Oz Trip - Day 89

Day 89 – 29/7/2012 – Mitchell Falls National Park

We left Drysdale Station at about 8am and didn't get to the camp grounds at Mitchell Falls until about 2:30pm. The first 100km or so was pretty good, although it was hard to believe that they had only just finished grading some of it as there were still very rough patches. Once we turned off the “main” road, the last 80 odd kilometers took us about 4 hours. We could only do between 15-30kph and 20kph was probably the average. It was mainly due to the corrugations. A lot of people passed us.  We were also stopping about every hour to give the shockies a bit of a rest and a chance to cool down.  When I felt the temperature of the shockies I could hold my hand on them for quite a while so it was good to know that they weren't getting too hot.

Drysdale River crossing

While were were lined up behind a few other campers to cross the King Edward River, I noticed on the camper trailer in front of us one of his shockies on the trailer had broken off and was hanging down. I let the driver know and he wasn't aware of it being broken. After the river crossing we passed their group pulled over and they were trying to fix it. Probably about an hour later the group sped past us again and the trailer was happily bouncing all over the place again. I would hate to think what condition the trailer will be in by the time that they get back out to the “main” road again!

The line up to cross the King Edward River - we are right up the back

Crossing the river

Our lunch stop beside the road

Others also thought it took a long time to get there

Also on the way in a flatbed truck was on its way out with a relatively new Nissan Navara up on it. That was a little bit unsettling. And to add to the unsettling feeling we also had in the back of our minds a conversation that we had heard about a week before on the UHF radio. Someone said that they had heard that two caravans had to be recovered from Mitchell Falls for a cost of $4,700 each! Afterwards I was speaking to some staff at Drysdale Station and they said that to get towed back from Mitchell Falls to Drysdale Station was about $2,500 so he thought the $4,700 to Kununurra would be about right.

After setting up camp we spent a bit of time unwinding from the hard track into the camp ground and I also spent a bit of time checking the camper and the Pajero over. Luckily everything looked ok and the battery tray was still in one piece.