Our GO-MAD Oz Adventure: Day 161

7 July 2013

Excited!! Mitchell Falls! Up early ready for our crazy 78km unmaintained dirt track, 8.6km return walk to falls, swimming in the falls and the possibility of a helicopter ride!

Well the 78km road was rough, lots of creek crossings, corrugations, big rocks and dust galore! We seriously have dust in every place you can think of and places you don't want to think about! This road also displays a whole new landscape with luscious green everywhere and palm trees amongst bush trees, it's quite a sight.

Anyway Joel hit the track pretty hard, his theory is the faster you go the less you feel....haha...and we managed to get there in 1 1/2 hours. Paid our entry fees and camp fees (a ranger does come around at night) and headed into the national park to set up camp first.

All setup, we decided to check out the helicopter flights which run from the campground to the top of the falls and vise versa so you can walk one way and get chopper back or get chopper both ways etc. after a bit of a conversation with the lady there we decided it was worth the $115 pp for a once in a lifetime op. So we were walking to the falls and breezing it back in the chopper.

The walk is graded 4 & 5 which is classed as difficult and they give you a timeframe of 3 hours. If you are young and fit then ignore these times, it took us 1.5 hours and we dawdled because we had 4 hours to kill before the ride was booked back to camp. The walk is over, up, down rocks, through bushland, over creek crossings so I guess that's why it's classed as difficult and the heat is pretty extreme too!

Little Mertens Falls is the first little falls you run into which are nice to stop and check out, Joel wanted to get a photo in front of the falls so went to sit down on one of the rocks and there was a big snake just where he was about to put his leg! Argh!

First wildlife encounter over we kept moving to another waterhole where you can swim too (water was freezing so gave this one a miss) and there was some aboriginal rock art on the gorges there.

500m off the grand finale is Big Merten Falls which honestly if this had of been the grand finale I would have been pretty impressed. It was a beautiful gorge with a flowing waterfall and you wouldn't want to be afraid of heights looking down into it!

500m and we make it to the top, this is the only place you can swim in the falls as there are saltwater crocs in the lower pools and only freshies up the top. The water was pretty cold and I almost slipped ass up on the extremely slippery rocks! Fish were chasing Joel while he was swimming, turns out people probably feed them as Joel threw them the crusts off his sandwich and they all came to the surface for a chance at the crumbs.

There is a little lookout to the right where you can look down onto the falls but to see them in full flight you need to cross the top of the falls and head to the right of the helicopter pad. This is where there is another lookout and you can see the full three tiers of waterfall. We sat and admired the falls and took lots of photos (except the fact that my big camera battery died as soon as we got into a good photo op spot) with the smaller camera, it is nothing short of spectacular and we could have sat for hours.

The heat was calling us back for a swim so we headed to another spot further up the top of the falls and while I waded in the pools of water, Joel showered himself under the force of the water rushing down the fall. Cooled off and nearly time for our cruisey ride back so headed to the heli pad and waited for our ride.

Chopper pulls in right on cue and we are lead to our seats. We sat in the back with one other person and the back seat has no doors so we buckled up tightly! Haha put our little headsets on (always wanted to wear them) and we were off from a hover to full flight, over the falls a couple of times and then soft landing back at the campground! Ride was unbelievable, we had such a good time and it was well worth the money paid!