Mitchell Falls Day. Yay!!!
Sleep-in Day. YAY!!!
We managed to get down to breakfast at about 7:45am, the room was pretty empty, which was nice.
After breakfast we stood on our balcony and watched a couple of helicopters take-off from a beach across the water from our boat.
We left the boat at about 10:05am for our zodiac ride over to the beach, where we were given another safety briefing by the pilot. There were 4 passengers in the helicopter, we both sat in the back on the trip to the falls.
The chopper went at up to 150km/hr on the way there. On the way up we circled a couple of crocodiles resting in the the middle of the Mitchell River. We soon arrived at the Falls and the pilot did a couple of loops so everyone could see the them from both sides of the helicopter, and get some nice photos.
We landed and made our way to a covered area. When we got there, there was a Monjon (the smallest species of rock wallabies, scurrying around.Monjo 
We got some great photos watching it do its thing.
Luke, our expedition guide for this excursion gave us a bit of a story around the falls and took a few pictures of us and our group. He also told us the local clans dreamtime story of how the Rainbow Serpent made its resting place at the bottom of the lower falls after it had finished its creation works. It added to the magic of the moment.
We got our photos of the falls and took time to just take it all in. Such a special place.
After all that we went back up stream a little and had a swim in a large pool not too far from the landing zone.
The water is all spring fed at this time of the year, including the falls.
We swam around for a bit and then moved to a shallow area of, what I’ll call rapids, a narrow part of the water course flowing over some rocks. It was very relaxing being washed over by the running water.
Our helicopter arrived about 12:10pm, after refuelling.
We took off and did a couple of laps, of the falls for last views and photos before heading back to the drop off beach. On the way we saw JC’s Falls, named after a local helicopter pilot and general area legend!
We arrived back at the beach we took off from, to find the tide had come in big time. We landed safely
and were back on the boat via one of the Explorers in time for lunch.
After lunch we took one of the Explorers to Wollaston Bay. Here we got off the Explorer with a clean dry beach landing and made our way about 100m inland to an old/ancient local clans camp site that was full of Wandjina Art, some dating back at least 4000 years
The area was in a cave, where it was said the local clans lived. There were signs of areas for food preparation and eating, sleeping areas, and where some of the walls and most ceilings were covered in art.
Many of them over drawn once or more times. There were drawings of the Wandjina, cloud and rain spirits of the local clans. The Wandjina depicted had large “halos” around their heads, with large upper bodies and their heads had eyes and a nose but no mouth. The were at least 3 or 4 Wandjina drawn here, all were very long compared to the other Art. I loved these images, for me they were multi- dimensional and alive. I wished they could speak and tell me their stories.
There were also pictures of turtles,fish,kangaroos/wallabies/Monjons, other human type figures and, surprisingly to us, Thylacyne (Tasmanian Tigers). Apparently Thylacyne were common in this area thousands of years ago.
We both enjoyed being immersed in the Art.
We returned to the boat and had our daily recap of the day and briefing for tomorrow by Cara.
At 5:30pm we boarded the Explorers and were taken to Veranda Beach for drinks and canapes on the beach. It was a fun outing, relaxing on the beach, taking inall things Kimberley- the beach, shells & coral, the red sandstone surrounds and the crisp blue water it was an enjoyable hour.
Back on the boat, we had decided to have dinner in our room, a cheese platter with a bottle of Bethany Shiraz, followed by Venetian donuts with berries. Delicious, and very relaxing.
A great way to finish the best day of the cruise so far.
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