Rachel Grindlay

After our walking and paddling in Katherine Gorge we had a couple of days off before we joined our SBW group in Darwin. We spent a very enjoyable day at Umbrawarra Gorge – lots of rock-hopping down a gorge which just kept getting deeper and deeper.

Tom didn’t believe me that we might get wet but there were some compulsory wades – no great hardship when it’s over 30°C.

Back in Darwin we met up with the other 9 people in our group and hopped in a mini-bus which dropped us off at Maguk (Barramundi Gorge). We had a short walk before we made camp. The real walking started on day 2. Disaster almost immediately as we managed to become separated from 2 members of group within 20 minutes of leaving camp! Many ‘day-o’s’ later we were reunited and actually on our way. Much of the first day was on a fairly well-formed (but unmarked) track.

We had a delightful lunch at the “Jade Pool” before spending most of the afternoon at Picaninny Pools.

I’m not sure what possessed me but I did a 6m jump – but I wasn’t standing at the top waiting for the photographers to get in position – I was either going straight away or not at all!

Day 3 we left Barramundi Creek and headed across to Gronophyllum Creek.

There were many beautiful waterholes on this creek but we pushed past many of them to have a late morning tea at the “Lap Pool”. [Though it seemed there were multiple “Lap Pools” depending on who you spoke to]

More swims in crystal-clear water before lunch at another delightful pool. We camped earlier than intended as progress had not been as fast we would have liked.

Day 4 we intended to get going early so were up well before dawn. One of the party had taken some heavy falls the previous day and wasn’t faring too well. We waited for a helicopter to take him out. Subsequently we started walking a fair bit later than planned. Eventually we were on our way down Gronophyllum Creek before crossing over the flood plains (very quickly as they had been burnt) to the exquisite Cascade Creek. Up until this point I’d been a bit ho-hum about the trip. I felt that the creeks we’d walked through in the Kimberley were as good, if not better, than what we’d been passing.

Cascade Creek is spectacular. Unfortunately as we were trying to make up time from the previous day we couldn’t spend too long here – only 2 hours to enjoy the many jumps, water slide and beautiful pools.

Mid-afternoon we reluctantly headed upstream through an attractive gorge with lots of rock-hopping.

Again we camped earlier than intended as it was getting late in the day and we were still over an hour from our planned campsite. Our spontaneous campsite was attractive but a little slopey.

We had an early start on day 5 to to continue making up lost time from the previous two days. The party split – 3 of us continued up the gorge, with an expected compulsory swim (pack float), while the remainder headed cross-country to cut off a bend. With some judicious scrambling we managed to avoid swimming but subsequently missed some art work which we were looking for ‘after the packfloat’.

Patsy got through all the tricky sections only to slip on the last climb-down and took a full dunking (with a non waterproofed pack!). The others had beaten us to the rendezvous point by a few minutes, where they were ‘camelling up’ for the cross-country trek to come. The first 8km or so was easy walking through burnt or low vegetated country. I was feeling confident we’d get into camp in the early afternoon which would be a nice change from the previous few days. We had a dry lunch at 1pm and then continued on. The country got more difficult, progress slowed in a tangle of small tributaries and head-high spear grass. It was after 4pm when we finally found ourselves at the top of the (dry) waterfall we were planning to camp at. There wasn’t a lot of water at the top but a large pool at the bottom. Peter and I headed down to check out the camping options – I was relieved to find an acceptable flat campsite next to the pool. It was a long, tough day with no swims so we were happy to get into camp and have a wash.

Day 6 surely had to provide some relief. This wasn’t the trip I was expecting!? Where were the early arrivals at camp, followed by multiple cups of tea, swims and general relaxation for the afternoon?

Fortunately we made good time in pretty easy walking country and were at a lovely campsite by 1:30pm. Everyone enjoyed the chance to chill out after some pretty long days.

Day 7 started with a short walk to the start of Koolpin Gorge (Jarrangbarnmi).

