Mount Trafalgar is situated in the Prince Regent Nature Reserve, in the Kimberley Region of Western Australia. It is one of Australia’s most remote places, with the only access by air or boat. There are no roads into the area and a permit is required from Conservation and Land Management for those wishing to enter the area. The top of the massive bluff can only be reached by boat or helicopter. A Kimberley region tourist company offers helicopter flights to the area which take visitors to the top of the mountain where they can enjoy a champagne breakfast as the sun comes up over the ocean.
The Prince Regent River, in the far north-west Kimberley, remains today as one of Australia’s most remote wilderness areas. No roads penetrate its rugged sandstone ranges, and a tide-race with formidable whirlpools restricts access from seaward. Upstream from the veritable inland sea of St. George Basin, the Prince Regent River runs straight as an arrow into the heart of the Kimberley Plateau, following an ancient fault line. The Prince Regent Nature Reserve, created in 1964, covers some 633,825 hectares, protecting almost the entire river catchment. The Reserve was nominated a UNESCO World Biosphere Reserve in 1978, in recognition of its outstanding intact wildlife and pristine values.
The first Europeans known to gaze on this scene were the botanist, Allan Cunningham, and ship’s surgeon, James Hunter, in September 1820 on the survey vessel HMC Mermaid, under the command of Lieutenant Phillip Parker King. While the ship was undergoing emergency hull repairs at Careening Bay, the pair had climbed a prominent hill, which they named Mount Knight. From this peak, their eyes were drawn to a glimmering inland tidal basin, as well as a skyline dominated by a spectacular tilted mesa.
In the oral traditions of the Wororra, the local Aboriginal people, this mighty mesa, Ngayangkarnanya, had been carried in the Dreamtime from the north by a vast shoal of fish, sharks and crabs. The colossal weight of the load not only exhausted them, it squashed many flat – creating in the process both rays and shovel-nosed sharks!
Unaware of these ancient legends, Phillip Parker King and the crew of HMC Mermaid ventured in to explore the basins and navigable lower river, bestowing British names with patriotic zeal. The Prince Regent River was named for the Hanoverian prince, shortly to succeed his incapacitated father, George III, and reign in his own right as King George IV. The 391-metre mesa was named Mount Trafalgar by King, in honour of Nelson’s great naval victory of 1805. An adjacent lesser peak was named Mount Waterloo, after the Belgian village that witnessed the decisive defeat of Napoleon by the Duke of Wellington’s army.
Careening Bay was named by Lieutenant Phillip Parker King after his ship, HMC Mermaid, was careened (had its hull scraped clean) there in order to repair a leak, during his first voyage of discovery in 1820. King was completing the circumnaviation of Australia commenced by Matthew Flinders 20 years earlier for the purpose of accurately mapping thw whole coast of Australia. Flinders never completed the mission – his reserach vessel, HMS Investigator, became increasing unseaworthy as the voyage progressed. He attempted to return to Britain to get a more reliable ship to complete the task with, but he was taken prisoner by the French in Ile de France (Madagascar) and was detained there for 7 years.
Perhaps because he had plenty of time on his hands while waiting for the Mermaid to be repaired, Lieutenant King had members of his crew inscribe a boab tree with the words HMC MERMAID 1820 , to record his visit. The tree is still alive, and is today an important tourist attraction.
One of several large inlets on the Kimberley Coast, St George Basin is believed to have been formed by a rise in sea level around 10,000 years ago. The Prince Regent River enters the Indian Ocean through St George Basin. The river makes its final approach to the sea through 80 kilometres of an extraordinarily straight valley, which is in fact a long fault line in the massive worn-down plateau of the Kimberleys.
The Prince Regent River was named by Phillip Parker King on 11th or 12th October 1820. The name honours George, Prince of Wales, the son of Britain’s George III who took over as Regent in 1811 when his father’s mental illness (thought now to be the disease Porphyria) had taken such a hold, the Prince of Wales had to take his place. By the time the river was thus named in his honour, George III had died and George, Prince of Wales, was no longer Prince Regent, but had been crowned George IV. At the mouth of the Prince Regent River is an ancient Boab tree on which the crew of the HMS Mermaid carved the name of their vessel in 1820.
The Prince Regent Nature Reserve covers more than 600,000 hectares of wilderness in Western Australia’s highest rainfall area. It is one of Australia’s most remote places, with the only access by air or boat. There are no roads into the area and a permit is required from Conservation and Land Management if you wish to enter the area. Some of its spectacular sites include King’s Cascade, Mount Trafalgar, Python Cliffs, Pitta Gorge, lush rainforests and the Prince Regent River which runs almost entirely straight for most of its length and often between near vertical cliffs. The reserve boasts more than half the mammal and bird species found in the Kimberley and more than 500 species of plants. This part of the Kimberley is the only part of mainland Western Australia where no extinctions are known since European settlement.
Kings Cascade is a remarkable landform. Even at the end of the Dry season, there’s still water flowing down its face and into the Prince Regent, forming an inviting oasis from the heat and dust. It has a sinister history, however, following the death of American actress Ginger Meadows in 1986. Meadows went swimming, against the advice of all the other passengers on board a boat, and was taken by a large estuarine crocodile.
The area remains one of Australia’s most remote wilderness areas with no roads and formidable tide-races and whirlpools restricting seaward access. The area is mostly accessed by air or by boat and has remained virtually unchanged since European settlement of Western Australia. A permit is required to enter the Reserve and can be obtained from the Department of Conservation and Land Management. One of the best ways to explore the area is on a cruise. More than 30 expedition cruise vessels operate multi-day cruises between Broome, Wyndham, Darwin and Cairns, and most visitors to the park arrive on one of these vessels.
