Day 44, 14 August 2009, Broome

The main feature of the day was the trip to Horizontal Falls.

The tour bus picked us up about 11:30 am and took us to the airport, which is really in the centre of town. Had a nice ride in a 10 passenger seaplane.

Well, I had a nice trip anyway. When we landed the sea was appeared to be beautiful green colour. It turned out that was just the reflection from Pam's face. She did not enjoy the ride.

The trip out took about 1.5 hours and was mostly at about 2000-3000 feet. (I could see the altimeter from where I was sitting.) The pilot did lots of commentary and flew in circles around points of interest, like Willie Creek, Beagle Bay and Cape Laveque.

One particularly exciting series of maneuvers took us over groups of whales, who thoughtfully posed for us. The mother and child whale were particularly appealing.

We finally landed on a nice smooth bay where we got off the plane and onto a large barge. The motion was much less pronounced and Pam recovered quickly although I noticed that I was the only one game enough to stand near her at first.

We spent about an hour on the barge, waiting for for the tide to build. We chatted and were treated to a barramundi lunch. After lunch we boarded a smaller, highly powered boat for a trip through the falls.

The falls are two gorges between the sea and inland bays. When the tide changes, all of the water has to flow through them. As the tidal height can exceed 5 meters, that's lots of water. (On our trip the tide was about 2.5 meters.) On one of our excursions we went through backwards and the boat driver was going 25 kph just to keep us standing still.

We went through each falls half a dozen times and the young chap driving seemd to really like his job. It was really, really fun. The young chaps running the tour live on the water and it's inaccessible except by air. They stay out for two weeks at a time. It's not too bad though as they live on a $10,000,000 yacht. They told us that they avoid eating the local oysters as they're reported to be an aphrodesiac.

It's a really unique place and I'd recommend the trip to anyone. Pam suggests injesting a heaping helping of Travel Calm prior to departure, or perhaps having a general anesthetic.

We finished an excellent day watching the footy (Port Adelaide beating Hawthorn) at the pub near the caravan park.

It's a dirty job, but someone's got to do it