12-23/06/2017 - photos

Participants: Tom Brennan, Rachel Grindlay, Mike Arnott, Rosemary McDonald, Marcia Kaye, Grace Love, Peter Love, Melissah Adams

  • Day 1-3 - From Kununurra, we took a light plane to the Mitchell Plateau airstrip, and then a helicopter to a set of cascades on the Moran River, where we explored for the afternoon. (5km) The following day we headed downstream past some spectacular falls, and then in the afternoon did a side trip to visit the original art panel found by Joseph Bradshaw, camping on slabs on the river nearby. (7km) We spent the next morning cutting across country to avoid some sandy loops in the river, returning near a great set of falls for lunch. It was only a short distance downstream from there to another camp on rocky slabs. (12km)
  • Day 4-6 - A short way downstream was another section of gorge, that we walked through for a short way, and then climbed out and around as the going got rougher. Rachel and I did a side trip up Wyulda Creek to a lovely pool. We rejoined the group to find that Ro had had a fall and broken her wrist, and a PLB had been set off. A chopper arrived fairly quickly, and we pushed on to a sandy camp a bit further downstream. (17km). The next two days were expected to be the roughest of the trip as we were crossing the grain of the country to Garimbu Creek. An early start got us over the hump by morning tea, and into a shady gorge. However, campsites were not forthcoming, and we were looking at a sandy camp by a stagnant pool before the creek magically opened up into flowing water and rock slabs. Heaven! (13km) We still had 5km of rough country to get to Garimbu Falls, and it took us 5 hours. Plenty of waist high spinifex and boulders slowed us, so it was nice to get to some easier walking approaching the falls. The falls themselves are spectacular, around 60m high, tumbling into a deep gorge. We were happy to find our food drop largely intact, with only a few nibbles from the local wildlife. (7km).
  • Day 7-8 - We left most of our food at Garimbu Falls, and headed up the gorge to a lovely campsite, not far from an art and burial site. (7km) The next day we returned to camp atop Garimbu Falls via a different route, exploring some parts of the gorge we had previously bypassed. (9km)
  • Day 9-10 - After a morning visit to a view of Garimbu Falls, we climbed out of the gorge to another view of the falls, then down a lovely side creek to the lower gorge. In the afternoon most of us rockhopped up the gorge to the bottom of the falls, which was an excellent walk. (11km) The following day we explored downstream from camp. This was only a couple of kilometres, but took us a good chunk of the day, and was also excellent fun. The end of the road is a 600m swim, after which we returned back to the same camp. (5km)
  • Day 11-12 - The next day we climbed back up the pretty side gorge we descended two days earlier. Once we left the side creek, it was slow going across the tops and tedious rock-hopping down a different side creek back to Garimbu Creek. A few more kilometres of walking brought us to the top of the lower falls to camp. (11km) The helicopter picked us up the next morning and flew us back to Mitchell Plateau, for a plane flight back to Kununurra.