Mitchell Plateau

Posted by efloow on August 9, 2015 in Uncategorized | 6 Comments

Our first side trip off the GRR was to Mitchell Falls and Kimberley Coastal Camp. This involved travelling along the Kalumburu and Mitchell Falls Roads which have a reputation for destruction of cars and trailers. After lurching and shuddering along the biggest corrugations and dips yet we wondered if we had we made a big mistake. But as we hit the 60km mark, we rounded a corner and met the grader coming the other way! It was still a pretty challenging drive with dips, rocks, river crossings, sandy sections, and jump ups that we did over three days.   

Our first night was at Drysdale River Station (7 August), another one of the pastoral stations that has moved towards tourism. It has a spacious (and remarkably empty) campsite, with great facilities. But, there was little to do there except refuel and basic provisioning, so we moved on an hour up the road to the King Edward River Camp at the foot of the Mitchell Falls Road. It was in an idyllic setting around a swimming hole above a small waterfall. Here the paddle board had its first outing and the kids and I had an afternoon paddling and swimming in the river.

  

The next day, it took a little over 3 hours to drive the final 90km of remote, stunning, and challenging bushland track onto the Mitchell Plateau and the Mitchell Falls Camp. It felt like a true outback adventure.  

It appeared somewhat less remote when we discovered that the falls camp ground is shared with 5 helicopters and the Helispirit base that ferry tourists to and from the falls from 6.30am to 4pm. There seemed to be more comings and goings than at Sydney airport! It is an amazing feat of logistics when you realise that each of helicopters use up to 150L of fuel an hour and that each pilot can only fly for 30 hours a week. Anyway, another tourist haven trashed by the thump, thump, thump of helicopters overhead (aka Uluru, Kings Canyon)!

   

Despite all this it was a great place (there was a reason for the helicopters!). The 3 tiers of the falls are spectacular and the walk in along the cliffs, smaller falls, billabongs and art sites was fascinating. We must also confess to contributing to the helicopters by doing the scenic flight back from the falls… a great way to get an overview and find out about the Mitchell Plateau.  

The Mitchell Plateau is a massive raised layer of rock that is made of volcanic basalt overlying the base layer of King Leopold Sandstone. This sandstone is the main base layer of the Kimberley that is so old, at 1,800,000 years, that it predates any life and therefore does not have any fossils! The basalt layer is covered with laterite (I can’t work out what this is!) that can hold huge amounts of water and acts as a permanent supply to the Mitchell River keeping it flowing throughout the dry season.  

 

  
 

This permanent water explains the rich flora and fauna of the area. The vegetation ranges from the savannah woodlands to areas of rain forest tucked under the escarpments. As in most of the top end the trees are not all that tall due to the fact that the soil layer is so shallow, the gullies contain the richest and tallest vegetation, and there are many areas with hardly any vegetation where you can see the dark crumbling basalt poking through.

It is also interesting that the basalt layer contains the richest deposits of bauxite in the world. It was considered for strip mining for the large amounts of aluminium it contains. As we flew over we could see the mining survey grids from the 70’s. Despite this “potential”, Rio Tinto have just handed the land back to the government with the provisos that it becomes a National park (I wonder what the politics behind this was?). This will change the tiny Mitchell’s Falls NP into one of the biggest NP in the top end. 

 

  
   

Enough facts, next stop Kimberley Costal Camp and some R and R!