MYSTIC RIVER
Its flanks tattooed by antiquity and alive with fauna, the wild Fitzroy River cuts a line through the Kimberley that’s capable of taking the breath away from even the most experienced of paddlers. STORY Lachie Carragher - IMAGES Lachie Carragher + Anthony Yap
“Wilderness is not a luxury but a necessity of human spirit.” - Edward Abbey, Author/ Environmentalist
It is this necessity of human spirit that expedition leaders Anthony Yap and I experienced on our previous extended paddling epics to the remote wilderness rivers of the Kimberley region, Western Australia. For years we had talked about ‘the perfect trip’, about getting all our closest friends together and taking on one of the Kimberly’s great rivers. It was over a couple of celebratory beers at the whitewater kayaking World Championships in Switzerland that the plan went into full swing. Paddlers from Uganda, New Zealand, America, Canada, and of course Australia, quickly put their hands up and committed to the trip of a life time.
There was little deliberation on the choice of river – we had talked about it for years after paddling the Mitchell, Moran and King Edward rivers back in 2008. A look at the maps confirmed our choice; the true heart of the Kimberley was obvious. It was a river that carried rumours of eight-metre flash floods that broke the banks overnight; a river with massive catchments and relatively easy logistics, perfect for our purposes. The river was the Fitzroy.
THE FITZROY IS AUSTRALIA’S HIGHEST VOLUME RIVER, with peak wet-season flows recorded as high as 1 million cubic feet per second (CFS). This flow is 21 times greater then the Colorado River sprinting through the middle of the Grand Canyon, and far greater volume then the Nile in Egypt, the Zambezi in Africa, and the Niagara River as it tumbles from Canada into the US.
Getting our team of 11 international paddlers and environmental spokespeople to the put in point was without a doubt the biggest challenge of such a large-scale expedition. After the team members flew into Melbourne from their respective corners of the planet, we drove over 4000km straight up and across Australia to Fitzroy Crossing in north Western Australia. From here we chartered four light aircraft to shuttle the 11 people, two rafts, seven kayaks, one month’s worth of food and shelter, and even a solar panel to a remote Indigenous community in the uppermost reaches of the Fitzroy catchment.
A grueling five-hour hike to the 80-foot monster that is the Manning Falls and our team was finally at the real source of the Fitzroy. Once the team was on the water, months of work, countless emails, phone calls, thousands of dollars, and thousands of kilometres were all behind us. It finally came down to 11 friends, our supplies and the mighty Fitzroy. We had to work together and with only what we had carried with us get us through the next month in the utter wilderness, travelling over 500km of river that separated us from civilization.
THE KIMBERLEY IS THREE TIMES THE SIZE OF ENGLAND, and it’s a region I believe will draw me back every year. Largely uninfluenced by the modem world it is an awe inspiring spot. When you’re out there on the river there are no fences, you can’t even see planes in the sky. Your world changes dramatically. You sleep when it’s cool and the sun is down. You rise with the sun and go about daily routines. The land is alive; dingoes howl at the bright moon that lights the land at night, flocks of birds fill the large empty sky. Startled bats follow the group in swarms down tree-lined channels of the river; wallabies jump from rock to rock in the dramatic limestone and sandstone gorges; crocodiles splash in the warm water around you. The Kimberley is full of life and energy. This contrasts dramatically with the world that every team member has parachuted in from before the expedition. The environment commands your attention in the Kimberley.
As a warm sun breaks a bright starlit night the land comes alive. Insects soon find your body and the blistering heat and sun make sleeping past 6am not an option. The team goes about daily routines, collecting fresh water for breakfast, putting the billy on for bushman coffee, exploring rapids down stream, searching for rock art, or just escaping the heat and having some personal soul time in what I call the edge of the earth.
The gorges and cave-like shelters that we sleep in during our month in the wilderness are full of paintings from travellers before us. The Kimberley is home to a unique style of rock art called Gwion Gwion, or Bradshaw paintings. The long slender figures in these paintings are depicted in ceremonial dress consisting of sashes, bangles and head dresses. Little understood and only recently explored, the art covers the cave walls. As we bed down after a day on the river, Gwion Gwion figures stand above us in haunting posses, engaged in dancing ceremonies and hunting.
To accurately carbon date the figures requires organic matter that is absent from these ancient paintings. From information scientists have gathered, the Gwion Gwion art works are said to have been done at least 17,000 years BP (Before Present), but they’re more like to date back a far as 25,000 years BP. To put that in perspective, Egyptian hieroglyphs are dated to 5000 years BP. The Gwion Gwion figures provide proof that the first waves of migrants to enter Australia from Africa entered via the Kimberley coast, and migrated up the rivers that we’re travelling down.
