October 1st 2019. Susan from Albury is still travelling with me and we are having a great time. While at Fitzroy Crossing we drove to Geikie Gorge on the Fitzroy River and did a short walk. The Fitzroy River is 730 kms long and when in full flood is known as one of the largest rivers in the world. Every wet season it can flow at 30,000 cubic metres per second. We missed the last tour of the day, but on our walk we saw an amazing number of wallabies and lots of bird life. I am told there is over 350 species of birds in the Kimberly region.
This is the Fitzroy River flood plains at Geikie Gorge
Next stop was Derby, 265 kms West. On the way we stopped off at a roadside stop to see this amazing boab tree.
It was hollow and just for fun I stuck the phone in for a pano shot... cool photo!! 😁
When we reached Derby I parked my van at the Kimberly Entrance Caravan Park and we took off to explore the town and surrounds. First stop was the wharf as we had just found out that today was the highest tide for the year (over 11 metres) and that Derby has the highest tides in Australia and the second highest in the world. We were pretty excited to hear we had arrived in Derby on this particular occasion so wanted to check it out. We decided to come back at 5pm to watch the sunset and have dinner at the wharf restaurant .
This was at 2.30 and high tide was due late afternoon so there was still more to come in!!!
We visited the Mowanjum Aboriginal Art and Cultural Centre a few kilometres out of town on the Gibb River road. To the three indigenous language groups in this area, Wandjina is the supreme being, the creator of all things so many of the figurative art works depict Wandjina. When we arrived at the gallery we were shown a 15 minute video explaining the beliefs and the meanings behind the art. It was a very moving experience and in looking through the gallery it gave us a much greater understanding. For any of my art friends it's worth a look at the website...https://www.mowanjumarts.com/about
The art centre was really well set up with some stunning art including this installation of a reconstruction of rock art paintings.
More Boab trees!!! They line the streets of Derby and they look fabulous.
This next one is a well documented "Prison Boab tree and is not far out of Derby. It's hollow and is around 1,500 years old and is a local "site of significance". There is a myth that it was used by police to hold prisoners on their way to Derby for sentencing, but from what I've read, there is no evidence the myth is correct!!.
Susan checking it out
Just up the road from the boab tree is the 120 metre long trough "Myall's Bore" built in the early 1900's. The trough provided bore water for up to 1000 head of cattle at a time and is said to be one of the longest trough's in the world.
We then drove back to the wharf for drinks and dinner to watch the sunset. The water had peaked and the mud flats beside the wharf road were now covered in water.
Derby Pier as the sun set
1/2 hour later
We packed up next morning and drove through to Broome and I parked my van at the Cable Beach Caravan Park. This is a huge park, very close to Cable beach and also has a very large resort style pool.
Not too shabby...and the water is very warm !!
Over the following week in Broome Susan and I went to "the world's oldest operating picture gardens" twice...an outdoor theatre called "Sun Pictures" and that's where we found "Brad Pitt"...A bit disappointed he was only two dimensional, but we could still drool!!! The movie house was showing 2 of his movies, "Ad Astra" and "Once upon a time in Hollywood", which we saw. We also saw Downtown Abbey. We ate out a few times and walked along Broome's historic China Town shops and browsed the shops including browsing the Paspaley Pearls boutique. Now they were something to drool over. The rarest and most expensive pearls in the world. OMG...such exquisite settings and so beautiful !!!
The movie garden has a great atmosphere, but it is under the flight path so when a plane goes over you can't hear anything for a moment. Bats also fly over at night so it has it's negatives, but it's a great way to see a movie or two.
This is a lunch at the wharf restaurant, which everyone raves about. We weren't disappointed... spring rolls, fish, char grilled squid and a glass of rose....life is good😀
We went to the Saturday morning market and also walked along Cable Beach to watch a glorious sunsets.
We caught up with the Rolling Solo ladies we had met at Hall's Creek and watched the Broome sunset together.
The group of "Rollers".
