It's official. Kaka-DO.

Today was another memorable day for a range of reasons that will soon become clear.

It started with a lovely morning watching the sun rise over the Yellow Water marshes with the Jabirus quietly feeding in the lillies, the Whistling Ducks returning to their banks and the egrets beginning their breakfast hunt.

Today's plan was to spend few hours at a waterfall that was officially named after me - Jim Jim Falls. Kathy was not feeling the best so decided to stay at camp and send us out. Heading over to Jim Jim the first part was an easy drive along corrugated roads but I knew it was going to get better when you reach a sign that says 4WD Required.  Engage 4WD gear.  

The next 10 km was a lovely drive following a narrow sandy track, through rocky small creek crossings with the towering escarpment shading you.

 But the car could only take us so far so. The rest was a boulder hopping treck to the base of Jim Jim Falls.  

Arriving at the plunge pool it is hard to describe the immensity of the falls completely dwarfing those brave enough to swim over to the base where the water comes to an explosive end.  Despite the sign at the beginning of the walk saying "crocodiles - swim at your own risk" and a crocodile trap located downstream we threw the kids in the water to see if there were any around.  Safe knowing there were no crocs we made our way to a lovely white sandy beach and swam and frollected for an hour.

(If you look very closely you will see 2 people at the very bottom of the waterfall)

Now this is where the stories slightly differ.  My recolection was saying "it was getting late and Kathy will be worrying so we should head back now. But Graeme insisted that we had come this far and it couldn't hurt to just go and have a look at how deep the water crossing was to Twin Falls".  

What ever the actual facts, we headed down to the crossing.  With the water markers showing just over 700mm I knew I would be OK and thought that Graeme's hire car would probably float away and I will have to pull him out (I didn't tell him this at the time).  So being the bravest we entered the water crossing that luckily has a nice firm base and to the kids screams of excitement (or fear) we made it to the other side.  

Before I could tell Graeme that it was a bit deeper than I had thought he had thrown caution to the wind and plummeted into the crocodile infested waters.  With a huge amount of 4WD experience under his belt (a 30 second lesson from me before hand) he handled it like a pro creating a perfect bow wave and making it to the other side safely.  That was fun.  Luckily we had to do it again on the way back.

But before that, we made our way to the falls.  Now a lot of the trip I had read about and knew what to expect but I had not anticipated going to Twin falls (remember Graeme made me). It was late in the afternoon and we arrived to a deserted car park.  Getting out I noticed a sign that read 400 m walk then a boat trip to the falls.  Last boat at 4pm. Was this correct? 

While it was getting late and I am sure Kathy would be wondering where we were, it was an adventure we had to follow (Graeme said). Reaching the bank a person comes from out of the shadows saying  g'day you mob, your a lucky lot as I was about to pack up.

Now it turns out you are meant to purchase tickets for the 10 min ride up to the waterfall but being unprepared for any of this Dennis the captain still took us up the river. Being so late we were the only ones in the valley making it more special as we had our private tour and waterfalls to ourselves.

The Twins (Isabelle and Bethany) were excited about being at Twin falls watching the water appear to fall out of the sky and crash into the pool below. While we saw a couple of fresh water crocodiles, lurking somewhere under the deep dark water were their more angry relatives so there was definitely no swimming here.

By now it was getting late but no worries - I will just use my satelite tracker to 'check in' and let Kathy know all is OK. As the sun slowly set we had the fun of the river crossing to go.  Let's just hope there had not been a rain event in the upper catchment otherwise we might be camping here for a week. Luckily we made it to the other side safely then a slow windy trip out of the falls.

Arriving back at camp I knew something was not right.  I am not sure if it had to do with the look on Kathy's face or her comment "where the bloody hell have you been - there is a search party out looking for you!"

Graeme had anticipated this reaction and concocted a perfectly plausible story that we had stopped to help a bus load of Swedish backpackers that were stranded and he had to perform mouth to mouth recucitation but I was insistent that everything would be all right.  We will just call the police, national parks, SWAT team and emergency service and tell them that we were having such a great time and that you only live once (although I think my life may be a bit shorter for me now).  

Having made all the necessary phone calls to call of the aboriginal trackers and confirm that all was OK we settled back in to camp full or adrenalin from today's adventure.

Despite the threat from Kathy to castrate me, this was another memorable adventure.

POST SCRIPT: I have just remembered that Adelaide decided to take mums phone with us on our adventure so Kathy had no access to my satelite tracker.  Atleast WE knew we were safe.