Walking up to the top of Jim Jim Falls with a 14 day pack is
a slog. Once we hit the creek, we turned up stream to find the nearest
campsite, as per the new leisurely walk plan and jumped in. Alison again asked
if I am sure the pool is croc free. I reminded her of the 180m of height we
gained in the past hour. Alison is wearing nothing but a neckerchief. When I
tease her about the scout look, she pulls a sultry pose on the water’s edge.
She getting good at these. I fill my water bottle from the creek and go to
drink only to find a tiny shrimp in it.
I get to work on gourmet dampers. Today
is cranberry and Nutella. Read, draw, write, drink tea, swim, do shoulder exercises, get sunburnt. I
had even remembered how quickly I get sunburnt up here, and still I manage to
get burnt on the first day. I have a unique tan line now. I discovered if you
want to get a full body tan, you need to just lie there on your back. When you
are a more casual nudist wandering around camp doing stuff, you get burnt on the top of your breasts
only. We wander down to the top of the falls sporting the classic sarong and
walking boots look. We are forced into the tent early by mozzies, and lounge around discussing sex parties and sex work. The conversation never deviates far. There’s no weight in the vice of talking about sex.
Despite a leisurely start the next day, we are at our proposed
camp by 910. It’s not entirely because we are lazy. We threw the extra days
from the missed walk into this one, with the intention of lazing around and
exploring. Given that we would have to commit ourselves to another 9 km if kept
walking from here, we settling in for luxuriating. By 10, we have set up camp,
been for a swim and settled in for some naked reading. Cheese and onion dampers
are made. They are yummy. The blow flies agree. Most people don’t really think
of bush walking as relaxing, but it is really enforced rest. We are miles from
anywhere. No phone. No internet. No work. No responsibilities. Nothing to do
but walk, swim, chill and eat.
Despite this, I sleep badly overnight, do way too much thinking about shit
and have a melt down the next morning. I seem to operate on two extremes.
Highly functional and non-functional. 3 days into a long walk really is not
good timing for a batch of non-functional, let alone on a day a 9km bash away from the creek requiring an
early start. Fortunately, after crying on Alison for half an hour, we resume
packing. Then Alison can’t find her hat. Somehow, we still get away by 730.
Outside of the rocky country, Jim Jim Creek becomes long,
still, dark pools, lined with overhanging trees, edged with water lilies. It
looks like prime croc habitat. The first time I saw them, I had come over the
escarpment and they are the first bit of Jim Jim you see. Not so inviting. At
least when you have come up from the base, you have the reassurance that there
is no way a croc would have gotten up that terrain. 10-12k of these pools is
not so exciting though, so we were cutting a couple of corners and heading
straight to the next interesting bit of topography. It’s pretty cruisy, mostly
flat, not too rocky, light vegetation. Still, I feel a bit like a rolling drunk
walking cross country like this. Whilst you are following a bearing and using
the sun to keep you in line, you are constantly weaving around vegetation, then
weaving back on course and in the end, you wonder how the hell you managed to
actually keep a straight line, but somehow it has worked. Our drunken straight
line successfully leads us back to the creek 4.5km later and we jump in. It
still looks incredibly croccy.
We cut another corner through a fairy tale stone
forest, where tall eucalypts and grevilleas full of tipsy honeyeaters create a
surprisingly shady environment full of micro rock towers that look like ruins. Alison
tells me I sound like an elephant charging through the bush. I scare 3 dragons
and a goanna. Hopefully it scares the snakes away too. Being basically a baby
elephant, I continue making enough racket to disturb our first ferals of the
trip, sending a herd of cattle running. Pest animals, however, do us the favour
of creating walking pads through the thick grasses, and they sometimes even
turn out to be in a useful direction. It’s so much easier than bashing down the
grasses ourselves that I frequently gamble on following any remotely close to the
right direction.
It's starting to get a bit too warm, we are getting a bit
over it and my feet are rather sore. I swear my feet are too small for me. They
don’t have the surface area to hold the weight of an adult, let alone an adult
with a pack. So, it is a joyous moment when we thrash out of the shrubbery and
look onto the creek again. It is not croccy. It looks like a tropical resort.
The water is a clear turquoise, white sandy banks grace the edges, and
grevillea and paperbarks provide shade. Pack and clothes are off before you can
say “this will do” and we are in the water.
