Munja Track - Challenge Accepted

by Fabian

Do you know the feeling of completing a challenge that you have been thinking about for days and days because you weren't sure if you can do it? And then finally you manage to make your mind up and it turns out to be one of the best things you have ever done? For us this has definitely been the Munja Track all the way to Walcott Inlet through the heart of the beautiful Kimberley. A challenge of its own into the remoteness of Australia.

Click pictures to enlarge and read captions

Ok, let's take one thing at a time: We reached Western Australia with our then-travel companion in the second vehicle with whom we had planned to safely tackle one of those tracks in convoy. Unforeseen circumstances held us up in Kununnurra and so we decided to take side trips to Lake Argyle and the mighty Purnululu National Park (also known as Bungle Bungle). With the circumstances being far from resolved in the meantime, we then decided to meet again on the Gibb River Road. Carolin and I spent some days on the beautiful Old Kurunjie Road, a lonely stock route surrounding the Cockburn Ranges and camped along the Pentecost River.

 The iconic and croc-loaded Pentecost River Crossing is one of the last places where you can find mobile reception for the rest of Gibb River Road and it was there that we found out that we were being left on our own for the rest of the trip. For days of malicious corrugations on "The Gibb" we asked ourselves what to do now - apart from having to deal with the disappointment itself we saw a major piece of the dream, tackling some of WAs most remote tracks, vanishing.

It wasn't until the evening before we actually hit the Munja Track that we made the decision: "What the hell, let's take the risk and do it on our own".

We camped on Elizabeth Station one of many stock keeping stations along the Gibb River Road and the gateway to the track. It is there that you get the keys to open the gate, detailed instructions for the route to take and some warm advice for the days to come. We are talking 225 km off-road one way to Walcott Inlet and back with lots and lots of jump-ups over steep, rocky outcrops and multiple river crossings. Nothing for the faint-hearted. We had filled up provisions, water and fuel along the way and were ready for anything.

It took us two full days of driving to get to Walcott Inlet and it was on the way that we learned how to properly do four-wheeling and how capable our car is. The things we have seen and experienced are so many and so hard to bring across.

Be it the wildlife in the untouched outback, the beauty and remoteness of the region, the adrenaline on the first steep jump-up over knee-high boulders, the mysterious artwork of the indigenous people, the smells and sounds surrounding you or the sheer vastness that is difficult to grasp if you are used to crowded places like in Europe. We hope you can make the most of it by letting our pictures speak for themselves.

And we made a list because that's what you do in the world of blogs, right?

1. Driving on a track through 7 feet of grass at night with all your lights on is the outback version of Blairwitch Project.
2. You cannot do much at Walcott Inlet in 42 degrees temperature and 85 % humidity - except for drinking in the shade.
3. Walcott Inlet has a 12 m tide - with the tide rushing in it looks like a huge river with lots of rapids. The crocs use it as an Autobahn to get inland.
4. We've counted about 150 crocs, each between 2.5 to 6 m. And for every croc you see, there's seven you can't see.
5. You think you've seen a night sky full of stars? Chances are you haven't really until you've been to Walcott Inlet.
6. Magpie Jump-up is the first of a couple on the track and also the steepest. It took us an hour to walk it, think about wheel placement and how to get over those boulders unscathed until an old Landcruiser 60 series with three youngsters overtook us and showed us how to do it.
7. We also helped another couple in a Land Rover Discovery (of course!) to tackle it - they learned that not having low range fully locked it can speed things up fairly quickly on a steep descent.
8. Walcott Inlet and Charnley River have massive amounts of Barramundi - of which we did not catch a single one.
9. Driving along Munja Track is almost like going to a museum about 4x4 car history - there's about five wrecks and burned out cars on the track - the youngest of which is a 2015 Landcruiser 78 series V8 right at Walcott Inlet. It became a costly victim of a grass fire while the poor guy was out fishing in his tinny - judging by the leftovers in his fridge he had a bad taste of beer though.
10. Nine straight hours of off-roading into the night can make you pretty tired.
11. Kookaburras (they are birds!) are not laughing because of sunrise and sunset but because you look like a newbie.
12. Waking up at night, measuring the amount of water left in your tank and estimating the days until somebody else gets to you seems like a natural thing if you have just woken up to a nightmare about the first jump-up you have to take in the morning.
13. Munja was a mission located at Walcott Inlet - you could only get there by boat until the lease owner decided to bulldoze a track to Elizabeth Station in the 60s - it took him about two to three weeks.
14. Aboriginal art in this area can be up to mind-boggling 20,000 years old, some earlier drawings and carvings could be up to 40,000 years old.
15. It's a bad idea to take a trailer on the track.
16. Tyres strapped to the roof might be loose at camp. Check them first before you pitch up the roof top tent or you'll have some bad scratches on the windscreen and the bonnet... :-)

We spent two nights at Walcott Inlet (including Carolins birthday) before taking on the way back and all in all we spent five days on the track.

It has been one of the best decisions and rewarding experiences on the trip and in the end we were actually happy to have done it on our own. It made us grow, more powerful than ever and prepared for the rest to come.