The Kimberley Walking Epic (Part 1)

Finally after 15 months in the Kimberley I managed to catch a fish !! After the three week tour of Kimberley with Mum and Dad I headed off to Drysdale River National Park, Western Australia's largest and most northerley national park, for a 6 day hike. Curiously WA is littered with national parks and conservation reserves (and heaps more are being planned) but there is no money allocated to doing anything on them. Thus Drysdale has no management plan, no access road and no staff, but plenty of feral cattle from the neighbouring cattle stations. They were our only companions for the six days - along with a few skittish crocs.
During the revious three week tour the trusty steed (dubbed Esperanza on her maiden voyage without a hint of irony) had developed a little mechanical trouble, nothing that a quick bit of bush-mechanicesque canvas and wire fashioning couldn't fix. However when consulting professional help in Kununurra, the Italian mechanic told me that Esperanza, she no good , So after frantic last minute ringing around Kununurra I managed to hire a ute to get up to the park. Leaving Kununurra before dark I managed to belt along the Gibb River Road, knowing that its endless corrugations and drift would feel like a runway compared to the Kalumbaru Road. As the ute was a hire car the constant vibrating caused by the corrugations didn't cause quite so much angst and I could put my Corrugated roads are best taken at 100 kilometres per hour theory in to practice. (It was only later when I returned the car and found out that insurance runs out at the Pentecost crossing, only the first 100 kilometres of the 1200 kilometre round trip) The Gibb River Road, as rough as it was did seem likke tarmac as soon as we the Kalumbaru road and its seemingly endless road wide corrugations. Somehow the car made it to the Carson River Station turnoff using rough details I had got off the internet. (Even the Department of Environment couldn't tell me where to go) However arriving at the small camping sign near the old cattle yards I took a right instead of a left and then started following dust from a car. It seemed to be going at great haste, and a small fire with the leftovers of a killa (a deceased cow) explained the apparent hurry. (Carson River is a station owned by an aboriginal corporation/community supposedly run as a business. Sometimes the efficiency of the business is challenged by community members going out on country and surreptitiously helping themselves to a stray killa here and there, though to the perpetrators this makes perfect sense because being members of the community they are the owners of the cattle.) As darkness fell swags were brought out and a dry river bed formed a very comfortable mattress.

The Kimberley Walking Epic (Part 2) Sand Glorius Sand

The next day was when the hard work really began. All our supplies for the next six days were packed in to two backpacks - tent, trangia, food, fishing lines and all. Considering the high quality of our map (a photocopied 1:100,000, with the creases in the crucial places), the prudent decision to follow the river was taken by consensus.
The intensely rainy four months of the Wet and the equally intensly hot and dry eight months of Dry means that for a short period every year rivers in the north flow at full tilt, going from trickling streams which you can jump over to raging torrents that are tens of kilometres wide, and 20 or thirty metres deep. When the waters recede in its wake are huge amounts of flotsam and jetsam - as big as whole trees, and kilometres wide of golden sand. Thus sticking to the river often meant we found ourselves trudging through knee deep sand under the blazing sun far from any cooling breeze coming off the water, for what seemed like forever. Perhaps it was the effect of the blazing sun, I started having flashbacks of the Sahara Episode.

Not long in we found ourselves scrambling up rocks on the far bank of west side of the river and the view was awe-inspiring, looking down the valley the river had carved out, imagining it at its full flow - probably four or five kilometres wide, the surrounding hills covered in thick forest as far as the eye could see in all directions. It is at times like that the enornmity and the isolation of the north really sink in. There were probably no people, roads, lights or any other scars of civilisation within 300 kilometres. There aren't many places in the world where you can say that.

The day dragged on with a little drudgery under the hot sun, which seemed to become more intense as it moved toward the horizon in the afternoon. After a few entertaining discussions about where exactly we were on the map, a wholesale ignorance of the needle on the $6.50 compass, a river crossing at shoulder height and a misjudged attempt to cut a corner by hiking over a point and coming down the other side through a couple of hundred metres of thorns as sharp as a chef's knife, defeat that we wouldn't reach the waterfall that day was conceeded. Camp was set up on the bank, with the massive rockwall on the opposite bank echoing the sound of running water and any noise we made.

