The Kimberleys - Part One

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After dropping the campervan off it was time to start our tour of The Kimberleys. We did an organised tour as The Kimberleys is a really remote part of Oz and involves driving down some tricky roads. We did our tour with All Terrain 4WD Safaris. I have just looked them up on the internet and they seem to have stopped operating. Not sure why, although I did find them quite difficult to deal with when booking the tour. The tour was really good though so it's a shame they aren't operating anymore.

Our tour group consisted of a real mix of people. We weren't on the typical Backpackers bus as we wanted something smaller and also got a really good deal on this tour when we booked it at the travel agent (could be one of the reasons they aren't operating anymore). This meant that our group was quite a bit older then us. This wasn't a problem though as everyone was really friendly and fit (well apart from one old guy but we wont worry about him!).

Anyway on the first day we went to the Boab prison tree (new fav type of tree!) which is a tree with a big hole in it where Aboriginal prisioners were kept when they were being transported to the jail. Very strange!

After this we went to Tunnel Creek. Here you walk through the pitch black tunnel, which kinda looks like a cave. Aparently an Aboriginal who was wanted by the police lived in this tunnel for about 3 years.

This trip was full of gorges and the first one we camped at was Windjana Gorge. This was a really lovely gorge and was full of freshwater crocs. We saw some during the day when we were exploring the gorge and then in the evening we went croc spotting on the lake. What you do is turn the torch onto the lake and see it reflect in the crocs eyes. As they were all freshies we were very safe but it was still very exciting!

This whole trip consisted on sleeping in swags. I hadn't had a good time in the swag at uluru so I wasn't really looking forward to it. Unfortunately this bad experience continued on the first night as it was FREEZING and a few people in the group were snoring. Luckily it got much better after the first night as it warmed up, I was given another sleeping bag and we made sure our swags were far away from the snorers in the group! Once it got better it meant we could appreciate being able to sleep directly under the stars and it was fantastic. Finally saw my first shooting stars too!

The second day we went to more gorges, this time it was Galvans Gorge and we could swim in this gorge (no crocs in sight!). After our swim we all pilled into the bus to find that it wouldn't start. Luckily our tour guide was also a mechanic so he was able to fix it without too much difficulty or taking too long, which was good. When he was fixing the bus all the guys in the group were trying to help - apart from Ian who was happily eating his sandwich and staying away. When I mentioned that all the other guys were helping (although they were more getting in the way) Ian's response was 'Why would I help - that is what I have paid for'!!! Very funny.

That night we spent it at Manning Gorge and did 'The Waterfall Walk'. Here you have to swim across a river with all your stuff in boxes to start the walk. You then walk for a few hours to a lovely waterfall where you swim again and try to cool off from the walk! This walk was prob my fav of them all.

The next day we travelled to Edward River where we camped. This was a very basic campsite as all there was was an ecotoilet which really smelt! We went and saw some Aboriginal Art and an Aboriginal graveyard. It was quite interesting learning about the different ages of Aboriginal Art. I find it difficult to appreciate Aboriginal Art as no-one knows what most of it means and I find it hard to grasp the fact that it is 20-40 thousand years old but is still on the rock. I know how difficult it is to draw after drawing my own 'art' but I can't appreciate something I don't understand and no-one can tell me how to understand it.

The next day it was off to Mitchell Falls. You have to do a big walk to get to the falls and then we had a helicopter ride out of them. On the way to the falls we saw Little Mertens Falls, Big Mertens Falls (which I thought was Mitchell Falls) and Lilly Lake. All of these places were really nice, as was Mitchell Falls. The helicopter ride was fantastic and even though it was now my second time in a helicopter I was bricking myself! It was great though and really gave a good us a good perseptive of the falls and how far we had come on our walk to it!

My notebook that I kept on the trip stops here so I need to go and find our itenery of the trip to try and remember what we did for the remaining 4 days!

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