In many ways, the King George is like a compressed version of the Berkeley River, packing many of the same stunning geological goodies into half the navigable distance. The main difference between the two is at the head of navigation. The Berkeley ends at a bunch of low cascades, whereas the King George ends in Western Australia’s highest waterfalls, Twin Falls, plunging from the clifftop 78 meters above.
This last feature makes the King George the most popular destination for tourists in the Kimberley region. This became apparent to us as we rounded the headland into Koolama Bay. Anchored there was a medium (100m long, about 150 passengers) cruise ship, along with a smaller vessel, which was categorized as “diving” on our AIS receiver.
Koolama Bay
On the next morning’s high tide, we crossed the bar into the King George and headed all of the way to the end at Twin Falls. As we did, the cruise ship departed northbound and a flying boat arrived to exchange departing and arriving passengers from the dive boat.
Once we were at the end of the river at Twin Falls, we took Begonia right up to the water of each fall, then anchored nearby and went back in the dinghy for more.
Around Twin Falls
About an hour before sunset, when she was still at large, a veritable invasion fleet of fully loaded black zodiacs came streaming by, heading for the falls. The next cruise ship must have arrived.
Indeed it had. The zodiacs were from Le Laperouse, which was Australian, not French, but named after Jean François de Galaup, comte de Lapérouse. Like James Cook and Matthew Flinders, He did a lot of exploring in Oceania and there are many, many places down under that bear his name.
Once all the zodiacs had apparently left, Maryanne said that she wanted to return to the falls one more time to top up a couple of our non-potable buckets so we would have some extra water to do laundry. She was gone for what seemed like an awfully long time. It turns out she was fine. She had been distracted and entertained by some of the crew from one of the cruise ships that were (at that time) waiting for the next batch of cruise ship passengers to arrive.
Voyages on Le Laperouse are generally not considered to be in the budget category. In keeping with this, one of the zodiacs was dedicated to shuttling between the others and handing out champagne to the guests. Maryanne had apparently entered their bubble in our dinghy and the guy came over to hand her a flute of bubbly to aid in her enjoyment of the falls. Then, to make sure I wouldn’t be left out, he gave her two bottles to take back to her boat so that she could share it with her husband (see in pictures above, Maryanne returning with a bucket of water and bottles of champagne!). She’s forgiven for staying out late.
From Twin Falls, we headed down river a couple of miles to a particularly narrow and pretty spot that caught our eye, known as the z-bend. We anchored a little to the side to be out of the flow of traffic. We were opposite a mangrove inlet. Just as we dropped the dinghy to go explore, several zodiacs arrived and headed into the mangroves with us. They were all filled with smiling guests happy to be on a big adventure.
Exploring The narrow Gorge, and BBQ Beach area of the River
The big draw for the inlet turned out to be lots of turtles. While we helped spot them, we had nice conversations with the guests about our trip and theirs. Being by ourselves, Maryanne and I were able to linger and hold back as several different groups passed through. Then we took our time exploring our patch of river after they left.
In the morning, we moved further down the river to the confluence with King George’s East Arm. The arm is too shallow for big boats, but tenders and smaller tour boats can go upriver to another waterfall at the end, above which several croc-free fresh water swimming holes entice.
As we rounded the last bend, we encountered Michael and Bob, who were anchored in Homer, the covered tour boat for Odyssey Expeditions. Odyssey was a small class of cruise ship for just a few guests that is able to cross the bar and anchor inside the Kimberley region’s smaller rivers and bays.
They were a fount of great information about where to go and what to see in the Kimberley. Michael, the Captain of Odyssey, explained that they were looking for a place to leave Homer for a couple of days until they returned on their next trip. Odyssey has two tenders that they can stow on the rooftop, but Homer is too big and needs to be towed. The week’s upcoming weather was not supposed to be the best, so they planned to leave Homer behind and pick it up on the way back west. They asked if we would check in on her when they were gone. Well, of course. It was the least we could do in exchange for all the great info they gave us.
We asked the guys about the adjacent falls and swimming hole. Michael said he’d never done the rope climb. Bob said he did it once, then subsequently vowed to himself to never do it again. This somewhat contradicted other reports we’ve seen that said that the climb looked bad from the bottom, but that there were plenty of ledges upon which to rest and that even elderly cruise ship passengers wearing flip-flops and anticipating a topside swim had managed it. We decided to have a look and judge for ourselves.
