Full speed through the waterfalls



Our first view of the gaps between the rocks,
called the horizontal waterfalls.

We’re still in Broome, but hope to be on the road again by the end of the week. This will mean almost two weeks here, but we’ve thoroughly enjoyed it.

Last Friday we took a seaplane to the wild Buccaneer Archipelago, supposedly of 1000 islands, well to the north of Broome, to go by fast boat through the horizontal waterfalls, formed when the rushing tide forces its way between outcrops of rock.

Broome from the aircraft.

 

 

 

 

We took off from Broome airport and took 1.5 hours to reach the floating tour base, where seaplanes land, boats take off and passengers are not only watered and fed, but on some tours, can also stay the night.



One of the boats that take passengers
through the waterfalls.

The flight took us over the Dampier Peninsula, where we hope to wander and camp in the coming week, and once we’d landed we were issued with a different kind of lifejacket and boarded a fast boat. The skipper assured us the waterfalls were ‘pumping’ as the tide was coming in. In this area, the difference between low tide and high tide can be 8 or 9 metres so there’s an incredible force of water.

We zoomed through the turbulent water of the first gap, which is about 20 metres wide, but the second gap, only 10 metres wide, was deemed too dangerous, as there was a drop of about 3 metres. The skipper assured us we’d try again later when the tide had settled down a bit.



Here we go through the first gap!

So back to the base, where crispy-skin barramundi had been cooked by one of the young crew, and along with salads and bread rolls, it made a wonderful lunch, with everyone encouraged to go back for more fish.



Then we watched one of the crew hand-feed some tawny nurse sharks that can swim around the floating base. Those who wanted to get closer went into an enclosed pool separated by mesh and using snorkels and goggles could see them as they snapped for portions of fish.

The floating base.

After that we went back in the boat and this time managed to get through the second waterfall, which had settled down a bit but was still very turbulent. The skipper then took us around some of the gorges and backwaters, including what they call Cyclone Creek, where all the sections of the base are towed in the wet season, well-protected from cyclones by high cliffs and deep water.

When operations start again around April, a crew returns to take it all out into open water, where the seaplanes can land and take off.

It was a most interesting day, ending with an hour-long flight back to Broome on a more direct route.



The heavily-weathered gravestone of one
of the Japanese divers.

We’ve watched people come and go from the caravan park and are starting to feel like elder statesmen. We’ve eaten out a few times, once at Matso’s Brewery, a great old building that had been one of Broome’s stores and was moved next to one of the old pearling master’s houses. As well as proper beer, Matso’s also makes an alcoholic ginger beer and a desert lime cider. We just love the ginger beer.



Matso’s is named for the Matsumoto family who operated a store in the building. We found the burial place of some Matsumotos in the Japanese cemetery we visited on Sunday after yet another breakfast at the markets.

There are 900+ Japanese buried there, the vast majority of them divers who died as a result of the bends, cyclones and other disasters when working the pearlshell industry. There is also a Chinese cemetery and a small area marked Malay and Muslim.

We’ve explored the port area where the service vessels for offshore rigs load lots of gear and today plan to have lunch at a restaurant there. There is what I call an open-air picture theatre here (locally called a picture garden and deemed to be the oldest continuously operating in the world) so we plan to go to a film there on Tuesday night, sitting in the canvas deck chairs I remember from my youth in North Queensland.