Sat 21st Sept 2013 - Horizontal Falls Adventure

Today Rodger and I went out to lunch to celebrate our wedding anniversary. It was rather a long way to go so the 4x4 bus picked us up at 5.30am! 

We drove North for a couple of hours until we came to Beagle Bay, an Aboriginal community that used to be a mission. The old Catholic Church there is fully decorated with shells - the altar, the window surrounds, the edges off the Stations of the Cross and even the floor. It was amazing.

We drove on to Cape Laveque, at the most Northerly point of the West coast , where we were given a Continental breakfast. 

Next we drove a bit East to One Arm Point, where we visited a fish and shell hatchery.

From here we went to the airstrip, where we boarded a sea plane and flew low over the Buccaneer Archipelago, a string of approx 1,000 islands off the North coast. They looked amazing, some big and some so tiny you could only just stand on them. They were red and pale yellow King Leopald sandstone with spinifex, mangroves and some small trees on them.

After 35 mins we landed in Talbot Bay where there is a house boat and some zodiac speedboats moored. 

As soon as we got off the plane, we got straight into the boat and were taken to the nearby Horizontal Falls. This is where the huge rising tide of 10m is forced through 2 small gaps in the Mac Larty Ranges - one 20 m wide and the other 10m.

This pushes the water off the walls of rock, making 2 sideways waterfalls and the water level is lower on one side than the other. The water was 50m deep and 1million litres per second were flowing through the gap at a speed of 36 knots. It's a most awe inspiring natural phenomena. The boat then zoomed us through the falls a few times at great speed before taking us back to the houseboat for some delicious grilled barramundi and salad.

After lunch they said we could go for a swim in a shark proof cage. We already knew we needed that as the sharks had been circling the boat hopefully while we had lunch. When we were swimming, the boat driver fed the sharks with the left overs of our lunch so they came right up to the cage, they were tawny nurse sharks.

We were then taken for another speed boat ride to look at some of the rocks and to go through the smaller gap, now the tide was lower. It had been too dangerous earlier. 

This was the end of our long adventure and we got back onto the sea plane and where flown all the way back to Broome. We flew much higher this time and the islands where just little dark smudges against the startlingly turquoise sea.

We were driven back to the camping ground, arriving about 4.00pm, and sank into our chairs for a cold drink and a rest after our action- packed day. What a special anniversary celebration!