Monday 5th July - Gibb River Road - Gibb River Rest Stop to Mitchell Falls National Park

We began to question our decision to drive the 500km detour to see Mitchell Falls as we hit the first stretch of really bad corrugations.  The quality of the main Gibb River Road has surprised us, being mainly fairly smooth hard packed earth with some tarmac sections, but we’d been warned that north of Drysdale Station the road surface deteriorates.  True to form the corrugations started, and not the little ones that we can almost float over at about 70-80kph, rather the much larger ones that rattle the whole vehicle.  It’s worse if you go slowly too, some people say that things settle down over 110kph but as we don’t even go that fast on the highways we just had to grin and bear it.  Luckily intermittent smooth sections gave us temporary respite, but I’m glad Land Rover built the Defender strong.

A sign at the turn off to Mitchell Falls from the Kalumburu road warned of an unmaintained surface and the prospect of a worse ride for 85km to the National Park, but, whilst rough and rocky in places, the road lacked the corrugations of earlier and we were much happier.  Everything would have been fine had it not been for the fact that this was by far the busiest stretch of road in the Kimberley we have driven, and we had to be quick on the window winders to keep out the dust from the cloud trails from oncoming vehicles.  We also found that we were no longer the slowest vehicle on the road, and actually overtook a number of other 4WDs.  You need to decide if you are just going to hold back out of the dust cloud of the car in front or go for the overtake, although the latter can be a bit nerve racking once your visibility goes, especially down a winding, narrow dirt track.  I’m glad to say that we survived.

En-route we stopped at a couple of Aboriginal rock art sites and could make out various forms on the rocky outcrops.  Our favourite were the Gwion (Bradshaw) paintings of figures dancing, said to be 17000 years old

- much less scary than the younger Windjana paintings. SPOT

We are now at the Mitchell Falls campsite for a couple of nights so that we can do the five hour return walk to the falls tomorrow.  Anne objects to paying for camping when they don’t even provide showers, but hopefully we can rectify that situation as we’ve filled our solar shower and we’ll let you know how it works out.

Also in camp is Ron, the German KTM rider we met at the petrol station outside Tom Price.  I think he’s feeling the corrugations rather more than we are, but we’ve fed him tea and biscuits and he seems to be reviving. SPOT