We woke early this morning and were collected from the caravan park at 6.30 by the tour company for our trip to the Horizontal Waterfalls. The trip is run by a number of young boys with boat licences and plane licences taking grey nomads on adventures. What a magnificent day!!
First we boarded a seaplane at Broome airport and flew for an hour out to Talbot Bay where we circled the Horizontal Waterfalls a couple of times. The land was hilly with trees but when we got to the Buccaneer Archipelago it was magnificent. There are over 1000 islands of different sizes with mangroves, sandy beaches and turquoise water.
Because the tide was not changing it was fairly calm. We then landed on the water and went on board the Barra Shack, a boat tied to a pontoon. We boarded a jet boat and went for a quick look at the Falls and the surroundings.
We came back for breakfast cooked on board the boat. Before breakfast Doug went swimming in the cage with some tawny nurse sharks, batfish and a groper called Gordon. The bacon and eggs was delicious.
Then we boarded the jet boat again and went travelling around, got a bit seasick but survived when the boat sped up. The young boat driver introduced us to his pet batfish, Warwick, as he lifted him out of the water.
We went through the falls a few times as the water churned around us. Fantastic! The first fall is 22 metres wide and about 40 metres deep whereas the second one is only 7 metres wide. We didn’t go through the second one when the water was churning as it was too dangerous.
We returned to the boat and jumped back in the plane to fly to One Arm Point and view the Hatchery. This is a trochus farm as well as pools of coral reef and related animals. This was very interesting.
We then drove in a big truck to Cape Leveque where we had barra for lunch. After looking around the beaches there we headed off for Beagle Bay and the Catholic Church made of pearl shells. It was beautiful. We arrived back at our van at 5.00 that evening, very tired but happy.