Walking early in the morning is really lush. It’s also
necessary as by lunchtime, it’s way too hot to walk. So, we are up just before
first light. It’s a beautiful time with the feel of the air and the changing
light. First light brings glorious colours that reflect off the water as I tend
the fire and make tea. The pandanus make striking silhouettes (they really are
lovely when you don’t have to walk through them and just lean appealingly over
the water’s edge). We are awake before
the first birds. It’s like the birds all wake up together. It’s completely
silent, then there’s one bird call, then they are going berko. These early
mornings are like a brief moment in paradise. Until first flies.
The heat seems to bring out the scent in the grevilleas.
It’s the first thing I notice walking near them. It’s a warm, sweet, rich,
almost tasty smell, and I look around for the tree. The orange flowers are
dripping with nectar. On most flowers, nectar is something you don’t notice
unless you’re a bird or a bee. Not these grevilleas. Visible drops of it
inspire you to lick them (and yes, they taste great too, although if you don’t
notice a green ant on there you can get an unpleasant surprise). They are so effusive, they drip off the tree,
leaving a sticky crust on the ground underneath them. No wonder the honeyeaters
are drunk.
Walking through woodland again and a random branch falls
from a tree just missing me. If a branch falls on a Wendy in the forest and
nobody hears her scream, did it really happen? We find a mini Nourlangie in the
rocky country just before we rejoin the creek. The art to finding rock art is to
be near good water, but far enough away to be out of the flood zone and spy a
good cave or sheltered face. Using these principles, I scrambled up to one
cave, and there it was. The surrounding area turned out to be full of art until
we had to stop looking or we would never have made it to camp.
As it was, camp turned out to be perfect but still not quite
good enough. A deep blue pool, sandy banks, rock tables, but Alison had come to
expect perfection and suggested it could have more shade and been more
sheltered from the wind. The map suggested the next kilometre of creek should
have plenty of potential campsites, so we meandered on. Turns out, it didn’t.
We find a site we could make work, but then Alison thought it would have
mozzies. On we continue – surely the next confluence will have a good site. Then
there we were at the confluence. About 13 years ago I did a walk in Litchfield
where we had to camp in a recently burnt patch. It was filthy. We were filthy. Our
stuff was filthy. We called it Fest Fest and I even made a commemorative shirt
by writing that on my (already filthy) walking shirt in charcoal. This campsite
at the confluence is Fest Fest 2, also known as the Feral Farm, as Alison has scared
off 2 cows and a pig already. It is quite pretty if we ignore all that though.
We covered 10.5 k today to get here. Alison is getting pretty good at the bush
bashing business.
We suffered through a morning of serious bush bashing the next
day. 2km had taken us 2 hours. Alison commented how you’d never get this sort
of work out in a gym and we started designing the bush bash gym workout. Lots
of things to push through with various degrees of resistance and capacity to
flick back at you. Things to step over or under or stomp down. Preferably at
inconvenient heights for doing any of the above. About waist height is good for
that. Things to sink into like a pile of flood debris, stuff to climb over and
things that grab at you and refuse to let you go. Then we got mean and added
things with spikes and itchy powder that could fall on you if you weren’t
careful and things that nipped at you. Somewhere in this, we saw our second
snake of the walk, thus making twice as many snakes as kangaroos or wallabies
we had seen out here. After these tedious 2 hours, we emerged at a massive
(think football field size) deep blue pool coming out of a gorge. Swim break
was called.
Then I pushed my luck a little too far. Sure, bush bashing
was probably not what the surgeon ordered, but I’d been getting away with it. I’d
slipped over twice already. Once on a boulder in a creek that moved, sending me
into the water on my left side. The shoulder, the camera and the map came out
of that unscathed. Next was slipping on the
sandy film covering a slab. 3rd time unlucky, I got my feet tangled
in a vine, tried to recover, failed and thudded forward onto both arms. It didn’t
hurt at the time, but movement at extension felt a bit tender as the afternoon
went on. I didn’t even have the pack on, just going for a reccy for a potential
campsite, and in the end, we camp back where I’d left Alison anyway.
Fortunately, it was gorgeous, so we took a rest day to see how the shoulder
fared. I made sprouted mung bean, onion and tomato dampers to comfort myself. Emergency
mat repairs were made and watching the incredibly clear skies at night, we invented
new astrological signs.