Once in the gorge some of us opted to pack float where we could while others boulder-hopped. Some people’s packs were more waterproof than others…  fortunately a leisurely lunch break provided time to dry out wet sleeping bags.

Our last camp was on the flood plains so we savoured the final swim above the last waterfall before making camp in the late afternoon.

The last day we only had 5km to get to Flying Fox Crossing on the South Alligator River where the mini-bus would pick us up. It was good walking and we made it with half an hour to spare. From there it was what felt like a long drive back to Darwin. The trip finished with the buffet at Seafood on Cullen taking in the sunset over the water.

 

Continued from Part I

The falls were spectacular and we were relieved to know the hardest 2 days of the trip where out of the way.

Ro had ensured happy hour was good on night 6 with a 2L cask of wine in the food drop. That had been her main concern when the bag had rolled off the boulder – did the wine stay intact? It had, the main complaint seemed to be “where was the second cask?”.

Unusually there had been a bit of cloud around on day 6 & 7. This provided a magnificent sunrise on day 7.

The morning of day 7 we had a few things missing. Apparently there’s a quoll out there that likes gingernuts, women’s knickers and steel wool.

Mike came up with an excellent plan of doing a one-night trip up the creek and then returning to the top of the falls the following day. This meant we could leave a lot of our food behind and avoid heavy packs for a couple of days. The food bags were re-hung (in a more accessible tree) and we headed upstream.

With a fairly short day ahead we had a leisurely morning tea with lots of jumping by Mike and Tom at a great waterhole.

Our camp on night 7 was our most intimate of the trip. It was at a wonderful waterhole, almost the definition of serenity (other than when Tom was jumping in!).

We explored a bit of the nearby country that afternoon.

On day 8 we headed back downstream following a slight different route.

We camped in a different spot above the falls on night 8 as the spot we’d chosen on night 6 had been a bit of a wind tunnel. The weather which had been quite cool up until night 6 started to warm up so we had a much more pleasant night second time round.

On day 9 we descended below the falls – via a side creek a couple of kilometres downstream. We got some great views of the falls on our way out.

We did a day trip upstream to below the falls in the afternoon. There was some good rock art along the way.

On day 10 most of us did a day trip downstream to see how far we could get before we would have to swim. The section below was the only time we got wet until the final canal.

The final canal where swimming was your only option stopped us. We had morning tea and a swim. Tom swam part way down the canal and then climbed up the wall and did a jump (if you look carefully you can see his silhouette in the photo below).

Our final day of walking we exited up the side-creek we’d come down on day 9 and then across into another side-creek which cam back to Garimbu Creek below the canal we’d walked down to on day 10. It wasn’t the most pleasant terrain and the temperature seemed to be up a few degrees on previous days. We were all losing the will to walk by the time we got to camp.

Our final day we just walked back upstream 100m or so and waited for the chopper to arrive. We were taken back to Mitchell Plateau airstrip, and then a flight back to Kununurra.

Back in Kununurra we had a lovely dinner at The Pumphouse, and later that night (with much help from google) we finally finished the crossword we’d been battling with all trip!

An another excellent Kimberley trip. Many thanks for Mike for leading, particularly after Ro left us prematurely on day 4, and to everyone for their excellent company.

Getting to The Kimberley region of Australia is a logistics challenge in itself. For Sydney-siders like us, it generally involves flying to Darwin (having to overnight there due to the flight schedules), flying to Kununurra (maybe having to overnight again) and then some other transport to wherever you’re walking. This year’s trip was in the Prince Regent National Park, west of Mitchell Plateau. Once we finally got to Kununurra the adventure started with a 1.5hr flight from Kununurra to the Mitchell Plateau Airstrip.

We got great views of the region on the way.

From the Mitchell Plateau Airstrip we were then transported by helicopter into the Roe River, via a food drop on Garimbu Creek. We were planning to be out for 12 days/11 nights with us due to get to the food drop on night 6.