The first thing we noticed was that the rope ladder was missing and had been replaced by a stout used mooring hawser (a thick rope). By the time we reached our first resting ledge, we understood that this change completely changed the character of the climb. Ladders provide not only a means of support, albeit a wobbly one, but also convenient foot and handholds at regular intervals. The big rope did not do that. Hand and footholds on the rock were irregular in spacing and quality.
Exploring East Arm - thankfully I have a good zoom, there was no way I was getting too close to that crocodile!
We resumed in the usual way, pulling ourselves up the rope with our weight more or less evenly spaced between our hands on the rope and our feet on the rock. Eventually, we reached a point where there was no choice but to swing out into empty space and pull ourselves up the rope hand over hand, school gymnasium style. Dangling ten meters above the water below, I suddenly felt a lot older and weaker than I wanted. Maryanne retreated to the first ledge for a rest, but I continued in the hopes that that was the worst spot.
It wasn’t. At the top of the open-air section, I managed to pull myself onto a ledge that wasn’t big enough for me. Crouching down as far as I could, I still couldn’t get my center of gravity on the inside of the shelf. My only choice was to swing over to another tiny, but slightly higher, foothold and then kick myself back to the ledge above me while climbing the rope arm over arm. That ledge was just wide enough to hold me if I didn’t breathe in too far.
It was here that I discovered the second rope. To get to it, I had to release my death grip on the first one and shimmy very carefully to the far end to get it. Then I had to grab the very end, push straight off of the wall and pull hard to get at least my torso onto the plateau just above my head. That rope really could have used a reassuring knot on the end, but if it had one, it would have been too short to reach. I was now at the top, where I could finally scoot backwards from the edge and rise on wobbly legs.
I must admit that the view was amazing from up there. Maryanne and my original plan had been to go for a refreshing swim in the big pool up here. When she backed out, I thought I would have a quick, cooling dip, then go back down to join her. Now I didn’t want to do even that. A few tentative steps at the water’s edge revealed that anything that wasn’t dry was super slick. I didn’t want to fall and suffer even a minor bruise and I definitely wanted dry hands, feet and shoes for the trip down. I took a few photos, but it was hard to really relax and enjoy the view because I was dreading the descent and because I knew Maryanne was waiting for me.
Going down the ropes was only about 90% as harrowing as the way up. The water below looked deep and anywhere else I would have chosen the jump from the ledge below the high rope over the shimmy to the lower one. Instead, I went back the way I came and soon found myself sitting with Maryanne on a wide shelf four meters above the dinghy. Time for the snack we had originally planned for after our swim.
As we sat there eating our granola bars, Maryanne pointed out a crocodile that she had seen climb out the water onto a rock ledge while I was busy climbing. She’d spotted some movement (she’s always looking for new birds). Through her telephoto lens, she spotted a pair of nostrils being chased by a pair of eyeballs. They approached the shore and then a big croc followed them and with great effort hauled itself out onto a rock. It was maybe only a little longer than our dinghy, but it was also nearly as big around. This croc was clearly good at catching food.
It watched us, but didn’t move as Maryanne and I lowered ourselves into the dinghy later. As we made our closest approach on the opposite side of the river, it suddenly turned toward us and bolted for the water. Afterward, Maryanne surmised that the croc was made nervous by the weird orange thing going by and retreated on the shortest path to the water, where it would no longer be an ungainly, lumbering behemoth, but was instead lithe and maneuverable and thus safer.
I remembered a podcast I had heard about elephants in Kyiv zoo. Elephants are sensitive animals and they have really big ears. Keepers at the zoo there would often have to stay through the night to help calm them during the noises of shelling from the Russian invasion. When the keepers were asked which animal was bothered least by the bomb blasts, they said, “Crocodiles. They don’t seem to care.”
That’s because crocodiles only care about food and anything that moves is food. When it submerged without a ripple, we got the hell out of there.
We had initially planned to anchor near the entrance, but the wind was quite strong, so we changed plans to return to Twin falls for one last night. That worked out especially well since it would allow us to keep a good eye on Homer as the Odyssey crew eventually also left Homer in the same area. We spent the balance of the day exploring and taking pictures from every angle we could manage.
Return to Twin Falls
The tides were wrong for us to leave the King George at high and then arrive at the next stop at high as well, so we left the river and anchored once again in Koolama Bay. As we did, we discovered that we had been the only people in the whole river since last night.
[Maryanne]Thinking of visiting the Kimberley with your own boat? – Check out our Kimberley Tips
1 comment:
Spectacular enjoy every moment, very brave too
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