Written Saturday 30th August – 5.55am
The peace is wonderful; it’s so quiet apart from the sound
of the river flowing over the rocks and the birds slowly starting their
day. I’m sitting in front of the camper,
on the bank of the Pentecost River waiting for the sun to climb over the top of
the sandstone ridge opposite me. It’s
chilly, about 10 degrees, so I’m enjoying the coffee I’ve made. Who would have
thought that the week would have ended so well?
Things started to go awry the morning we packed up and left
Manning Gorge. Not is a big way, you
understand, but we’d had a pretty incident free trip so far (if you don’t count
the firewood falling off the roof of the car and putting a big scratch down the
door of my car!)
We packed up the camper and headed out to the roadhouse where
we thought we’d use the public phone there to make our Sunday morning call
home. All’s going well at home and the
call mostly consisted of Tom and RaRa (his name for me) having invented
conversations. I could see the people
waiting to use the phone after us rolling their eyes!!! The 7km from the campground to the roadhouse
isn’t particularly rough by standards around here, but it was enough for the
chip in the windscreen that we’d got from an oncoming caravan on the bitumen
near Derby to become a crack that now stretches across the passenger side. Each day now it is slowly making its way
across to see Doug. It was to be
expected I suppose, and we won’t bother replacing the windscreen till we get
home, as there’s always the risk that it might happen again.
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| Crossing the King Edward (note the crack in the windscreen) |
Our initial plan was to travel from Manning Gorge along the
Gibb River Road, then take the turn off for the Mitchell Plateau and Kalumbaru. We’d had it pretty good up until then, as
parts of the Gibb had recently been graded, so the corrugations weren’t too
bad. The grader hadn’t made it to the
Kalumbaru Road yet.
We turned left and almost immediately we were met with huge,
rippling corrugations that you could have hidden a car in, I swear!! We made the bone-shaking, 60km drive north
towards Drysdale River Station, trying to travel at a speed that would take us
over the top of the corrugations, but it was difficult to find that speed. We passed a couple of vehicles travelling the
road who were trying the nurse their cars along at about 25km/h and were
dropping into every one of the corrugations as they went. It would be a long day for them.
We arrived at Drysdale around lunchtime. The station is a working cattle station, one
of the longest family owned pastoral leases in the Kimberley, proudly working
for 28 years. They have also
diversified to offer a respite for travellers on the Kalumbaru Road in the form
of camping and meals. Their Kimberley
Burger is apparently famous. We had
lunch, and were disappointed to see that fuel was 10c per litre cheaper at
Drysdale than it was at Mt Barnett, where we had refuelled; diesel was selling
here at $2.40 per litre!
From Drysdale, we headed back out onto the Kalumbaru Road
and continued north. We were heading for
the King Edward River and planned to camp there for a few nights. It was only 103km to the turn off, but
because of the state of the road, that took us over 2 hours. We reached the campground and set up in time
to go for a swim in the lovely clear water of the King Edward River and enjoy
the serenity of another nearly empty campground. Well, it would have been
serene if not for the dreaded gennie being run by the camper a hundred or so
metres from us. Enough said, but we did
go and ask them to turn if off about 7.30pm.
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| The falls on the King Edward near our campsite |
The next day (Monday) was going to be a big one, and we were
up and getting organised early. We had
chosen to drive up to the Mitchell Plateau and the falls and back in a day
rather than camp up there, fearing the constant helicopters taking off and
landing all day at the campground would be less than peaceful. It meant that we wouldn’t have time to
explore further and take in Surveyor’s Pool and Point Warender, but there would
always be next time.
The road from King Edward to the campground at Mitchell
Falls was 75km, and we fully expected it to be a nightmare, so had allowed plenty
of time. As it was, the road had been recently graded, and although still
rocky, it wasn’t as bad as we expected.
