Day 45
Kununurra - Cambridge Gulf - Berkeley River- King George Falls - Faraway Bay - Honeymoon Bay - Kalumburu - Truscott Airfield - Mitchell Falls - Home Valley - El Questro - Kununurra
" to lie in sweat, on familiar sheets, in brick veneer on financed beds...."
Today we splurged! The Kimberley is such an amazing place we decided to see the rest of it. The places that are really only accessible by sea or air. We chose air!
As Cayla decided to write in her journal tonight - we hired a private plane to show us around the top end of the Kimberley!!
We took off from Kununurra in a Cessna 210 - 6 seater, single engine - on a 6.5 hour oddesy. Even the airport and airspace in the Kimberley is unique - there is no tower, you just taxi out onto the runway and get in the radio and tell the ether what you are doing! Some listen - some don't!
We tracked over the Lower Ord river and past the mountain range used by Baz on his Australia movie as the backdrop for the Homestead and flew onto the Cambridge Gulf where the massive Ord River junction ends. The Ord River is just enormous!! And full of crocodiles!
From there the inaccessible coastline of the Kimberley was before us and as we flew further North the water colour turned from brown to turquoise blue. We tracked over the Berkeley River and onto the beautiful King George Falls where we did a number of figure 8 flyovers to ensure we all gotta good look - air work it's called apparently!
From KG we tracked over 2 other large rivers the Drysdale and King Edward before landing at Western Australia's most remote township - Kalumburu. This was our lunch stop. It's an Aboriginal Community with a mission in place that was set up in the early 1900's. Kalumburu is in the middle of no where ! Its access road was smashed and washed away in the last wet season. You don't need a licence to dive a car here as it under Aboriginal law combined with uniformed WA police stationed there.
We toured their museum - as our pilot Scott said we are only a small number of people that will ever visit it! There is a lot of history in the town too from the missionaries to its strafing and bombing in the war and how the Father was the morse code operator as a forward 'observation post '.
After lunch we put the Toyota ute back into the car park - a locked shipping container next to the runway and took off again to continue our 'private tour'. That's our private plane on the runway at Kalumburu in the cover pic today.
We tracked over Truscott Airfield - built in 1942 as a forward airfield it was bombed by the Japs in 42 and close to the airfield was where the last Jap plane was shot down over Australia. Today Truscott is still working - its the longest tarred runway that is in the middle of nowhere and is regularly used for dodgy international meetings and by customs. It should be an international airport - but there is no customs, tower or anything! You could bring in anything or export anything at all from there.... Sounds like a regular occurrence too!
We flew out back over the coastline to view Paspaly Pearls massive operation - lines as far as you can see cultivating pearls in the calm turquoise waters with small runabouts 'working' the lines and the mothership nearby.
We then tracked inland again over the Mitchell Plateau and onto Mitchell Falls. All Cayden has talked about since getting into Derby and the start of the Kimberley was Mitchell Falls. We did a number of figure 8's to make sure we all got a great look - they were spectacular too!
From the Falls we flew on another 40 mins to flyover Home Valley Station and the Pentecost river , Cockburn Ranges and El Questro - all the places we'd been to in the pervious few days seen from above .
We landed safely back at Kununurra after again just telling whoever was listening.
Such a great day had by all - the rough bumps didn't worry any of us - and there were quite a few today too in our private plane!
Tomorrow we embark on a 2 day canoe trip of the Ord River. We pack ourselves, tents and eskies and paddle for 2 days with the current back towards Kununurra . Along with ourselves and our gear, we will be sharing the river with its resident crocs .
We'll be offline for the next 2 days as result but will have lots to report when we get back into Kununurra!