The mystery of the Gwion Gwion culture continues, as they seem to have disappeared as quickly as they came, most likely due to the climate change surrounding the last major Ice Age, around 10,000 years ago. The Kimberley gorges are also home to an array of more recent and abstract styles of painting; the Wandjina paintings have a direct connection with Indigenous groups that still populate the area, and date back to around 3500 BP. Wandjina are the cloud and rain spirits of the Kimberley. They are depicted with no mouth because the spirits are so powerful they do not require speech. If they had mouths the rain would never stop.
The Kimberley has the most pristine savanna woodland you will find anywhere on the planet. It has a stunning, untouched marine environment to match the Antarctic. Unfortunately there are also a lot of mineral recourses in the Kimberley; uranium, iron ore, bauxite, diamonds, coal and natural gas are just a few. The environmental and political issues facing the Kimberley are very complex – the more I look into the threats to the area the more I am overwhelmed.
Currently there is a compulsory Aboriginal land acquisition on the Dampier Peninsular, part of the Kimberley’s coast, by the Western Australian Government. Energy giant Woodside, the Western Australian Government, and local Aboriginal groups are said to have reached a stalemate in negotiations on the land, but the Western Australian Government has recently confirmed a compulsory acquisition of the Aboriginal title to build a $30 billion gas processing plant, a sad and devastating development. This is just one of a large number of industrial threats to face the area, and there will be more, from coal mines to dams to offshore gas rigs. If people don’t stand up for the Kimberley it will face a very sad future, as the neighboring Pilbra area of Western Australia already has. This trip was as much about highlighting these threats to the environment as it was about paddling.
There is something strange I find in the Kimberley. In the extreme heat, the monsoonal downpours, the flies waking you every morning by crawling in the corners of your eyes, the remoteness, the endless sounds of nature and thunderous raging rapids that keep me up at night…in all of this I feel at home. I do not fear the crocodiles I see splashing in the water and swimming towards us, nor the snakes or distance from the ‘real world’. Worries disappear and the days blend into one. I feel that the river and place will nurture me, and will grant me a safe passage through its massive rapids. But that’s not to say I don’t get a little scared sometimes…
I SPLASH BATH TEMPERATURE WATER ON MY FACE. The water is warm but it’s still a refreshing change from the 40?C heat. Looking downstream I get the ‘all clear’ signal from the safety team. I’m scared but it is this moment that I have been working my way towards for the last 6 months. I am in the heart of the Kimberley, my senses are heightened and all I am thinking of is my line down the rapid. It is in these next few moments of focus, surrounded by the extreme wilderness, that I fulfill my personal ‘necessity of human spirit’. Months of headaches and sleepless nights are all worth it for the few seconds of raw, primal, fight-for-survival feeling you get on a massive rapid. It is this feeling that drives me to these places.
No one else thought it was a good idea to paddle this rapid but I was confident I would hit the line. Anthony, standing on the bank near me, camera in hand, says:
“How do you feel, Lach?”
“At least the water is warm if I swim!” I reply.
I peel out into the current and break through the first crashing wave. I feel good, I feel strong, and the only thing I am thinking about is my next paddle stroke. My heart beats strong and the world is quiet. I place my stroke exactly where I need to and pull. I give an almighty heave to make my boat land flat off the water fall. I style the line but it’s not good enough, the sheer power of the giant hydraulic river feature at the bottom of the falls instantly throws me and my kayak straight back into the ‘meat’ of the falls.
Within a split-second I know there is no chance I will get out of this situation in my kayak and staying in my boat is only going to waste precious oxygen. I pull the pin and swim from my boat. There is no longer quiet, stillness or focus. There is only a 6’ 4” guy being tossed like a rag doll in every direction at the bottom of a big waterfall. I disappear from the sight of my safety team, and I feel my helmet only just staying on my head. My life jacket is half torn from my body, and I try to ball up as best I can to keep my gear from being ripped off me. I feel like I’m in a spin dryer that is being dumped by a massive wave on the beach.
My greatest fear on the rivers of the Kimberley is the abundance of caves and undercuts that have formed in the ancient rock. Being wedged in any undercut or cave in the river would without question result in a loss of life. This thought jumps into my head. My breath runs short but as long as I don’t feel my body get wedged under a rock then it’s okay.