We didn’t have far to walk on the first day! In fact we were camping where the chopper dropped us off, which was nice given our packs were full of 6 days of food.

Day 2 we started walking down the Roe River.

We didn’t get far before we hit these major falls which were a great spot for morning tea and a swim.

That afternoon we visited the original “Bradshaw” art works.

And then we settled down to camp on night 2. The weather was a lot cooler than we were expecting and most of us were cold on the first few nights.

Day 3 saw us go cross-country to cut off a couple of loops on the Roe. Unfortunately we saw quite a few cows, including some herds. In theory DPAW does some culling but from the numbers we saw it’s not that effective.

Lunch was had at this lovely set of falls.

There were lots of pot-holes around. This one fitted Tom in it!

That afternoon there was generally easy walking down the river.

We found some lovely shady overhangs, which unsurprisingly had rock art in them.

And we had a delightful spot to camp for night 3.

Day 4 we continued down the Roe River. The rocky slabs gave way to more sandy country. It was fairly easy going but not particularly exciting. Tom & I went on a detour up Wyulda Creek where we found some lovely waterholes and had a swim.

Expecting to find the rest of the party at camp we were surprised when they flagged us down only a short distance from the Wyulda Ck/Roe River junction. Unfortunately one of our group had broken her wrist and the decision had been made to activate one of the PLBs. A chopper picked her up within 90 minutes of the PLB being activated. And so then there were 7…

Subsequently we got to our intended camp later than planned. We were a little surprised when the creek we intended to follow cross-country the next day was a very small, dry channel. Tom & I headed up it to see what was going on and found the larger creek (with some water in it) actually joined the Roe 500m downstream rather than what was shown on the map.

We had groups dinners on the trip. Each evening’s food was allocated to one person to prepare (everyone doing 1.5 nights over the trip). Night 4 was Melissah’s night and we had a delicious laksa, followed by damper which we filled with honey for dessert.

Day 5 we left the Roe to start our cross-country route to Garimbu Creek. DPAW had been burning in the park in May and when we encountered those sections the walking was a lot faster.

Where vegetation hadn’t been burnt then things were slower as you normally couldn’t see where you were putting your feet so a lot of concentration was required.

We’d had an early start on day 5 as we were going across the tops on what could have been a long day. The going was reasonable, but we’d been looking for a campsite for a while with no options coming up. We were pinning our hopes on a permanent waterhole marked on the creek we were descending. When we arrived at the waterhole it wasn’t quite the picturesque camp we were hoping for. Having been walking for over 8 hours we weren’t keen to walk much further. It wasn’t too bad; there was some sand we could flatten out to sleep on and the water was ok if you cleared the scum off the surface….

I had a bit more energy left then most of party so I decided to push on another hundred metres. To my joy and amazement what had been an exclusively bouldery/rocky creek, with little surface water, suddenly gave way to large rock slabs with running water and even some waterholes big enough to swim in! Amazing. Everyone was pretty happy.

Day 6 we didn’t have much distance to cover but we were expecting difficult terrain. The terrain didn’t disappoint, we spent 5 hours covering 5km (including breaks). The worst of it in ‘tiger country’ where we were going about 0.5km/hour through deep spinifex and boulders. We were pretty happy when we got to Garimbu Creek and our food drop. When the food drop had been hung in the trees at the start of the trip one of the bags had rolled off a boulder and got a couple of tears in it. We were a bit concerned that this may have made it vulnerable to animals, but while there had been some gnawing the animal seemed to have mainly had a penchant for plastic bags. The only food casualty was a twiggy stick (salami).

go to part 2

I wanted to put a trip on our bushwalking club’s program and I was searching for inspiration when I stumbled across Tom’s list of ‘future walks he’d like to do’. Russells Needle was on it and from there I had the seed for my trip planning. I’d read a couple of trip reports about sketchy ascents of Russells Needle but I figured it was an out and back so if things got beyond people’s comfort level they could just stop! Planning a route out Rocky Waterholes Creek seemed the obvious choice to avoid backtracking. I found a few more sketchy trip reports of people trying to go up Rocky Waterholes Creek so it seemed like a great adventurous option. And thus it went on the program – all pretty unknown.

