Today is one of the big days for this trip. This region, known as The Kimberley, is one of the remotest and least populated parts of Australia and the Mitchell Falls is perhaps its most iconic tourist attraction. It is also the attraction that stretched this particular adventure for us to 6 months from its original conception of half that much time (originally we were planning a 3 month trip to Australia and then Nina found Destination Kimberley and the plan got extended to 6 months). So its a big day.

The itinerary for today was to start early, walk the 4-5 km to the falls, swim, get picked up by one of those helicopters I mentioned in yesterdays post, and do an aerial tour of the falls, and the nearby coast, and then be dropped back at the campground.

The challenge to this plan is that neither Nina or I are in the best of form. Nina's right foot is playing up (arthritis in the large toe, a long term issue for which she has been postponing a surgical remedy for years) and my neck is painfull whenever I spend too long with it bent looking down, which is difficult not to do on a rocky hiking path. So at the start there I had some concern as to whether we can complete the hike and meet up with our helicopter appointment.

But of course we managed to complete the hike, though we did not set any speed records, and got to the falls with hours to spare. This allowed us to spend time taking way too many photos. We obviously had no trouble making our helicopter appointment, and the flight gave us some great views of the Mitchell Falls, the Mitchell River and the Kimberley coast.

You might notice in the photos that there does not seem to be much water cascading over the falls; that is correct. The last wet season was particularly light and the locals expect the falls to stop flowing within a week.