Mitchell Falls

Heading west along the Gibb we stopped at Ellenbrae Station for some lunch. Back on the Gibb, which was at last becoming a bit rougher, we came across a couple who asked for some help as their suspension as their shock mounts had disintegrated. It took maybe half an hour to canablise his mud flaps and turn them into temporary shock mounts before he was back on the road again.

Of course no good deed goes unpunished and while helping this couple Daz had unloaded a couple of supply boxes to get to his tools. In is wisdom he stacked the boxes 2 high on the side of the road. This was fine until the top box fell off. This happened to be alcohol box (well one of them anyway) and we lost 3 cans of beer and a bottle of Kaluah.....bugger! For his irresponsible behavior the kangaoo court (ie Nat) sentenced Daz to 2 nights without drinking however this was generally accepted as un-enforceable so the sentence was suspended.

 Continuing west we were starting to finally hit some decent corrugation patches on the road....some of them were making the patrol drift sideways and some were big enough to slow you down to a crawl. This was more like the Gibb River Road we'd read so much about -  hooray! We turned right to head up the Kalumburu Road towards Mitchell Falls. The road wasn't terrible but it did get worse as we continued on to Drysdale Station. We camped that night at the Miners Pool with the Summers family and made plans for them to drop off their box trailer at Drysdale (it was in need of some minor repairs which the welders at Drysdale could do, and rumor was the the rest of the way to Mitchell Falls was rough and slow and not kind to run-of-the-mill box trailers).


 So the next, morning with the Summers Family sporting tents on their roof rack it was time to hit the road again. The road definately got worse as we headed north - we were now without doubt in the 'rattle zone'. This means that this is where stuff starts to fail....like beer cans exploding in the fridge, trailer shackles rattling loose, the Anderson Plug rattling out of the truck, the door open light turning on and off, and the EGT gauge wigging out intermittantly. It's the sort of place where you get out and check your gear every 50 km or so, and if you hear a new rattle you stop to check it out in case something serious is failing. That said you could get a commodore up the road if you were prepared to go sloooow. 


Turning left onto the Mitchel Falls Road, the road turned into more of a track lined nearly the whole way with palm trees. While the track wasn't terrible, you still had to get down to a crawl for parts of it. It took about 2 1/2 hours to travel the 80 km to the Mitchell Falls camp ground. The camp grounds were good and we were soon set up complete with camp shower set up (after chewing dust all day that shower was worth is weight in gold). 

Chopper flight to Mitchell Falls

 Next morning while the Summers family bush walked to Mitchell falls we got our washing done (hand washing in the fish box) and then hopped on a chopper and flew to the top of Mitchell falls celebrity style! If you come to Mitchell Falls I definately recommend you save up for the chopper ride as it's the only way you can get a look at all the layers of the falls. They dropped us off at the top of the falls where we met the Summers and started back down the 4 km return walk taking photos the whole way. 

Jess is the co-pilot

Matilda give the thumbs up on her first Chopper flight

Mitchell Falls from the air

Mitchell Falls on the right (3 tiers) an Big Mertons on the left

Chopper landing at Mitchell Falls

Big Mertons falls. A few days after our visit a lady fell to her death over here :-(

The falls are amazing around this place and there's plenty of places to stop and have a swim on the way back. One such place is Little Mertens falls. You follow the track under an over hanging rock with aboriginal rock art and next thing you know you're behind the waterfall! You can swim in the plunge pool or stand in the falls and get pummeled by the water from above. Nat did both! We had lunch under the falls and then made it back to camp. Happily both Jess and Matilda can walk 4km and even managed it without too much whinging! 

Cave under Little Mertons Falls

Nat finally get a shower with decent water pressure.

Jess in particular is really becommimg a bush tucker girl. She's been catching the ants with the bright green bottoms and eating the green tails off them! Later in the arvo we doubled back to the nearby creek with the Lilo and had a ball swimming around the little rapids. 

Kids are turning into pretty good rock-hoppers

Next morning we said goodbye to the Summers family as they were heading back to the Gibb (they need to get home a month before us so can't dawdle!) and we did another bush walk and went swimming in the creek. On a whim we decided to head north the next day through the aboriginal community of Kalumburu to Honeymoon Bay on the northern Kimberley coast.