Tag Archives: Kimberley

Kimberley Day 2 – Montgomery Reef and Freshwater Cove

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Wednesday 14 August 2024 – Today saw a morning Zodiac cruise and an afternoon landing. The cruise was to see one of the many extraordinary phenomena that result from the geology of the Kimberley – tidal water movement at Montgomery Reef. The afternoon was spent walking at Freshwater Cove.

So, Montgomery Reef, then.

If you look at the track of our Zodiac cruise on Google Maps, it looks very dull indeed.

However, add the Satellite layer, and you begin to see what we were cruising through.

In detail,

you can see we were cruising up a creek. Because we were there as the tide was falling, it presented an amazing sight.

The range of tidal movement around Montgomery Reef is very high.  At Spring Tides, it can be a 12m (40ft) difference between sea levels at high and low tides.  We were there at Neap Tide, so the movement is much less – about 5.5m (17ft).  As the tide rises, the water rises above the reef; when it falls, the water has to go somewhere, and the shape of the reef means that it spills over in multiple channels. I stole an aerial photo which gives a clearer idea of what’s going on here.

It’s not just pouring out in the channels; it’s running over the surface of the reef everywhere.

Montgomery Reef is somewhat different to a regular coral reef. Whilst coral reefs are usually composed of limestone from coral skeletons, shell fragments and the remains of calcareous algae, Montgomery Reef is an ancient terrestrial tableland created from the same rocks as the surrounding Kimberley Basin. Covering the existing features of the rock is a more recent layer of marine sediment, including calcareous coral, shell and algae. Calcareous algae in the form of rhodoliths (the yellowish chunk in the picture)

are the predominant reef building organisms on Montgomery Reef. Rhodoliths are unattached, photosynthetic organisms made of coralline algae, which aggregate to form complex communities and in the case of Montgomery Reef, act as a long barrier across the reef. (Tom, our guide for the cruise, explained some of this detail, and I got the rest from this fact sheet).

The water in the channel appears to have a problem that would be labelled “pollution” were it seen in the UK – scummy froth on the surface.

However, it is entirely natural. Because the reef spends so much (i.e. half) of its time exposed to harsh sunlight, the corals that have colonised the reef have developed a natural protective substance which acts as a sunscreen, and this finds its way into the water with the fall of the tides.

The creek we cruised along is the feeding ground for green sea turtles, and we saw several heads pop up as we went along, as well as some swimming beside the Zodiac.  Annoyingly, they were always on the shallow side so we (seated as we were on the other side of the craft) rarely got to see anything.  Our optimism that we would surely see some turtle action on the way back was dashed as we returned up the other side, so we never got our turn at looking for turtles nearby. The best I got was this bit of video, which shows a turtle basking in the shallows.  Yes it does.

The afternoon saw our first landing, which was at Freshwater Cove.

An indigenous family lives there, and every group was welcomed with a speech from the niece of the family and her sister, who narrated a story from the Dreamtime and anointed everyone with a dab of ochre on their cheeks – the dark colour of the ochre was explained by the story we heard. The building top left in the photo is an artist’s hut, where punters can relax and (preferably) buy souvenirs, such as the hand-painted T-shirts, decorated in traditional style by family members.

It was a wet landing, and the nice folk at APT had ensured that there would be towels for people to dry their feet in order to change into shoes suitable for the rest of the afternoon.  A couple of walks were on offer: a short one along the beach; and a longer one (2km out and back, up a hill) to see some aboriginal rock art.  We had opted for the latter. Dain, the expedition leader had stressed in yesterday’s briefing that some of the going was over rocks and boulders, and that there would be reasonably large rocks to clamber up and down. (He had laid a test, which was that people had to be able to step up on to the stage in the Laperouse Theatre without any assistance as a prerequisite for anyone wanting to do the longer walk.)

There was a reasonably well-defined track for most of the walk

and people obediently trudged along it.

Inevitably, for a group like this, progress was at a gentle pace, but it gave us a chance to appreciate the remarkable rock formations we passed.

