Glycosmis Bay (The Kimberley)

[Kyle]High tide for entering the inner bay at Glycosmis was right at sunrise. To get there by then, we would have to leave just before 3:00am. As I was downloading weather, a cruise ship arrived and another one appeared on AIS. It looked like it was going to be a busy day here.

When we arrived at Glycosmis, we were the only boat around. We picked our way into the shallow inner bay and dropped anchor along the north shore. Glycosmis usually has two waterfalls that tour boats like to duck under to give the guests on their bows a shower. This far after the wet season has ended, the falls were down to slicks on the rock face. The bay was a picture of quiet and solitude.

After a nap to make up for our early rise, we got in the dinghy and headed ashore for the “trail” to the top. I used the quotes because there isn’t one, per se. The surface is mostly bare rock and boulders, rather than a dirt groove in the ground, so the guidance was mostly to head in a general direction in a general area and look for cairns and any obvious trails through the spinifex.

That part of Glycosmis Bay is all sheer cliff face, apart from one section of boulders where the wall has collapsed. That makes a scramble up them the only route to the top. Some helpful soul had at least marked the best spot to tie up the dinghy, followed by a general direction (up). Specifics after that were few and far between (but we did have a photo with a line of the approximate route up from a friend.

Pretty Glycosmis Bay

Maryanne and I each took several routes after spotting a distant cairn that ended up being dead ends where we had to retreat before getting to it. Maybe they weren’t cairns after all. The whole place is loose rubble. Everything looks like a cairn.

After a lot of near-vertical climbing and shuffling sideways along three-inch wide ledges over big drops, we arrived at an edge where I could reach the only available handholds for the next bit, but Maryanne could not. It was one of those spots where we really didn’t want to go back, so I climbed over, braced myself and then pulled her up.

I wasn’t actually on a ledge, but on a knife edge on the other side of her. When she got her weight over the lip, she started sliding face first down my side toward a big drop. I had to quickly get underneath her, catch her and then spin her around to where her feet were at the bottom again so she could grab the knife-edge and pull herself off me.

I think I spotted another cairn above, but getting there required a fairly big leap with long legs to get there, so I said I would just go have a look and see if that might be a way we could go. Maryanne had already decided it wasn’t and was making her way along another route. She had to go down a bit, but was now making her way up a crevice on the opposite wall of a gap between my boulder and hers. The gap was so deep that the bottom was hidden in darkness. It was at least four stories.

I was feeling pretty pleased with the big, wide shelf upon which I was now standing. I could see that I was now only about three meters from the top. My shelf disappeared behind me. Ahead of me, it rounded the corner toward Maryanne and narrowed to the width of my foot. Then it shrunk to half that size before finally reaching another big boulder wedged into the chasm. In four more steps, Maryanne would be standing upon that one. After that, it would just be regular old walking on top of the escarpment.

This is where I had my scariest moment. At the half shoe-width section of my ledge, I had to make two big steps before I could step onto Maryanne’s nice, wide boulder. The wall above me was a little past vertical and I needed to use handholds to keep me glued to the rock. I had a good one to start, but for the last step all I could find was a largish pebble embedded into the conglomerate over which I could hook the end of my left ring finger. This was with the four story drop into the darkness behind me. Well, I owe my life to that little pebble and whatever forces mashed it so firmly into place.

At the top, it was just a matter of heading generally parallel to the cliff and looking for cairns to verify that we weren’t too far off course. At the end, where the ground started descending toward the pools of the remaining riverbed, we saw our first Boab trees (These look similar to the African Boabab trees, but are a different species). These distinctive trees have giant bottle-shaped trunks topped by short branches and look like prehistory itself. We went down to where the waterfalls normally plunge off of the cliff face and took pictures of the beautiful bay, plus that one sailboat.

Once we made it to the top, we enjoyed a delightful wander about - and especially loved the large boab tree

The way down to the dinghy was better than the way up. We started with Maryanne’s crevasse route, found the join with the wrong route from which we had come, then a much more straightforward path down. We think we may have even located most of our missed cairns from before. It’s still not good enough that we are ever going to want to do it again, though.

The next day, faced with a choice of that or the climb, we chose a walk on the beach fronting the outer bay. Everything was going great until Maryanne spotted cow pats. Apparently, feral buffalo and cattle are one of Australia’s most dangerous animals because of their foul tempers, fierce territoriality and constantly being underestimated by a human population paying more attention to croc and snake dangers. We didn’t see any, but we sure kept our heads on swivels.