The next morning we set out fairly early, and not long in came across a loose, thick wire cable running along to river bank. Following it out of curiosity, after 400 metres or so it finally snaked its way up the rock wall to a pully, cemented in to the cliff. On the opposite bank I spotted what looked like some sort of engine surrounded by a housing made from corrugated iron. So maybe we weren't quite as remote as first thought !!!

About 20 minutes from where we had camped we finally heard the roar that we had been attentively craning to hear for the last days, and ten minutes later the falls, in all their glory, came in to view.

The Kimberley Walking Epic (Part 3) The Perfect Campsite

The amount of water tipping over the edge of the horse shoe shaped cliff in to the deep pool below more than matched the thunderous roar that echoed across the plain. After a rest and a few photos we then proceeded to find and make a path to scramble up to the top of the waterfall. When we finally made it, the views both ways, looking bacck down the river as it snaked across the plain, and looking up the river as it wound its way down from the rocky hills covered in the afternoon haze were equally iimpressive.

About a kilometre further on from the falls we found a large rock ledge, with a few small caves offering protection from the sun, plenty of driftwood, a large patch of sand for sleeping and only 20 metres away from the water' edge. This was to become home for the next four days.

The handlines that we had brought along proved very useful, and the fish were soon biting - even for a novice like me ! I didn't catch anything too big, but what I did catch was big enough to eat, and when grilled on the fire, it tasted delicious. Fortunately no crocodiles showed up to compete against us. A swim in the river was a refreshing escape from the heat of the day, and the caves provided an ideal location for a relaxing read of some books I had meant to read but never had the chance to start. Firewood was abundant, and the wood was so dry that a couple of times the fire almost took on a life of its own.

I did find myself pondering from time to time that it was almost the perfect location for a nomadic people to eke out a subsistance living - plenty of water, flora and fauna for people skilled and knowledgeable enough to survive. And plenty of vandtage spots to quickly identify visiting friends or foe.

One day we did try and leave however not farther on from the waterfall the banks became very swampy and the lure to return to paradise was too strong, so we returned to the little bit of paradise for another night.

Eventually, despite my best Rex Hunt impressions, the fish stopped biting and the food was getting a little thin, so we packed up camp and headed off early one morning in the general direction of the car. As usual, the walk back was far easier and shorter than the other way, especially as our packs were now almost empty. With the forced march pace we adopted, we were within a stone's through of the car by the end of the day.

Suprisingly when we arrived back at the car it was still there, so we through our backpacks in the back and fanged it out of there.

The Kimberley Walking Epic (Part 4) Back to the Pentecost

On the way back to Kununurra I experienced my first punctunre on the Gibb River Road, not bad after 6 trips up and back. However when you get a puncture on the Gibb you really know about it, a sharp rock pretty much tore the tyre to shreds, leaving rubber here, there and everywhere. Other than that the return trip was relatively uneventful, even the corrugations seemed bearable. I even had time to stop and snap a few photos !!

At the Pentecost crossing (For those who don't know, in the north we don't have bridges, but instead crossings, where if the water is low enough - that is the tide is out and the Wet far enough in the past, you get to drive your 4WD across the rocky riverbed. The Pentecost is a huge river, and the crossing is quite close to where it makes its way in to the ocean. It is the last crossing on the Gibb before the relative safety of the Great Northern Highway and Kununurra) we came across an English guy on his motorbike, and a Japanese guy on a fully loaded push bike. (What kind of fool would ride along the Gibb River Road ?) Despite repeated warnings about the number of crocodiles and an offer to carry him across in the back of the ute he pressed on. The Englishman tempted fate by asking, I wonder if Japanese taste like chicken ? He did make it across unscathed, after walking the bike all the way across.

Finally, I can't finish this story without a small thanks to a certain car hire company that somehow ended up charging me less than I could believe for the car hire, including no charge for the tyre or the removal of the thick layer of dust which covered both the outside and inside of the car. Nice work fellas.