We had to squeeze through a narrow gap between two substantial boulders.

This is known as the “dessert gap”, as it’s a test as to whether someone has gone heavy on the puddings during the cruise. (Spoiler alert – there is a way round for the portly!)

At the top, our group rested for a few minutes

because another group was below us looking at the rock art.  When they surfaced, we clambered down past a scene that looked like something out of Picnic at Hanging Rock,

but which was actually the roof of a wide-mouthed cave, on which one could see the rock art.

“Where is it, then?”, you might well ask on seeing that photo. “Digitally removed”, is the answer; we had been briefed that respect for the native traditions dictated that while it was OK to take photos for our own records, these were not to be shared or published on social media: it is not for us to tell their stories. That’s why you can’t see any of the paintings in the photo above. Something you can see, however, is the colonies of native bees nesting in the blackened holes along the top of the back “wall” of the overhang, whose honey is harvested by the local people.

The father of the family, a chap called Neil, described the history behind the cave, which was known as the “cyclone cave” for the protection it afforded when the weather got uppity. When asked how old the paintings were, Neil said they go back 65,000 years.  I did some intensive research asked ChatGPT about this and discovered that, generally speaking, Kimberley rock art could stretch back as much as 17,000 years;  so the figure that Neil used could well be the folk memory which inspired some of the paintings, as there is broad understanding that Aboriginal peoples have been in Australia that long. Whatever, the paintings have great historic and cultural import for the indigenous people. They depicted various aspects of life – stingrays, turtles, fish, cyclones and even the cautionary tale of a little boy, who had disobeyed his mother’s instructions and gone out on a fishing expedition, only to be sadly killed in an accident. So the pictures give lessons as well as tell stories. The art is touched up by the family every so often to keep it fresh but new paintings are not added

Jane and I didn’t find the walk at all arduous; I should jolly well hope not – the temperature was “only” in the upper twenties – we’ve walked much further in far hotter conditions – and the going was by and large not at all challenging bar the final scramble. However, a couple of members of our group were unfortunately not up to completing the walk back to the shore without issue. To be frank, I’m not surprised; some of the people on this cruise are quite crocked in various ways – aged, frail or otherwise not in good shape. APT had, though, prepared for this eventuality, and a medical team was despatched from the beach – at a run, complete with stretcher – to support the two who were having problems, and they both eventually made it back to the boat OK.

After we returned to the ship, we didn’t have long to wait for the evening briefing; just long enough to pick up a drink at the bar, actually.  Dain explained what we would be seeing tomorrow, a combination of interesting geology and further unusual tidal action, this time in Talbot Bay.  APT had organised a casino evening in the lounge, which we really weren’t all that interested in, so after a bite of dinner al fresco we repaired to our cabin and tried (with not a great deal of success, it has to be said) to get an early night, as we had to be up betimes-ish for the Talbot Bay activity. Which will be revealed, of course, in the next thrilling installment, which I hope you would like to read in the fullness of time.

Kimberley Day 1 – Lacépède Islands

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Tuesday 13 August 2024 – Today was to be the first expedition from the ship, to cruise on Zodiacs around the Lacépède Islands. There were three activities in preparation for this, one of which was mandatory, and so all the passengers had to sign in to make sure that everyone had attended. The expedition leader, Dain, first introduced the rest of the expedition team, a very diverse set of people and relevant skills, but all with clear enthusiasm for the job of making sure we punters got the best out of the time spent off the boat.

The next bit was the mandatory bit, which was a lesson on how to get on and off the Zodiacs safely. This was familiar territory for us, since the procedures were pretty much exactly what we’d learned and observed when we were in Antarctica. That had been a well-organised setup and it was reassuring to note that APT, who were running this cruise, took it every bit as seriously.