We are walking before sun to get over to the Twin Falls
catchment. I didn’t expect water in the final creek, but there it was. We cut a
corner, find the creek again, and there’s still water. It soon turned into a
treelined sandy corridor, impossible to get lost in and as easy as walking in
sand ever gets. Pools still appeared occasionally, eventually a long one forcing us onto the banks with the pandanus and green ants until we said fuck it, and chose the spinifex instead. We climbed out of the gorge over rocks surrounded by spinifex so thick we couldn’t see if there was anything beneath it to stand on and end up sinking waist deep in it. On reaching the top, we discovered the country had been burnt and rejoiced.
Burnt country is a walker’s blessing. I completely understand why the
aboriginal people burnt the ground before them when travelling. We wove through
a maze of rock towers on the cleared ground until we crossed the creek at the
very top of its catchment – to discover a pool of water beneath a dry waterfall
even there, followed by another 3 k across the top. It’s mostly burnt, flat
country until we come to a line of rock towers, little fortresses guarding the
descent. In time honoured short person behaviour, I climb up to the highest point,
and spy where our creek descends the other side of the valley. We weave our way
down the cliff and hit the creek. It’s dry. HTF can that be? Twin is a massive
catchment. The last pissy little catchment was wet to the last few hundred
metres. Have we hit the tributary just before where we thought we were? I go
for a quick reccy. Nope, this is it. Wide swathes of rock drop into
remnant pools. It would be stunning if it was running. I give up and return to
Alison. Lunch, swim and a rethink are declared. Nutella tortillas were eaten. You
can almost convince yourself they are as good as crepes at this stage of a
walk.
We dub this “the creek of disappointment”. After all the lush, flowing water on Jim Jim,
we expected this to be similar, if not better, because Twin Falls flow much
later in the season than Jim Jim Falls. I obviously don’t understand hydrogeology.
The original plan to go upstream was abandoned and downstream we go. Shortly we
find another pool with a nice camp site. As we are contemplating if we should
stay there, Alison points out that if we came across this site in Victoria, we’d
be rapt with it. We stay.
Twin Falls continues to be the creek of disappointment. The
day did start with a lovely gorge, but the map looked like it could be hard
going, narrow, steep sided and an ominous shade of dark green. It could
actually have been worse. A little serious bush bashing, but mostly clear rock
hopping and some long rock ledges that made us very happy. Early on, I walked
into a web and missed a giant orb spider by an unexaggerated 3 mm. I armed
myself with a spider stick after that. There were more close encounters with
giant spiders in that gorge than kangaroos spotted all trip. Alison is quite
distressed by the lack of kangaroos, but there is no shortage of dingos. Whilst
we did not see any, almost every sandy bank had prints and we heard enough
howling to suggest large packs at night.
At the end of the gorge, the creek formed a long still pond.
On one side was vegetated flood plain nonsense, on the other, steep rocky
spinifex. Hmmm …. Boggy pandanus and green ants or spinifex? It was a unanimous
vote for spinifex, and as we scramble on more rock than spinifex, we were very
happy with the choice. The ground opened up towards the next confluence and we
find a random pair of socks. Some group has been desperate enough to make camp
here. It doesn’t bode well for camp potential downstream. They are nice socks
though, so I grab them. As we cringe at further flood plain in our path, I spy
some burnt ground. Burnt ground doesn’t sound very exciting, I know, but when
your other option is bashing through head high cane grass hiding vicious
pandanus, it is great.
This is where the day starts to go on and on and on and on.
8 km of alternating flood plain and burnt land and not a decent camp site seen.
The creek is flat as a tack here. It drops a single contour line in those 8km,
so it’s like an elongated wetland, with vegetation so thick, we can’t get
within 100m of it. We bash through to the water to fill bottles and wet shirts
whilst precariously balanced on a pile of flood debris then retreat back to burnt
country.
After 11km, we find a small clearing and hear running water.
That’s the first movement in the creek for a long time. There’s a tiny pool
formed where the water is funnelled through some pandanus. It’s actually
incredibly cute. We have a long deliberation about whether to camp. It will be
another Fest Fest. But as the creek drops only another 10m in the next 11km, this
might be it.
The next day we were congratulating ourselves on our
decision. It was another 4.5k to the next decent campsite and we were so glad
we hadn’t slogged on. It would have been a lush campsite though, with little
cascades running between sand banks with shady melaleucas. From this point onwards, it stopped being the
creek of disappointment. The creek was more open, with tannin coloured translucent
pools in white sand and intermittent rocky cascades. It was nice to be able to
see something other than the cane grass/pandanus nightmare. The walking was
easy, following our noses between animal pads and previous walkers’ pads. It is
a definite benefit from ferals, when they have bashed down the grasses for you.
