Middle Lagoon road, Cape Leveque |
Thursday 8 June 2017. Day 43. A day of doing not much. Had another good talk with John and Kathleen and visiting Uncle Andrew. Very solid intelligent people.
Friday 9 June 2017. Day 44. Left our delightful eco-tent and hosts John & Kathleen and drove back to Broome Gateway Van park. That dirt road is trying. Into Broome for a stock up.
Large gap. Hang on as we go up the 1m fall. Dark line on rocks is the tide fall in the last 2 hours |
Saturday 10 June 2017. Day 45. Horizontal Fall trip. A huge day. Up at 4am for a 28 km drive and 5:15am pickup at the Broome visitors centre. Our little bus had 10 people (4 of whom had forgotten the day, had to be woken up and kicked up a stink all day because one of their party had not got up when woken and had been left behind). First, the drive (again) out to Kooljaman at Cape Leveque (breakfast) and on to One Arm Point (tour of Trochus shell farm) and onto the seaplane for a 30min flight to the Horizontal Falls pontoon. After watching sharks being fed and lunch (barra), we took a fast boat up Cyclone Creek (good shelter in cyclones and where the pontoon and house boats are kept in the wet) along a magnificent set of gorges being swept by 9m tides.
Horizontal Fall Seaplanes Pontoon at Talbot Bay |
Very interesting structural geology (good folds). Back to the pontoon for our helicopter ride over the falls. ($150 each and well worth it.) Back to the pontoon to join our fast boat up the falls. The ‘horizontal falls’ are a pair of consecutive narrow gaps (20m and 7m wide). Today, we had a 6.3m tide change, which means that 6.3m of water squeezed itself through those two gaps – one after the other. Paused for a minute at the top of the tide and squeezed itself back the other way. It does this twice a day, day after day at different heights. Huge whirlpools, sinks and standing waves form. Today we had an outgoing tide with a one metre drop at both gaps (which meant that it was safe for us to charge through the narrow gap).
The marketing photo shows a 5m drop which is unsafe to take the boat up – but it does look spectacular. The fast boat made several ‘laps’ up and down each gap and even parked for a while (at 8 and 13 knots) in the strength of the tide. Very good fun. Much better than jetboats on the Shotover. Then, back to Broome by seaplane. A very big day.
Horizontal Falls Seaplane Adventures do an excellent job at this trip. Highly recommended.
Sunday & Monday 11-12 June 2017. Days 46 & 47 Mainly prep – selecting and packing for the 16 day Gibb trip.