Day 154 9/5/14 – King Edward River Campground – Mitchell Falls Campground WA

We had a BIG day in front of us so we were going early, so early that we had to pack down the tent and matresses still covered in due....the due is so thick up here I think you could bottle it! 

We headed off on the last 100kms to Mitchell Falls. The road was in surprisingly good condition, again it wasn’t the M1 but considering where we were I was amazed it was as good as it was! We cruised along at around 50 – 60kms per hour with numerous creek crossings slowing our progress. However much to the boys sheer delight the road the traverses the Mitchell Plateau had a new feature on the road.....massive muddy puddles! They both loved driving through them, and while I did slow down and try to keep one side of Izzy on the dry stuff I was having a ball! We crossed another family heading back and he wasn’t holding back ploughing straight through the centre of every puddle!

2 ½ hours later we had made it, set up our tent and matresses to dry and hit the track. Our first stop was the Little Merhten’s Falls. From the top it looked ok but after finding the track (nothing is sign posted up here) we got to the bottom of the falls where we found a glorious swimming hole. It was pretty warm so we didn’t need too much convincing to take a dip! We had a great time jumping of rocks and I climbed up and sat under the falls, enjoying the sound of the water pounding on my skull!

We headed on across the spinefex covered flats to the next river and hoped along the creek bed to Big Merhten’s Falls. There is no doubt why they call it BIG as the drop is huge with the water falling 40, 50 or 60m straight down where it flows along the base of a deep narrow gorge. While it is an incredible set of falls you can’t get to the bottom of them and I couldn’t scramble far enough around the top of the gorge to enable me be able to see them top to bottom. It was quite unnerving as we needed to hop across a couple of rocks about 3 or 4m from the edge of the falls to follow the track to Mitchell Falls.

By now it was the middle of the day and it was pretty bloody warm. We walked over to the top of Mitchell Falls in the hope of finding a place to have a swim and a bit of shade. While we did find both where we swam was about 30m from the top of the falls that has an incredible amount of water flowing. De and I were the marker boys on the edge of a protected ‘eddy’. Eventually I said ‘this is far from relaxing can we just get out’ and we retreated to have lunch under out postage stamp sized piece of shade.

Mitchell Falls is made up of four (or is it 5) separate falls, with big pool in between each level. The best view of the falls is from a helicopter but at $130/6 minutes/person it was out of our league. The 2^nd best view is from the far side of the falls but as the water was still careening down the river that was also out of the question so we made our own way hoping down the rocks trying to get a decent vantage point. While it wasn’t perfect what we did get to see was pretty amazing.

The view from our swimming hole

On the Edge!

Looking back to the 'Edge' - you can figure out where we were standing!

The 3rd and 4th falls

What the falls look like from a helicopter...courtesy of Logan Walker!

We headed back on the double and had a long swim at Little Merhten’s on the way back. Both of the boys ventured underneath the falls this time as well as having lots of fun exploring under rocks and doing more diving.

On the way back we visited our first major Aboriginal art site. We were all transfixed as we entered the small cave just up from the falls. Here we were standing in front of art that was painted 10, 15 even up to 40,000 years ago and I felt humbled by it beauty.

It was late in the afternoon by the time we returned to camp and after collecting fire wood we relaxed for the remainder of the night having dinner, playing cards and staring at the dancing of the flames.