The final part was information about the destination for today’s expedition – the Lacépède Islands. The name was conferred in 1801 by the French explorer Nicolas Baudin during his expedition around Australia, in honour of French naturalist Bernard Germain de Lacépède, who described several Australian fish species. He dubbed the three islands Napoleon, Grant and Victoria. Then (we were told) the Brits came along, and renamed them West, Middle and East. Whatever, the islands have been identified by Birdlife International as an Important Bird Area, and are now an A-class reserve managed by Western Australia’s Department of Environment and Conservation. Rats (introduced accidentally during the guano mining carried out on the Lacépèdes as well as numerous other islands off the western Australian coast during the 19th century) were eradicated in 1986, allowing the recolonisation of the islands by nesting seabirds, prime among which are Brown Boobies; the islands are home to 18,000 nesting pairs. They are also Western Australia’s most important breeding habitat for green sea turtles.

No confusion about what wildlife we might expect to see, then.

It wasn’t a long journey to get there, so the skipper took it nice and gently, even temporarily altering course in order to get a slightly closer look at some humpback whales which were cavorting not too far away.

We could even see the occasional breaching by humpbacks in the distance, and some tail-slapping, too. One of the naturalists also spotted a sea snake swimming by.

The Lacépède Islands are noted for the variety of bird life there, and so we had a lecture from one of the guides to help us identify the birds that we might be able to catch sight of on our Zodiac cruise. Then, after a swift bite of lunch, it was time to man the Zodiacs. Since there weren’t enough to accommodate all the punters at once, we had been split into four groups, denoted by different colours, in order to get everyone out on the water in an orderly fashion.

Jane and I are in yellow group, who went first; and Jane and I happened to be in the first Zodiac out.

It was not difficult to see the Brown Boobies. They are curious birds, and it wasn’t long before they spotted us and a delegation came out to welcome us and check us out.

They are adept fliers (their name comes from the Spanish “bobo”, meaning a clown or a clumsy person, because they’re not elegant at all on land) and so presented a few challenges to capture photos of them as they whizzed around us.  But the trusty Nikon was up to the job, I’m glad to say, despite the difficulties I faced of accurately aiming a heavy lens at a distant moving object whilst seated on a boat which is rocking unpredictably.

They are slightly odd-looking birds at the best of times; then they stare at you directly, at which point

you see their very scary dementor faces.

There were quite a few crowded colonies of the birds visible as we cruised past, but they tended to be on rocks, which meant it was difficult to pick them out against the background,

but occasionally we could get a decent angle to show them as they rested and nested.

Our ship, Le Laperouse, in the background

We even caught sight of a couple of chicks.

No problem to see Brown Boobies, then.  It was also quite easy to spot this salt-water crocodile,

which was something in the order of three metres long. Xander, our guide and Zodiac driver, was assiduous in making sure we were seated as we passed by; crocodiles can move very quickly indeed, and this one might have made for the Zodiac with the intention of causing trouble.  If Xander had then suddenly and swiftly accelerated swiftly away in response, anyone standing might have then fallen overboard, which would likely cause a lot of paperwork. So we remained seated until we were sure it was just chilling [thermo-regulating, actually – Ed].

The other key wildlife member was much more challenging even to see clearly, far less to photograph. There were many green sea turtles around, but they were not at all obliging when it came to be ready for their close-up.  The best one could expect was, if lucky, to catch a shot of a head popping out of the water as a turtle took a breath, but one had to be very lucky to catch it.

I was not one of the lucky ones.

The best I could do was to get an image of something vaguely turtle shaped under the surface.  I hope this video gives some idea of how a typical encounter with a turtle ran.

Our time was up and so we headed back to the ship so that someone else could have a go on our Zodiac and, via some nice chocolate accompaniment to afternoon tea, had a bit of a rest before the evening briefing.  Similar, again, to our Antarctic experience, Dain, the expedition leader, ran a session which added a bit of background to today’s expedition (Xander telling us more about the life cycle of the green sea turtle), followed by a briefing of what was due for the morrow. Various options were on offer, some involving scrambling over rocks and some not. We opted for the scrambling over rocks version, which I hope was not an error of judgement on our part.

