Saturday 6th July – King Edward River to Mitchell Falls

Up early this morning to get away about 7:45,  the plan being to get in nice and early at Mitchell Falls to get a good camping spot.  There are quite a lot of campers here at King Edward River and we want to be off with the early crew.

The 80km drive in to the camping ground at Mitchell Falls was straight forward.  We had heard that it was a pretty awful road and that the advice was to leave camper trailers at King Edward.  While corrugated in places and some fairly steep ups and downs we didn’t find it too bad and it was certainly no problem for the Aussie Swag.  The most interesting feature on the way in were the fan palms, initially as understory in eucalypt forest then as pretty well a forest in their own right.  Apparently this area gets an annual rainfall of 1400mm per annum – hence the palms.

We set up camp, had lunch and then searched out the shade for a rest.  It’s very hot today.  Later in the afternoon we walked down to Mertens Creek and found a waterhole big enough to cool off in.  Some beautiful birds in this area that we don't usually see including red winged parrots, northern rosellas and red backed fairy wrens.