In the two weeks leading up to my trip I received quite a bit of information regarding the ascent of Russells Needle and also exits out of Rocky Waterholes Creek. While it is great to have information suddenly it didn’t seem like so much of an adventure!

Saturday morning arrived and 7 of us set out from the Wattle Ridge Carpark. With another bushwalking group also setting out at the same time we had to use overflow parking spaces. The weather was beautiful for walking and it wasn’t long before we were dropping packs at the track junction with Slott Way and the Ahearn Lookout track. We took the opportunity for a side trip to Ahearn Lookout so everyone could get expansive views of the Nattai Valley, and particularly our target for the day – Russells Needle. Russells Needle is an unusual sandstone spine which sticks out into the Nattai Valley, a knife-edge ridge separated from the main cliffline by a deep saddle.

Back to our packs we made quick time down Slott Way which was (too?) well marked with pink/yellow tape and blue metal markers on what felt like every second tree.

The Nattai is still fairly easy going after the floods which scoured it out in mid-2016. Lunch and our campsite was a large sandy bank on the Nattai not far downstream from Needle Creek. After lunch we set off with day packs to ascend Russells Needle. Prickly bushes (blackthorn?) made the initial slopes unpleasant and of course the group were constantly advising the leader that ‘the ridge over there looks nice and clear’ (they were ignored). Once we’d broken through that we were soon skirting the upper cliff line. It took a while to reach a break in the cliffline, which looked easy, though turned out to be a little less so. The rope was deployed for those that wanted it. This brought us on to the knife-edge ridge.

Now we were almost at the real deal – we picked our way up the rocky spine until we got just below the summit. Soon the majority of the party were standing on the summit plateau.

Some were more comfortable with the considerable exposure – Matthew lounged on the true summit rock for quite some time. After a decent period taking in the views and giving everyone who wanted to the opportunity to get to the true summit we started heading down. It was only then that I discovered the easy (unexposed) route up to the summit rather than the more exposed route we’d taken up the boulder.

On the descent we took the ‘clear ridge’ that everyone wanted to be on during the ascent. I’m pleased to report it was just as full of blackthorn… Back to camp around 4:30pm, after picking up water from Needle Creek, we settled in for a pleasant happy hour and evening around the camp fire.

Sunday always had the most unknowns – not least what the weather was going to do. The forecast during the week had oscillated between 0-3mm to 5-10mm almost daily. The most recent forecast was fortunately back to 0-3mm and Sunday dawned clear which was a good sign.

Away from camp at 8:30am we walked down the Nattai a few hundred metres before crossing over to Rocky Waterholes Creek.

Similar to the Nattai there was significant flooding impact so the going was reasonable – as reasonable as it can be when you’re boulder hopping and scrambling. The creek varied between large boulders which were a full body work out to get around, flatter sections with beautiful pools (though only Matthew was keen to swim!), and some delightful cascades over rocky slabs. The clouds started building but other than a few drops at lunch we were spared, which was fortunate as some sections of the creek were slippery enough without extra moisture from above.

Shortly after lunch we hit the side creek at 625986 that we hoped to ascend. Alan had kindly scouted it for us during lunch and was able to confirm we could get up. I’m always a bit concerned about whether Alan’s routes will work for the whole party but he assured me he did it with his “Melinda hat” on. We scrambled up the true-left of the creek around a number of waterfalls and then bashed up from the true right to one of the many fire-trails that exist on the ridges in the area.

Those that were keen headed down the firetrail to the skinny ridge which pokes out into Rocky Waterholes Creek, giving spectacular views of where we’d spent most of the day.

From there it was just an easy walk following firetrails and a track skirting the Wattle Ridge property. We arrived back at the cars at 4:30pm – no sign of an epic! An excellent weekend of adventuring in a lesser visited part of the world.