Sun. 9th June 2019
One of the iconic trips in this part of the world is to visit the Horizontal Falls, located in a very isolated part of the far north-west of the continent. The easiest way for us is a day trip from Broome. So we signed up with Horizontal Falls Seaplane Adventures and paid over an arm and a leg after philosophically saying we are never coming back to this part of Australia (even though it has been so good). It also ticks Dave’s ambition of taking a seaplane flight. Like Uluru it is an early pickup so at 5:40am we are standing outside our hotel in the dark hoping we have not been forgotten.
Within the stated time window we are collected and whizzed off to the airport ready to board out seaplane. A young lady weighs each of us (I shut my eyes not wanting to know the number!) and she loaded us into the fourth plane before jumping in the pilot’s seat and we were off. Yep, there are wheels in the floats in this seaplane. We were almost at the back of the 12 seater seaplane, Dave in the window seat and me in the middle. It was a bit bigger than the Dragon Rapide the Fisher family went on two years ago.
No messing, about as after an hours flight we had a very smooth landing on the sea and were straight to the houseboat base near the falls along with a second plane full. The base is like a hotel on a pontoon with added helicopter pads and both seaplane and boat docking stations, as well as two restaurants for two groups at once. I am not sure where the other two planes which took off with us from Broome went but as the day progressed we began to appreciate what a slick operation was being coordinated moving punters efficiently from one place to the next. No sooner had our pilot dropped us off, she took off again to shuffle another group around in the jigsaw puzzle
There was just time for a quick coffee and we were on the power boat and heading to the falls. There was a second boat load too, presumably they started in Derby. The order of the day is partly governed by the tides as the phenomenon of the falls is created by water forcing its way through two small gaps 20m and 8m respectively. With the huge tides experienced on this coastline the gaps are not large enough for the flow trying to pass through. Different water levels therefore exist on either side of the gap as the tide rises and falls. If the height differential is less than 1m it is deemed safe for our powerboat to pass through. Our boat held its position in front of the wider gap for us to take photos and then suddenly sped through riding the waves, accompanied by screams of delight from most passengers (not me, I had my eyes shut and was holding on tight).
After a few “fun” passes as they were called we headed to the smaller gap where the height difference was 2m so we could not go through (yes! I said quietly to myself). Fun over, we headed back to base for an 8:30am breakfast, cooked egg and bacon, yummy. No rest though, as next up was swimming with sharks. Dave was happy with the camera so it was up to me to go in the “shark cage”. I really do not see why everyone gets so excited at this as all those in the murky water looked through the bars at a few “wild but tame” sharks. There was a much better view from the pontoon than in the water and most of the sharks were nurse sharks that have no interest in eating humans.
The leisure cruise was more to my taste, just meandering around Cyclone Bay (close to the floating base) past the mangrove trees and looking out for birds. We did spot a busy kingfisher who had no time to pose for us. Ralph the crocodile however had all the time in the world to just slowly glide though the water by our boat. The rock colours and shapes around the bay were quite spectacular. Cyclone Bay is where all four of the company boats hide up when the cyclones are approaching and also in off season when there are no tours. The only other boat we saw was the owners luxury yacht. It is quite a large unpopulated area of WA.
We then had the treat of returning to the falls two hours after our first visit. The tide was close to changing and the water in the larger gap was almost mill pond still. Quite a contrast to our first viewing. At the smaller gap, however, there was now less than a metre differential in water levels as we got a closer look. Before we knew it the skipper accelerated and we passed through the tiny gap, with seemingly little clearance either side. After a few more photos the boat drifted into the small gap but it needed to be running at 12 knots just to stand still. Then we just had to do a few more ‘fun runs’ and one of us had her eyes firmly shut and hands clenched on the rail.
As you may have surmised we had a great morning and to be honest, we could have called it a day and headed home. But that was not the plan. It was straight back onto the seaplanes, same seats as before and a half hour scenic flight to Cygnet Bay flying low over amazing little islands. On landing again there was a slick operation of the overland truck at a remote unsealed airstrip acted as a refuelling station for the planes and cold drinks for the punters. The two seaplanes were filled with passengers who were doing the trip in the reverse sequence and were now heading to Horizontal Falls.
We all bundled onto the truck to head to Cygnet Bay Pearl Farm for an interesting talk on their operation there and on pearl farming. I had forgotten Dave had not joined me on the pearl farm outing in Rangiroa on our round the world trip in 2012. This is the oldest pearl farm on the peninsula and at full capacity can have 500,000 oysters. Unfortunately at present they are having problems with disease and only have 83,000. They harvest 10,000 each year in July and August, reimpregnating the oysters with another nucleus in the hopes of another pearl in a couple of years. Half the oysters are home bred and the remaining are Pinctada oysters fished out of the local waters.
Our guide then opened a five year old oyster, which would not be reimpregnated, apparently at random to see if it contained a pearl of value. The pearl retrieved looked quite large, almost round and hardly scratched so to our untrained eye looked pretty good. Even after learning about the grading system of colour, size, shape, lustre and smoothness we were surprised to learn it was only worth 50 AUD, so what do we know! All this activity and it is only lunchtime (yummy local barramundi fish).
We had a quick peep into Cape Leveque beach with the red rocks and golden sands, where surprisingly the truck just drove straight onto the beach. These big 4×4 trucks can go just about anywhere and tackle more difficult terrain than we have dared in ours (yet!). To continue the pearl theme, we head to the town of Beagle Bay whose claim to fame is that there is a church decorated with many pearl shells. The church was built by German monks in WW1 as they were essentially prisoners of war had little else to do then.
It is the middle of an Aboriginal Community who must be fed up of these tour buses coming in and out. We are still some 129km from Broome and mainly unsealed roads so the driver goes full speed ahead and doesn’t spare the horses! Being the last picked up this morning we are almost the last dropped off tonight and get back at 5:45pm. Quite a mammoth for day with so much (almost too much) crammed in. This country just keeps giving us more and more wow factor and we have lots more still to look forward to.