I start to panic; I expect that because I’m not in my kayak I will pop up down stream quite quickly but it feels like my body is being surfed and there is not sign of it stopping. I know that the only way I can hold on is if I stay calm. “Stay calm,” I tell myself, “Stay calm.”
I feel my face turn blue then it all goes quiet. It is not white anymore; it’s dark and very still. The water feels cold, and my ears pop under pressure. I know exactly where I am. I have been forced to the bottom of the highest volume river in Australia, and if it has taken me this long to get here then I am only half way through my swim for survival.
“Stay calm” I tell myself again. I feel the direction change; I am no longer sliding down; I am going up, and fast. Without a second thought I swim up from the darkness and I erupt from the surface almost dolphin-like with my entire upper body, all the way to my waistline, coming out of the water. I feel the downstream current and swim as hard as I can. Only after drifting 100 metres downstream from the waterfall do I give the ‘okay’ signal to the team, in between gasping for breath. It’s been one of the scariest swims of my life and the video shows I was under for around 40 seconds.
WE CONTINUE DOWN THE FITZROY with plans to find new river waves to surf in our small, specially designed kayaks; I have no question in my mind that they’re out there. We’re jumping 20-metre cliffs, and there are entire trees resting on rock ledges above us as a reminder of last years’ wet season flood levels.
But we’re travelling the river during the driest wet season since records began. This goes against the current weather trend – that high levels of air pollution from Asia are causing the Kimberley to get increasingly wet. Constantly we look to the skies for more water, and constantly we’re disappointed. The team is tired; we are sitting at the edge of world, united from all corners of the globe, waiting for rain, waiting for Wandjina to speak.
But the rain doesn’t come. With low water levels, flat sections of the river that with normal water flows would offer an easy float, require the team to pull the heavy rafts across the flats and back to the Fitzroy crossing, one paddle stroke at a time. If Kimberley missions were easy then everyone would do it.
On our last evening I stare at the bleached highwater marks etched into the limestone rock walls of Geekie gorge, reflecting on the journey we have all undertaken. I feel defeated. My strongest memories of the Kimberley had been the dramatic thunderstorms. They were like nothing else I had ever experienced, with their overwhelming energy, winds, and spectacular lightning. But on this trip we had only seen one small storm.
We are camped very close to the waters’ edge, complacent. Every night previously I had ordered everyone to store their gear up higher, bundle their gear together, not to leave things lying around overnight incase of flash flooding. Everyone one was sick of my orders; the river has been steadily dropping from the day we put on.
I go to sleep watching lightening flashing from a storm in the distance, dreaming of the Kimberley I once knew. A few hours later I wake with my entire body burning from very strong winds that whip coarse sand against my skin. Disorientated, I look around. Our gear is flying everywhere. It’s night, but I can see the world around me as if it were day. Lightning cracks deafeningly on a nearby ridge. The sky is lit heavily by repetitive sheets of lighting, so much so that I can clearly make out the shapes and colours surrounding us; there is no need for a head torch, even in the middle of the night.
The sky booms at me over and over again, and an oversized water droplet explodes into the dry soil beside where I’m laying, and another, and another. “Get your gear!” I scream, as everyone runs to pack our camp together, flip the rafts and make for higher ground. Huddled together under overturned rafts, wet, and in the full knowledge that a lot of equipment is missing, we laugh.
The monsoonal downpour doesn’t stop all night and none of us sleep. On our last night Wandjina has spoken, even if it is a final whisper: “Goodbye, see you next wet season…”
POSTSCRIPT
On Tuesday 1 February 2011, Lachie Carracher set off on a new expedition, with his sights set on becoming the first person to ever paddle solo down the Fitzroy River in the remote Kimberley region of Western Australia. The Fitzroy is Australia’s largest volume river, and with current weather conditions it is one of the largest in the world. Only a handful of rivers with a volume anywhere near as big as this have ever been paddled solo. You can follow Lachie’s progress daily on the Outer Edge website: www.outer-edge.com.au. Good luck Lachie, we’ll be on that river with you mate (in spirit at least).
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Lachie Carracher, Outer Edge‘s Young Adventurer of the Year 2009, has held a place on the Australian Whitewater Kayak Team since 2005. When not competing he is usually very hard to find, as he’s typically off exploring wild rivers and remote areas of the globe, anywhere from Uganda to Nepal, or in our own enormous and under-explored backyard here in Australia. A film maker, photographer and writer (as well as world-class paddler), he is passionate about the conservation of the planet’s wild places, and is currently working on his debut feature film, the Calling, with Joel Kowalski. Find out more about Lachie by visiting follow-the-river.com.
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