A lovely beach walk

We moved Begonia to the outer bay at Glycomis to a site that is reputed to have aboriginal rock art. Armed with vague directions, we headed into the bush on an overgrown trail that quickly dispersed into far too many options that had probably been laid down by wallabies. We continued in the general direction of a waypoint we had, looking under ledges and climbing into caves along the way. We spent hours up there and never found any art. It was pretty, though, and the views were stupendous.

Eventually, sick of being shredded by spinifex, we headed back to Begonia to prepare for a few days of sailing to the next area. As we arrived at the dinghy, one of Odyssey’s tenders arrived. Odyssey was anchored in the next bay down the coast. Maryanne had passed on our tip about the art to them, so they showed up to have a look, we wished them luck.

We tried hart to find any rock art, thankfully it is a pretty enough to be ashore

After hoisting the dinghy and putting the motor in its hidey-hole, the Odyssey guys passed by to say the place was a gold mine of art. “A hundred plus” they kept saying. They showed us their track. We had basically been one block too far to the east the whole time. Well doesn’t that figure? There was no way I was up to reassembling the dinghy all over again. Plus, we were leaving early. At least we could feel good about pointing them toward a site about which they hadn’t previously known.

As we were finishing up our early dinner, Odyssey itself arrived in the bay. Michael, the Captain, said he came to see it to see if it might be a good place to add to their itinerary. He asked if we wanted to go to the beach to join them. When Maryanne explained about our dinghy and motor being packed away for the passage in the morning, they agreed to pick us up in Homer instead.

When they arrived, it was just five Odyssey crew and us. They had ditched their guests for us! Well, not really. They don’t want to take their guests, some of whom are elderly, on an unknown excursion for an unknown goal. This was intended to be a high-speed reconnaissance trip to assess viability. They were trying to be back onboard in an hour.

We hit the beach running and it was a struggle to keep up with the fit, young crew. We no longer tiptoed from rock to rock trying to avoid the spinifex, but instead blasted right through it like charging buffalo. Sure enough, they took a right where Maryanne and I had gone left and we found LOADS of amazing art and it really was at about every third place we looked. We had just enough time to take a quick look at each one before chasing the next person who called out that they had found another one to theirs. Jayden, who seemed to be Odyssey’s photographer, had the hardest time. She was trying to get good pictures of it all and was constantly having to run between sites to keep up.

Finding art is apparently 'EASY' (once you have your eye in!)

We all pretty much fell through the spinifex back to the beach. Homer picked us up, dropped Maryanne and me off at Begonia, then the crew returned to their guests. Within half an hour, Odyssey was steaming north out of the bay for an overnight passage west. Wow! How lucky was that?

It was then that we really had a chance to process what we had seen. The paintings we had seen today were Bradshaw type. Aboriginal paintings come in two types. Bradshaws are the older. They are essentially prehistoric to “modern” aboriginal paintings that go back 5,000 years. Some Bradshaws have been dated as old as 40,000 years, with the average being 10,000 to 20,000 years ago. These paintings are older than the pyramids, older than ancient Greece, older than the ruins at Skara Brae in Scotland, older than anything in Europe. In fact, apart from maybe a few things in museums, these paintings are most certainly the oldest human artifacts we have ever seen. They aren’t in museums. You can crawl under a ledge and lie in the red dirt gazing up at them in situ.

One theory is that the continuous line between the two styles was broken by the last ice age, when the changing climate caused populations to abandon their home areas. It’s that part that really got me. Not only have these paintings been here for a really, really, really long time. When they were painted, this was a different place. The ice came and went far to the north and south. The forests turned to desert and then to grassland and then to rainforest. The rainforest returned to grassland and then changed to mixed scrub. The sea level was 140 meters lower then, which meant these paintings were made in deep ravines in a mountain range nowhere in sight of the sea, not where someone can anchor a boat a five-minute walk away. Now the hills have worn down to where the art is under overhangs of boulders sitting on the tops of the smooth hills. EVERY single plant in the area, even the most ancient Boab, is several generations from even being a seedling. The plants that were there when these paintings were made have all long decayed into the soil. Through all of that, the paintings are still here patiently waiting, while every now and then, a human face stares up at them and wonders about what they mean and who made them.

[Maryanne]Thinking of visiting the Kimberley with your own boat? – Check out our Cruising the Kimberley Tips

King George River (The Kimberley)

[Kyle]From Reveley Island (outside the Berkeley River system), we had an easy, all-spinnaker run along the coast to Koolama Bay, at the entrance to the King George River. We needed the tide to be in the upper half of the curve for both, so we anchored in the Koolama for the night until the next day’s sunrise high tide.

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