Despite this, my feet were caning. Alison’s neck was sore. 9 days in, but we
are still smiling.
We decide the next pool is relatively close in the scheme of
things. What’s a kilometre, when we are 30+k still from the car? Compared to the
3000+ ks from Natimuk, we are basically there. Or the 16000 k or so from
London, we are actually swimming in it now. We find another cascade dividing 2
huge pools and settle onto the convenient sand bank for an afternoon of what we
really came here for. Alison is concerned that the bank is covered in snake
tracks. I am much more excited when I see them. There are either a lot of thirsty
goannas making a beeline for the water, or our pool is home to a healthy
population of freshwater crocodiles.
We finished walking at 9am the next day. I know, it seems
like we could barely have started. But we’d done 3.5k and serendipitously hit
the creek again at a perfect campsite, and who were we to say no? At this
point, I develop the Rule of Gingernuts. That is, no walk can be longer than the
supply of gingernuts allows. I have a little ritual of making tea and dunking
gingernuts in it when we arrive at camp each day. On the current schedule, we
are going to breach that rule by at least 1 day.
Again, we are treated to easy walking. Vast flat slabs worn
by the wet season torrent, broken by convenient steps.When not on the slabs,
there’s a pedestrian pad. We are very close to civilisation again now, and the
tourist helicopters reappear. It’s a good thing it’s easy, as we are tired.
Then suddenly, it’s not at all easy. There’s a major waterfall to a massive
pool.
We find still more freshy tracks
on the sandy banks, and this time they are ending in obvious diggings. Freshies
nest in the late dry, burying their eggs in the sandy banks. We weave our way
down the side of the gorge, once even hanging off trees to avoid getting in the
water and settle on a raised sandbank with stunning views down the gorge.
Alison comments how it doesn’t feel real. We’ve been transported to somewhere
that doesn’t actually exist. Some tropical island maybe. I ask if there are hot
waiters bringing us cocktails anytime soon on this tropical island?
I can’t believe I didn’t remember
this gorge from 2006. I honestly don’t know what I’ve done with my brain cells.
For the last few km above the falls and now down here, the landscape is, well,
massive. It’s large scale water, erosion, rock, falls, pools, gores, boulders –
everything is so striking. It’s certainly making up for being the creek of disappointment.
Or maybe it’s even better for it. I run screaming down the sandbank and dive into
the pool. On my second run, I stub my toe on a rock in the sand and decide
maybe I didn’t need to do that again before I had to walk out with a broken toe.
I am continually embarrassed by
my memory on this section. At the end of the gorge, a massive boulder in the
creek prevents us getting across without getting wet or climbing. Did I
remember having to swim? No. I drop the pack and put my hands lovingly into the
crack up the boulder. Yippee! I am doing a few moves of real climbing! It’s maybe
15. Alison chooses the water and passes the packs up to me and wades around. Then
about 500m before the falls, the creek goes underground. You can hear it
running beneath the boulders. Nevertheless, I don’t think twice about it,
because I seem to have early onset Alzheimer’s. You’d think something as crucial as “there is
no water at the top of the falls” might stick in my memory. Apparantly not. We
admire the view (and again, the rock architecture of the falls is stunning,
although the water is running out of the cliff inaccessibly 15m beneath us) and
resign ourselves to walking back to fill our water bottles for the walk down.
When we left Jim Jim Falls, the
road to Twin Falls was still closed due to high water level at the crossing. The
ranger thought it would open soon. So, we were hoping it would have opened in
our absence and we could just hitch down the road. No joy. We have lunch at the
car park and contemplate camping or walking out in the heat. I was out of
gingernuts. Alison was out of nut bars. We couldn’t stop thinking about barramundi
and gin and tonics. We wet our shirts and started slogging down the road. 8km
later, we hit the crossing. Such a little way across. A little wade in 800mm
deep crocodile infested water. We sigh and turn up stream, through head high
cane grass. A side creek creates a thickly vegetated confluence and after hopefully
heading upstream to find a clearing, we give up, dive into the nightmare, climb
a tree fallen across the creek and eventually find a bit of Jim Jim we can boulder
hop across. At the car, we eat half a fruitcake and half a box of cheezels each,
then head for gin and tonics.
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