Mitchell Falls (late dry)
Swimming at the top of the falls
28.8.09
We had planned to head to Kalumbaru first, but met a nice family at Miners Pool who were heading to Mitchell Falls, so decided to go in on the same day as them, on the theory that kids walking together can walk for *much* further than kids walking with only their own family. Someone had told us about some indigenous rock art on the Mitchell Falls road, so we stopped at the first site for lunch – with mainly wandjina style art. It wasn’t signposted at all, and once we were there I felt that we really weren’t supposed to be there….. it was obviously a sacred site of some description, and it felt very eerie. The art was amazing and T was very excited about it. (As an aside, his own art has really changed to reflect his surroundings on the trip. Lots of four wheel drives, crocodiles, kangaroos, boab trees, etc. And he has also started to experiment with “aboriginal art”, working with serpent shapes and dots. Even in the most adverse circumstances T can really lose himself in the “flow” of art, which is very precious. And he seems to use it as a way of interpreting/intergrating new information.)
We went down the “notorious” road on the Mitchell Plateau unscathed, though P prophesised that something is bound to break on these roads…. probably the suspension. The corrugations were bad, and it was made more interesting by the extremely steep ascents/descents – achieved in first gear. At one stage we actually came across at “steep descent” sign, which prompted a “God, this *must* be bad” from me, and a chuckle as we reached the campsite and it suggested “slow down”.
We had planned to hike in to the falls, and then helicopter out. But we hadn’t realised that you need to book the helicopter taxi, and the office didn’t open till 7am, and we set off at 6am. So we had to hike in and out, but saved $400 on the helicopter. It turned out that the two-way hike (6.6km, class 5) was quite doable. I think we had had the wind put up us by the fact that there *were* helicopter taxis at all. I mean, it *must* be bad if there’s a business there helicoptering people in and out! I packed J in for about half the way, and P packed him out the whole way. We were back at around 11am, which included a swim above the falls…. which were worth the walk, btw.
The campsite on the plateau had no water, little shade and a lot of dust, so we decided to head *back* down the road to the King Edward River campsite where there was swimming, and we could park ourselves for two nights, waiting for Kalumbaru to open for business on Monday. T commented that “dad was having a busy day”, which made me laugh, as yes it was quite busy, what with getting up at 5am, hiking for more than 6km, carrying 20kg for the last 3km in the heat of the day, then packing up camp, driving down a really bad road for almost 2 hours, then collecting firewood and setting up camp at the other end. We were both exhausted, but surprisingly the kids were fine – even T who had done the whole walk!
King Edward River is a great campsite. Shade, a beautiful river, nice pit toilets, I still can’t quite believe we’re doing all this swimming in croc country, but maybe that just goes to show what lemmings we are. We visited the nearby Bradshaw art site, which didn’t make me feel quite so intrusive, as apparantly this art is believed to belong to a pre-aboriginal civilisation.
Bush Bath (King Edward River)
We’d been told that the road in was bad – allow 2 -3 hours to travel 52 km. I didn’t think it was so bad, but we had to stop a few times as T felt sick, and P seemed to need to use the air con as an extra set of gears.
