here right?” “We did swim here
last time and it was absolutely fine, which means it should be fine here again
right??” “Maybe we should send one of
the kids in first just to check??” Glenn
got a whack at this point, and shoved into the water.
 |
| One of our favourite camp spots - King Edward River |
All was fine, and this was the first of many many swims in
the river. The weather was heating up, but
with regular dips, the days all seemed to go by so easily, and very fast!! Before you knew it, it was dinner time and
bed again. Time to dream about another
swim tomorrow.
3 days later, the Toomey’s rolled back into camp, hot,
shaken and tired. Geez, glad we didn’t
do that trip J. Matt was saying that if he’d hit one more
rock on the road he would have lost it!!!
Erk. Luckily, after they’d setup
in the heat, we had a cuppa boiled (of course, can’t do anything without a
cuppa in this troupe), and Glenn had cooked a damper in the camp over, on the
gas no less. A significant achievement.
We spent a few more days sitting around, more swimming, and
Glenn rotated the tyres, just to share the hammering. We had a final day extension (our 9th
in total) to celebrate Deb’s birthday, ensuring we weren’t travelling for
it. This was to mark the start of a
quite incredible 2 weeks where as a travelling group, we celebrated 5
birthdays!!!!!! Amazing. That many virgo’s all together, sounds like a
tidy and harmonious group!
 |
Fantastic rock art around King Edward |
 |
| The swimming was the best |
Deb’s birthday started for her with Matt cooking pancakes,
us giving her a sneaky packet of Smarties, and then Matt cooked the most
amazing mint chocolate cake in the camp over.
One could say it was a fluke, but it was just too perfect. Well done Matt, and thanks, we enjoyed
sharing it! J
No comments:
Post a Comment