Yep it was my birthday (again). We had seen all along our trip brochures for a trip out to a special place. It had caught our eye a few times but a couple of weeks ago while Sharon was doing washing she was talking to a young girl who had done this trip and she raved about it. The first day we went into Derby we went to the visitors centre and enquired about it. We left a LOT lighter in the wallet and booked to do it on my birthday. The lady at the visitors centre said it was fabulous as well. There are a couple of other options to do it out of Broome as well but we chose the overnight option out of Derby. When we arrived at Derby I spoke to the manager at the caravan park we were staying at and he raved about it as well. He raved about Tassie as well as his son lives in Hobart and got married at the Red Feather Inn last year.

In the morning we wasted some time seeing the sights of Derby before our early afternoon flight. Another prison Boab tree and an old cattle watering trough reputed to be the longest in the southern hemisphere that they used to water the cattle before walking them the last few miles to the Derby wharf for export. Cattle exporting was big business up here in the early days. We went out and did a lap of the wharf and watched some aboriginals catching crabs off the wharf. Some lunch and back to put the camper in storage and get ready.

Another prison Boab tree (with bee hive)

Cattle watering troughPart of a large mosaic at the wharf

Barge docking at the wharf

The tides were perfect for the trip and everything fell into place with timings. We had woke to a very windy day at Derby and were a bit worried about how it might affect things. We put the camper in overnight storage for a small fee and some dead beat guy picked us up in a bus and took us to the Derby airport to catch the sea plane on the first leg of our journey to Horizontal Falls. Right next to us in the storage area was another couple from Tassie (Scottsdale) and they turned out to be very good value on the trip.

Our plane, the others on the one behind

Sharon was offered the co-pilots seat for the trip out but let me have it. The flight out was quite speccy as when we got their we did a couple of loops over the falls before we did a very low pass over some hills and dropped into the sea to land side by side with the other sea plane in formation. Pulled up alongside the floating accommodation we were ushered inside to our cabins and then upstairs to a safety briefing about the floating accommodation and the boat trip we were about to do. accommodation was down stairs and a large platform on top for dining as well as areas attached to it for boats and float plane docking. Very impressive and well put together. He had some money invested in this venture.

Co-pilot Col and his camera

Our track on the GPS

Nobody to hold her hand, she was very brave

Home for tonight from the air

The narrow falls from the air

Both falls from the air

Formation flying as we land

Just as we arrived this helicopter came thundering in and did an amazing backwards turning drop down landing onto the roof of one pontoon, he was good and he knew it! Turns out he was ‘the outback wrangler’ from Foxtel and other channel doco’s. There were Gopro’s hanging out of it and a bunch of doods who obviously had a top flight. Apparently this chopper pilot guy (Mat?) was famous but we did not know him from a hole in the ground. Others were all over him getting info and looking at some of his videos on his laptop. The next day they went off to do some helicopter reef fishing. The guy in the other front seat turned out to be the owner of the whole shebang, a quite young guy. They can only run the venture for 8 months of the year and tow the whole thing into cyclone bay in the wet season and storage for the other 4 months. The tides are only right 4 out of every 6 days I think it was as well.

Boys back from a helifishing day

The famous chopper guy, owner and some other lucky doods

We donned life jackets and piled into this huge boat with massive twin outboards on the back and took off to not far from the pontoon to a gap in the hill and then we saw the first of the horizontal falls close up. Massive amounts of water was rushing through this gap of about 15M wide. The boat pulled into the churning cauldron and it was doing 13KN in 44M of water and we were stationary! We did a few runs through this gap at speed and took heaps of photo’s and video from both sides. There was some statistic about how many millions of gallons of water a second rush through the gap (google it!)?

POWER!

Entering the widest falls

After a bit we ventured over to the second horizontal fall that is only 7.5M wide. The water height difference from our side to the other side was 2.5M and would be 5.5M on Thursday at the spring tide peak. It was not possible to go through as it was too dangerous. It was amazing seeing the wall of water on the other side trying to get through. Heaps of video and photo’s and we went back through the first falls and powered down to the other end of the bay.

2.5M water height difference

The boat driver has an old pearl barge down in cyclone bay he lives on. Pretty ugly looking but probably pretty special being down their on your own to wind down. He had another pontoon with some pet bat fish that he feeds but there was a crocodile and last time he fed them with a crocodile around he lost one. We then ventured up into cyclone bay that got it’s name as it’s the safest anchorage in the Kimberly and the place to wait out a cyclone due to it’s towering cliffs and safe mooring.

Skippers ‘shack’

Back on board the accommodation boat we were directed to get the snorkel gear out and get in the shark cage for feeding time. The water was slightly cool and refreshing and they proceeded to feed the resident Tawny Nurse sharks and the massive Groper. Some bigger nastier sharks come in some times as well but not today. Sharon even got the snorkeling gear on and I didn’t hear here hyperventilate once. We stayed quite a while relaxing in the water. Next stage of the night was to clean up and get the booze flowing freely. Two particular old women had booming laughs that you could hear miles away, it was going to be an interesting night. You are only allowed to take 5kg of luggage with you including alcohol so you have to choose wisely but they did not weigh anything before we got on the float plane and one group took a small esky with them.

Groper

Feeding time at the zoo

The party started to get livened up a bit and the baramundi was sizzling away on the BBQ. Tea was great and I might have eaten a little too much baramundi. Cheesecake and a cake with a sparkler in it for my birthday and the usual ‘happy birthday’ sung by everybody. The old girls were getting reved up by now and quite loud. There was an interesting mix of people with us being the youngest but we ended up with the ex Scottsdale people and some others at our table and had a great night. Latter on the groups split between country downstairs and rock upstairs with people wandering between the two.

Note my white feet and tanned legs!

Happy birthday sparkler

Looking down, no swimming allowed.

One old girl Carol put on a real show she was quite dottery and as it turned out dying from cancer but going out with a bang (smoker)! She went down for a shower and she had no water. Everybody was calling out and one of the deckies came to help out but unbenown to him Carol was naked in the shower and he walked in to check the water and got the shock of his poor young life!!!!! They got the water fixed and that was over with till I walked out of our cabin a while latterand Carol came wandering out of the shower with just a flimsy towel half wrapped around her!!! Where to look, I am also scared for life now just like the young deckie! Everybody thought it was a great laugh when I emerged onto the deck and announced what had happened.

Having the owner on board was a bonus as latter in the night vodka slushies started to flow, not my style but Sharon was pretty happy. Eventualy all good things must come to and end and we wandered off to bed very satisfied with the day. See tomorrows blog for part two of this great adventure.