It was a good thing that we’d allowed plenty of time, as about half way
up we heard a loud noise coming from the roof rack. One of the brackets had come loose a few
weeks earlier, so we thought that something similar had happened again. Doug got out and tightened everything, and we
set off again – noise still there. It
turned out that one of the brackets had snapped in half. There was nothing that could be done at the
side of the road, so we nursed the car the rest of the way to the campground
and decided we’d tackle it when we got back from our day exploring.
The Mitchell Falls is one of the images of the Kimberley
that everyone knows, the vivid green water flowing down through the series of
four waterfalls into the valley below.
But what they don’t tell you is how beautiful the whole plateau is. It’s like being in another world. During the drive up we noticed the vegetation
changing, the eucalypt woodland was now dominated by thousands of Livingston
palms; you wouldn’t be surprised to see dinosaurs in an area like this. And
every so often the road got close enough to the edge of the plateau to reveal
beautiful views that went on forever.
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| Big Mertons Falls |
The hike into the falls took us about two hours, with a bit
of rock scrambling and a lot of stopping to take in the scenery or look under
ledges for hidden Aboriginal art. We passed
Little Mertens Falls on the way, which had not long stopped flowing, and
further up the track, came across Big Mertens Falls (now called Mertens
Gorge). It was still only just flowing,
but you got the feel of the immensity of the water in the wet. We crossed the river and looked over the edge
into the gorge below. It was here too
that we met up with the first tour group of our trip. We had expected the APT crowds to be
everywhere, but had so far managed to avoid them, but our luck had come to an
end. I’ve got to the give oldies their
due though, it was no mean feat for them to get up here, some of them with
walking sticks and all. I would like to
know what kind of waivers they sign when they book for these kind of
trips. One of them could easily have
done a hip!!
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| Rock art near our campsite thought to be over 17000 years old |
Not far from Big Mertens we emerged at the top of the Mitchell
Falls. We had to negotiate crossing the
Mitchell River, hopping across rocks (or in my case, being dragged by Doug), to
get round to see the falls in all their glory.
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| Mitchell Falls |
We spent a couple of hours at the top of the falls. We had some lunch, did some exploring and had
a cooling dip in the water before getting picked up by our chauffeur,
Phillippe, who flew us out and over the falls, and back down to our car. What a way to end a great day.
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| Post-flight hair style |
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| Mitchell Falls from the air |
Back down and now to address the problem with the roof
rack. It was going to be a simple
fix. Doug would just replace the broken
front bracket with one of the middle brackets, and that should be enough until
we can get it fixed, possibly in Kunnanurra in a couple of weeks. Should take about half an hour and then we’d
be right for the two hour trip back to camp, in time for a swim.
The problem was, though, that when he took off the middle
bracket to move it to the front, it was broken too. And then he thought he’d take the middle
bracket off the other side and use that – you guessed it – broken too. So here we were, two hours from our camper,
with three out of six mounts for the roof rack broken.
Hindsight is a wonderful thing, isn’t it? When I looked at the broken brackets, I
wasn’t surprised they had broken. They
were made of woefully thin material that hadn’t stood up to the stresses of the
roads we’d travelled. The rack was fine,
but the mounts were only suitable for dodging round town. It probably had been coming over time, but
the roads north from the Gibb River Road had sealed the deal. But hindsight doesn’t help when you’re stuck.
I had had visions of us leaving the rack and its contents
with the ranger and coming back the next day with the trailer, and somehow
trying to get everything onto the roof of the trailer, then taking it all off
again every time we set up camp. But I
have a very clever husband, and we were aided by a very helpful Ranger (thanks
Ranger John). The Ranger Station had a
scrap yard and maintenance shed, which he said we were welcome to. So over the next two hours, we scrounged in
the scrap pile and found enough angle iron for Doug to make six new brackets
for the rack. We fixed it enough for us
to make a slow journey back to our camp, and even got there in time to have a
very quick swim before dark. And a
well-earned beer.
The next morning was spent fitting all of the newly made
brackets (which are probably stronger than the ones that were on it). Running repairs were also made on the strap
holding the wheelie bag on, as it had fallen victim to the roads too. I took this chance to give the car a bit of a
clean out and do a bit of washing.