Woohoo!!! How do I describe this next adventure??? Susan and I took the “Horizontal Falls” tour from Broome. It was an expensive, long, but spectacular day and worth every cent🤩
The day started at 5.30am in a 4WD bus. Our first stop was Bardi country in an aboriginal town called Beagle Bay to check out the beautiful missionary church with the mother of pearl altar have our first coffee for the day😁
Check out this link for some history on the church https://www.eternitynews.com.au/australia/mother-of-pearl-church-celebrates-100-years/
Situated in the McCarty Ranges and Buccaneer Archipelago, North East of King George Sound are two parallel ranges running 300 metre apart, each with a gap, one 20m the other 7.5m wide. The falls are caused by the huge tidal movements going in and out the gaps faster than what the gaps can accomodate. (This area has the highest tidal movements in Australia and the second highest in the world so the volume of water is pretty spectacular.)
Next stop around 8.30am was Cape Leveque where we were provided a beautiful big cooked breakfast then drove us onto the beach for a walk
Our bus at Cape Leveque
Cape Leveque Beach looking South
Cape Leveque looking North
We continued driving north for over an hour to a Aquaculture farm at One Arm Point, an aboriginal settlement where there is an airstrip. The farm researches reef environment so we saw a lot of reef fish, coral, barramundi and even got to pat a beautiful turtle.
Susan at the Fish Aqua Culture farm
From here we boarded a sea plane for the half hour flight to Horizontal falls. A spectacular view from the air as the young female pilot flew quite low over the Buccaneer Archipelago.
Here's our pilot sitting on the top of the seaplane refuelling.
Buccaneer Archipelago from the air
The plane landed on the water at the Horizontal Falls floating hotel, we hopped straight into a large speedboat and took a joy ride through the falls. Time was about 1pm and the tide had turned a couple of hours earlier so the fall was still small.
The floating hotel
First boat trip
Back at the floating hotel we sat down for a lunch of BBQ barramundi before getting into the water with the grey nurse sharks.
Then back on the boat to take a leisurely ride through Cyclone Creek which is a gorge of stunning Leopold Sandstone rock formations
And some speeding thrills through the Horizontal Falls once again. This time the tide was running much faster and the fall more pronounced, particularly in the 7.5 metre gap so it was quite a thrill.
By 3.30 we boarded the sea plane for the 1 hour trip back to Broome airport then onto a bus to be dropped back at our accommodation.
The trip is exceedingly expensive, but you can see why. All up there’s over 1.5 hours of flying time in a sea plane, at least 3 hours in a 4WD bus, around 1 hour in a speed boat, all meals are provided etc. I think it is a “Bucket list” tick as the falls are a natural phenomenon and the Buccaneer Archipelago is stunning.
And there was more... tours to be done in Broome!! 😱....The"Big Bird" Hovercraft tour out over the mudflats to see the ancient dinosaur fossil footprints.
Our transportation...Big Bird.
Our starting point at Minyirr Bay Broome
The dinosaur footprints at Gantheaume Point, Broome, are on the flat rocks up to 30 metres out to sea and can only be seen on low tide. They are around 130 million years old and Palaeontologists worldwide say Broome has the largest collection of dinosaur footprints in the world.
Walking in the footsteps of the dinosaur fossils
It is now 7th October and Susan leaves today to fly back to Melbourne via Perth. It's been an exciting two weeks for both of us with a lot of kilometres covered. My small abode coped with the two of us really well. We didn't have a cross word the whole time 😱 and it's been loads of fun😀. Thank you Susan for making the trip to Darwin and joining me on the Darwin to Broome leg of my trip.
I'll post this and continue the journey in my next blog. It's actually now 19th October and as usual I am running way behind the actual date. I'm spending a lot of time socialising as I'm starting to meet up with other female travellers on their way to the Exmouth "Rolling Solo" event I'm attending. There's been more fabulously exciting tours coming up in the next episode so watch this space.
Until then...Enjoy the journey with me.
🥂Anne