My birthday today, so the kids woke up very excited to see me open my presents ... they and Deb gave me some bicycle lights (good choice), and Len and Narrelle gave me a puzzle (one of the steel ones where you have to figure out how to get the ring off).

The road was pretty good most of the way to the Kalumburu Road turnoff, where we stopped to photograph the signs. There was a sign there advertising the scenic flights from Drysdale River Station over Mitchell Falls and the Prince Regent River. After some discussion we decided to go for it, so by 2pm we were taking off in the seven-seater single-engine Gipps Air plane (made in Australia).

We tracked out over the Drysdale and Prince Regent rivers to St George Basin, passing King Cascades on the way. Then we turned north to overfly Prince Frederick Harbour, which looked absolutely gorgeous from the air, with turquoise water, islands, beaches, colourful trees, bendy rivers and two-tone mud flats. Finally we did some circles over Mitchell Falls, which still has plenty of water pumping through: the wet season finished late this year.

We toyed with the idea of driving up there as well, as the road to it was just opened up today. But it's not practical to either tow our campers in there or leave them on this road and do a day trip, so scratch that.

Finished up with a campfire and birthday fruit cake, yum yum. A birthday I'll remember for a long time.