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.