Friday 5th July 2013 – Drysdale River to King Edward River

Before heading north this morning we drove back the few kilometres to Drysdale River Station to find out where rock art is at King Edward River.

The road initially crosses the Drysdale River and continues to be fairy rough (quite a few corrugations) for the further 160 km to the turn off to Mitchell Falls.  

From the turn off the road deteriorated further with plenty of warning – “This is an unmaintained road”.  Actually it wasn’t much worse than what we had been on but much windier so I guess we were going at a slower pace.

After crossing the rocky ford on the King Edward River we pulled into the Munurru Camping area and set up camp.

After lunch we set off to explore the rock art.  The first site was about 4km down the road towards Mitchell Falls.  It wasn’t too hard to find and there was a surprising variety of both Gwion and Windjana figures – and some skulls and bones at what is obviously a burial site.  

The second site was back along the road just where we had crossed the river.  Again quite a variety of figures with some quite classic Windjana faces.  We are indeed honoured to be able to see this variety of indigenous art work

Back to camp for a swim in the river and then Jill and I went for a walk down stream to where there is a pretty waterfall.  The rock here is again quite different to anything we have seen.  Very red volcanic rock.  You could just imagine the larva bubbling up over this area.  The area covered is quite immense.