After the briefing came the a drinks reception, at which the captain introduced the senior crew members,

followed by a Gala Dinner, which was probably, judging from the quality of the meals we’ve had so far on the cruise, a sumptuous feast.  However, neither Jane nor I had the stomach for stuffing ourselves, and so we opted to stay downstairs and have a light buffet supper. Our original plan, which was just to eat à deux, unravelled when sociability and good manners led us to invite another couple, who had also decided against the more formal option, to join us.  So Jane had an enjoyable conversation with the engaging husband, which I would have been delighted to be a part of were it not for his wife’s annoying inability to refrain from injecting her own distracting, and not very interesting, converse in my direction. Unfortunately, it wasn’t possible to engineer a decently swift escape without being ruder than even I might consider acceptable.

One of the guides hosted a star-gazing session on the roof of the boat, which sounded interesting, so we went along. Unfortunately, the moon, although only half full, was bright and clear, which buggers up the chance of seeing all the lovely stars, and so I lost interest quite swiftly. I did, however, learn that the Perseids, through which the Earth is currently ploughing, should give rise to shooting stars here in the southern hemisphere, so I might try my luck later on in the cruise to watch out for them on another evening.

Tomorrow is set to offer two excursions, one on Zodiacs to view a particular phenomenon at Montgomery Reef, and the other one on land, to stumble along the rocky path we have signed up for and see what may be seen.  Keep your eye on these pages to see exactly what is was that we ended up seeing.

 

New: Broome

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Saturday 10 August 2024 – All the general admin associated with getting from Mantarays to Exmouth Airport to Perth Airport to the QT hotel to dinner to overnight to Perth Airport to our next destination went perfectly smoothly, and so here we are at said next destination, having traveled some 2,800km. We have got only as far as Broome, about 950km from Exmouth as the Australian raven flies, but time pressures and airline schedules governed the choice of route.

We arrived at the Mangrove Hotel slightly before our room was ready for us, so there was nothing for it but to deal with the housekeeping’s laxity by going to the bar.

Jane’s preparatory research about Things To Do, and the look and feel of the place that hit us as we took our places and our beers, is that there is a very different, and quite relaxed, vibe about Broome. For example, the main restaurant here is called Johnny Sausage, which carries a set of implicit brand values rather different from what we experienced in Perth.  The temperature, according to the nice man who drove our aeroplane, is 34°C, which in England would likely be intolerably hot; certainly when we had temperatures like that in Spain or Grenada, it was not comfortable.  Here, it’s absolutely delightful, from which I infer that the humidity is very low. The sun is stinging hot, but in the shade, accompanied by a glass of something cold, one feels one could sit and relax forever.

Helping the general pleasantness is the view.

It is easy to see why this is called the Mangrove Hotel.

The colour of the water is simply wonderful. In North America, this would be result of glacial flow; here, it’s due to shallow water, sand and blue skies.

There’s a lot of birdlife to watch, as well.  Inevitably, there are gulls,

in this case Hartlaub’s Gulls, once considered a subspecies of the Silver Gulls we saw in such profusion in Perth, and there are flocking loads of them, all looking to pirate food from the restaurant tables.

We also saw several Black Kites

many White Ibises,

and a Rainbow Bee Eater

which was sometimes being followed by another one

which was presumably a Ga Amma.

We took an early evening meal and the opportunity for a reasonably early night, as we had to be up and at ’em quite promptly the next morning.

Sunday 11 August 2024 – dawned and, having a day at leisure, we went for a walk. Obviously.

But first, we caught the bus. We were out of the hotel by 0728, as this was the time for the First Bus of the day. Broome is really quite spread out and so walking between the various points of interest being not really a sensible choice, we opted to catch the Broome Explorer bus, and buy a hop-on, hop-off pass. The reason we caught the very first bus is that this is the only one that goes to Gantheaume Point, something that we were interested to see and to use as a starting point for a walk back to Broome, which we had been told would be about 5km.

Because the bus goes round the houses before driving out to the point, it was 8am as we started our walk towards the point, which is about 500m from the bus stop, with a Straw-Necked Ibis overseeing us as we went.

