Follow the Red Dirt Road: Not So Tough

The Gibb River Road through the Kimberly has a reputation for being tough. A rough road where the reward for the adventurous is a remote wilderness experience filled with spectacular scenery. But like a fighter past his prime, I suspect this old road becomes less fearsome every year.

Maybe its because it is early in the season and the road has only just been opened and graded, but we are two thirds of the way along and have sat comfortably on 80-90 km/h most of the way. Unfortunately, good roads make the country less remote. Every camp ground seems full of grey nomads, foreign travellers, and families like us 'doing a lap'. Normally we would try to avoid the crowds by camping in the bush but this is discouraged by those who run the huge cattle stations that dominate this region.

If the road is less challenging, and the wilderness less remote, the scenery is still spectacular. Like the Pilbara, the gems are the gorges. Same, same but different! The Pilbara gorges are shy; narrow and almost hidden in the landscape. The Kimberly gorges are big and brash. Beautiful gorges like Bell and Manning with majestic waterfalls and deep big pools. But also fellow tourists. Lots of fellow tourists, often ferried in by the ubiquitous off-road tour buses.

In an attempt to escape the crowds we turned north off the Gibb River Road and headed for Mt Elizabeth Station. This station is home to beautiful waterways, aboriginal art sites and rough roads (and a chorus of dingoes howling us to sleep each night). We took a station tour to see several examples of Wandjina and Bradshaw art, and a burial site where a skull and bones rested on a ledge above a quiet pool. The Wandjina art is up to 3000 years old and depicts the dreaming of the present day indigenous peoples. The Bradshaw Art is about 20000 years old and is the work of a long forgotten culture. The present day Aborigines believe it was drawn by birds.

The next day we set off along a rough track to another gorge on Mt Elizabeth Station. The 20km drive took well over an hour and was followed by a hot, steep walk down into the gorge. Nic almost earned herself a helicopter ride out when she fell off a ledge, but her fall was broken by her backpack which saved her head and back. The effort seemed well worth it for here we were finally in the wild Kimberly, surrounded by beauty and not another human in sight. And so it was for about an hour until another family turned up, then four foreign tourists and we packed up and headed back to camp.

If Mt Elizabeth couldn't deliver us from the crowds perhaps the Mitchell Plateau could. The roads of the plateau have an even tougher reputation than the Gibb, and Mitchell Falls are supposed to be the most spectacular in the Kimberley. There was also the considerable attraction of a cold beer at the bar at Drysdale River Station along the way. After turning off to our campsite at Munuru, a moderately challenging river crossing offered the prospect of deterring some of the crowds but even though we had passed only a handful of cars all day, the campsite was well populated.

Despite the crowd, the campsite was beautiful and a great place for kids. Big swimming holes and spacious sites. Mallee and I wandered downstream in the morning and found a delightful little waterfall. After a bit of fishing and swimming and no sign of another human, we decided to go back to camp and tell the others we had finally found a piece of secluded Kimberley. On the way back we were almost run over by a tour bus. A little disappointed we nevertheless encouraged the others to join us back at the falls. We passed the tour group having morning tea in the car park but none of them took the short walk downstream. And that was the story for the whole day, despite many comings and goings at the main campsite, we were all alone at the falls. It seems that most people just use Munuru as a transit stop on the way to Mitchell Falls and don't bother to explore. Its a great place to spend a day, just please don't tell anyone.

We'll see you when the dust settles.