Afloat The River Of Creation

Through the aeons-old Kimberley region of Western Australia flows a river at times among the mightiest on Earth, yet rarely visited and still less-often paddled.

- Lachie Carracher

I LOOK AROUND AT THE GROUP OF skydivers, paramedics and assorted self-declared adventurers. They’re no couch potatoes. Most seem at least passably fit. But until 10 days ago, none of them had any whitewater experience. It will be up to me to keep them alive today.

We are about to launch onto the most demanding stretch of the Fitzroy River in the Kimberley region of Western Australia, the highest volume river in Australia and one of the highest volume rivers in the world when in flood.

As it’s the wet season, the only access into the Kimberley is by air, with the limited roads impassable due to daily torrential downpours. We flew in 10 days ago on three light aircraft, landing at an isolated Aboriginal community on the Gibb River Road. Even then we had to wait five days for a gap in the weather to get airborne.

After a three-hour flight from Broome, we were dropped off in the middle of one of the last true wildernesses. The Kimberley is larger than Germany, or about the same size as California, yet has a population of little more than 50,000 even in the milder winter. Overwhelmingly rocky and riven with gorges and cliffs, it sits on ancient limestone and sandstone strata dating as far back as the Devonian, 360-420 million years ago.

The region has an average annual rainfall of 1,270 millimetres, most of it falling in a short, intense wet season. Having used our weather window to get in and down 300 kilometres of slower water, we are now well placed to run the remaining, more challenging 150 kilometres, as runoff upstream keeps pushing the high-water mark ever higher.