Bushman Bud Tackles Elliot Falls to the Frenchman’s Track
Waking up at the moonscape of Canal Creek, we were on our way quickly to Elliot Falls. In reality, only a 10 minute drive from Canal Creek. We were looking forward to checking out the falls and going for a nice swim.
We pulled up in the carpark and headed towards the falls. You access the falls along a easy board walk which stinks of bats. There are bats everywhere and bat dung everywhere. Hold your nose and run I say. Luckily the aroma of the bat dung is not present at the falls. Arriving at the falls you have Elliot Falls and Twin Falls within 100m of each other. We found that Twin Falls is the better of the two for swimming. In fact if you had to compare the falls I would give Twin Falls the nod, just ahead of Elliot Falls. Luckily they are close to one another so you get to see them both anyhow.
Arriving at Twin Falls we were lucky enough to have the place to ourselves for an hour. We had a great time swimming and splashing in the falls and swimming right up to the falls to be massaged by the water gushing down onto your back…a very refreshing place to swim and relax. Its funny though when you get to these areas and you are the first there, that you ponder where the safe swimming is. Finally you get enough courage to go for a swim and relax after 5 mins or so when nothing has eaten you. The even funnier part is that other people just come and jump in where you are without thought…thinking that if you are ok, then we should be too. How crazy is it that we act like sheep sometimes and it gets us into a whole pile of trouble. We had a funny incident where Lynda lost her hat down the creek, below Elliot Falls. I followed the hat and was just about to jump in and retrieve it when two things dawned on me. First was crocs and second was, how the hell was I going to climb back up the steep sides of the gorge without having to swim to find a spot…I would have probably found a croc before a safe place to climb out…lesson learnt again!
Twin Falls are a beautiful set of falls, two tiered (hence the name) that fall gracefully over the beautiful coloured orange and red shaded rocks. It is typical of the falls you find in the Kimberleys and is very pretty and a must if up in this region.
Elliot Falls plunder off a shallow river bed over a table like serrated edge that runs down the river instead of across the river. The falls in fact have created an umbrella formation as they continue to erode away the softer rock in the middle of the falls. Too hard to explain in detail, check out the photos, I am probably not doing the beautiful falls justice.
After a beautiful swim in the crystal clear cool water we were back to the car and heading off to take on the challenge of the Frenchman’s Track. We had missed out on the track on the way up due to heavy rain and a rising Pascoe River so we were keen to get stuck into it today.
Back on the highway it wasn’t long before we were bouncing along on the corrugations heading towards the start of the track. We had spent a long time enjoying Elliot Falls and we quickly realised that we were not going to tackle much of the Frenchman’s Track today. In fact we only passed Bramwell Junction around 3:00pm and debated over stopping there for the night. The thought of the track was too much though and we continued on finding the start of the track at about 4:00pm. At the start of the Frenchman’s Track there is a sign saying private property and no access allowed. I found this somewhat unusual because I had heard of plenty of people tackling this track. Well in an attempt to do the right thing I headed to the B?? Homestead which was 10 klm down the road to find out what the story was. The caretaker there informed me that you can use the Frenchman’s Track but are not allowed to venture off the track or camp before the Wenlock River. I then quizzed him about campsites and he noted that the only one he knew of was on the Wenlock River where there was a sandy bank on the far side. Well at now 4:30pm and 25 klms away that was our only option.
We were back at the start to the Frenchman’s Track at about 4:45pm heading for the Wenlock River and needing to cover 15 rough klms. It dawned on us early in the peace that this was probably wishful thinking as we would need to negotiate the difficult river crossing in darkness. We looked out for many camp spots along the way and in the end out of desperation camped on the track at an intersection with another track leading South. What had slowed us down was a very muddy and soft 300m section which required momentum and careful wheel placement. We were actually very lucky on a couple of occasions not to come unstuck (or rather very stuck here).
Cooking dinner in the dark is never a nice experience and neither are the ever present mozzies and midges. We were finally fed and into bed early looking forward to high expectations of adventure tomorrow when we tackled the Wenlock and Pascoe Rivers…until then…
Bushman Bud…Enjoying Australia