Although the roof rack was now sound, we made the hard
decision that, rather than continue our trip further north to the Aboriginal
community of Kalumbaru, where we’d planned to spend a few days, it might be a
better idea to head back south. Just in
case we had further problems with it. So
we had another swim in our lovely pool in the Kind Edward River, and then
packed up the camper and headed back down to Drysdale.
The grader had been making his way south, and the trip back,
for the most part, was far better than the way up. We arrived late in the afternoon, set up the
camper, had a wonderful shower, and headed over to the homestead for a Kimberley
Burger. It was a great night, and a bit
of a relief that the roof rack had held up so far. It was also nice to catch up again with
Ranger John, who was down that way to do some work. We were able to buy him a drink or two by way
of thanks and, after his twenty years of working there we learned a lot about
life on the Plateau.
We said goodbye to Drysdale the next morning. This next stage travelling back to the Gibb
River Road, where the grader hadn’t reached would certainly test the repairs on
the roof rack. But it all seemed to be
holding well, and we reached Ellenbrae Station for morning tea. Ellenbrae had been a planned stop for the
night, but since we had changed plans, and were way ahead of ourselves, we kept
going. After enjoying their famous
scones, jam and cream of course.
As we travelled along the road, heading for Home Valley, our
next intended stop, we noticed another grader driver busy doing his thing. Great, we thought!! What we didn’t notice was the large rock he’d
graded into the centre of the road, amongst the pile of dust. It hit the underside of the car with a loud
bang, and we pulled over to see what the damage was. Thankfully the car had underbody protection
plates, as there was a large dent in one of them, and it had broken it off the
chassis. So we now had developed a very
loud rattle when the revs were low to go with our dodgy roof rack! Nothing for it but to head on to Home Valley,
where Doug said he could fix it, but everyone will definitely hear us coming.
Not much further we came across a rental car at the side of
road, up on a jack, with both passenger-side wheels damaged and a big dent in
the side of the vehicle. A nice French
woman was sitting in the little shade there was waiting for her husband to come
back. Someone had given him a lift to
try and organise repairs. It seems they
had found similar rocks to us while following the grader. After making sure she had enough food and
water with her, we left her sitting there, hoping that she would be alright. Home Valley was only 50km or so away, and
there was a reasonable amount of passing traffic on the road.
Home Valley is owned by the Indigenous Land Corporation, and
runs a training academy for indigenous people in the area, offering
apprenticeships and training. I was
really looking forward to spending time there, but Home Valley is probably the
biggest disappointment I’ve had so far.
We arrived early afternoon, and the first impression you get
is one of a very touristy resort, with a big pool, children’s playground (a la
McDonalds) and huge restaurant/bar area.
The campground near the pool was small, and reasonably busy (remember
we’d had a lot of places almost to ourselves recently, so anything would seem busy). We had heard that they also offered a bush
campground further out on the banks of the Pentecost River, so we decided to
check that out.
After a 4km drive, we reached the bush camp, which was
weedy, open and exposed, and again, reasonably busy. It wasn’t much for the $37 per night they wanted. That, together with the fact that there was
nothing you could access on the property yourselves, without signing up and
paying for a tour. You could do a couple
of self-guided walks but walking wouldn’t get you very far to see what the
property had to offer.
We sat and thought for a while, and watched another half
dozen vehicles arrive and look for camping spots. El Questro was only another 50km further down
the road, so we decided to make a break for it, and jump further ahead of our
planned itinerary.
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| The famous Pentecost crossing - not much water at this time of year unfortunately |
We arrived at the famous gateway to El Questro on Wednesday
afternoon, and secured ourselves a private riverside campsite, well away from
the station township. Yes, township –
that gives you some idea of the size of the place, and the slickness of how
it’s run. We originally booked in for
four nights, but have extended it now to six.
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| Turn off to El Questro |
Now this post is more than long enough, so I’ll leave
telling you about El Questro till the next one.
The sun is up now and the day is warming up. Doug’s up and has made me my toast, so we’re
all set to take on the day.
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