Day 4: The Lost City and a Swim at Miri Miri

Our last day at El Questro involved a four-private tour exploring the Lost City and Miri Miri. We were up, packed and ready to leave at 9am. We were given our safety briefing then put on a four-seater TINY doorless helicopter. Off we went!

The ride was soooo much fun. We didn’t go super high but without a doubt would have died if we’d crashed. I was grinning from ear to ear the whole time as we banked left and right to get a spectacular view. 

The pilot, Jacob, took us over the gorges we’d down on the other days then out to Lost City, a collection of rocks that look like tumbled down stone columns. We landed then went for about an hour’s clambering over rocks and into the caves. 

Here we saw ancient rock art, spiders, dragonflies, and a complete shed snake skin suspended from the ceiling where some snake clearly had found the best spot to peel itself out of its old skin. 

We crawled through a very narrow opening, though luckily this was not long and we emerged into a large space where we could stand. (I don’t do at all well in confined spaces but this was manageable.) In here, we unfortunately saw two cane toads, but also a splendid tree frog and a snake! The snake was black and yellow striped but not very big. It was slithering through a very narrow crevice, probably in search of the nearby tree frog. We didn’t get to see the snake’s head, but after talking with a herpetology friend, we think it was most likely a brown tree snake. They slightly venomous but small and shy and prefer frogs. 

This was good as the whole countryside is littered with some of the world’s most venomous snakes, including death adders which are camouflage extremely well and are ambush predators, which means they don’t run away like a lot of other snakes. They just sit and wait for you to step on them, then strike with lightning speed. Thankfully, no sign of them. 

We continued our walk out through a very squeezy whole, up some more rocks, and back up to the helicopter. It was great. 

We then took a flight to Miri Miri, checking out the falls from above before coming in to land. A short walk took us to the picturesque pool and waterfall, where Jacob left us with our lunch so we could have a swim. 

The water was again really really cold. Narelle and I saw around for a while, checking the large waterfall and the small trickling (and warm) waterfall. The pool was very deep, almost unfathomable, and despite the chilliness of the water, it was a beautiful place to swim. 

Lunch had, clothes changed, we returned to the helicopter for the flight back to El Questro. I got to sit in the front for this longest leg of the journey and we saw more gorges including the pretty Champagne Falls. 

We landed back at the station before 1, again with me grinning like a lunatic. It was the highlight of the trip so far for me and I highly recommend it. 

Back at the station, I had a quick bite to eat, we refilled our water bottles, then left El Questro for Kununurra. We checked in, had a rest, did the washing, and then went up the lower portion of Kelly’s Knob for a sunset lookout over Kununurra, before dinner at the local sports bar. 

There I bumped into a friend from the zoo who I haven’t seen in about ten years, I’d say, as she now lives in Darwin. It was very trippy to see her walk in. We caught up on the big news and off we went. 

Another early night as we were tired and had to be up super early the next day. What a great Monday!

Response

  1. That’s interesting about the snakes. Your post made me think of Shakespeare’s line, “And there the snake throws her enamled skin”

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