Our interest was, in principle, two-fold. Firstly, there are outcrops of sandstone, which make for striking rock formations. Some of these were deposited in shallow water in the Early Cretaceous period, about 130 million years ago, Secondly, footprints from dinosaurs of that time and plant fossils are preserved in the sandstone. At very low tide, dinosaur footprints can apparently be seen about 30 metres out to sea. We weren’t expecting to see these footprints, but were interested in the rock formations.

As you approach, the outlook is not all that promising. There’s a skeletal lighthouse

(not suitable for Skeletal Lamping, which is from a different country)  and a few rocks visible.

Then you get close and

it’s very striking indeed. My favourite formation was this one.

It was, apparently, possible to see what one chap swears were dinosaur footprints, and people were out scouting the area he was indicating

but neither Jane nor I were up for scrambling down to take a look (and then having to scramble back up again).  There was a representation of dinosaur footprints up where we were,

which we think were made with a plaster cast of the real thing. But we’re not sure.

Our plan was to walk back to the (“world-famous” according to the audio commentary in the bus) Cable Beach area of Broome, starting from the beach near the bus stop

and aiming for the Divers Tavern, near Cable Beach, where we would seek breakfast. Or, at least, a beer.

It’s possible to do the walk entirely along the beach, but a sign indicated that there were other trails available through dunes and bush as well, which we thought we would aim for. The trouble was that there didn’t appear to be any signage for the trails.

We walked along the beach for quite a way, on sand which was quite firm in places and somewhat hard work in others. We kept an eye out for possible trails leading away from the beach but seemed to be covering a lot of distance without seeing anything.

We crossed a patch of very damp sand with a strange covering

(here it is in close-up)

which might be the excavations of a crab or other creature?  Again, we’re not sure.

Eventually, we saw a trail marker which led away from the beach, and decided to take it, on the basis that we were fed up with walking on sand in what had become very hot sunshine. A certain amount of robust debate ensued as to whether this track was a good idea, and bits of it involved crashing through overgrowth, which was not particularly rewarding.  But eventually we came across a path through the bush

which led us to a road close to the Divers Tavern, by which time (about 1045) we  had covered a total of about 10km, were very hot, quite tired and ready for a glass of something cold.

The Divers Tavern doesn’t open until 11am.

Bugger.

In the end, since a Broome Explorer bus was due before the pub opened, we decided to head back to the hotel and find some kind of sustenance there, which meant we broke our fast with burger and pizza. The accompanying beer was very welcome, though.  At a neighbouring table, there was a striking vignette of a lady who was talking to her mate on her phone, but couldn’t tear herself away from the lunch she was eating at the same time.

We saw what we thought was an Osprey, but it was too far away for a clear photo. The Rainbow Bee-eater was still on duty, too. It’s so pretty, I can’t resist sharing another photo.

After a bit of a siesta, we made use of our bus passes to do a further expedition, to look at Downtown Broome and then go to Cable Beach to see a particular sunset sight.

Broome‘s history has been dominated, since the 1880s, by the pearl industry, following the discovery of a very rich source of pearl shells. Japanese and Chinese people were skilled pearl divers and many of them set up ventures in the town. In consequence, it now has a significant China Town and a profusion of pearl emporia.  Mother of pearl was in great demand until the 1950s, when plastic became the main material for buttons; these days, the pearl industry in Broome focuses more on the production of cultured pearls.

We walked up to China Town and took a quick look in Willie Creek’s Pearl Luggers establishment. As well as selling all things pearl, they have a couple of old pearl lugger boats outside

one of which is the subject of a major restoration project.  Nearby is a reminder about what diving might have entailed.

China Town is mainly centred around Johnny Chi Lane

which was rather quiet, since today was Sunday and everything was closed. The whole place was practically deserted, which I suppose is not too surprising for 5pm on a Sunday.

The architecture is not particularly varied, and the audio track on the Broome Explorer explained that everything was built with steel and corrugated iron in order that it be robust enough to withstand a cyclone – in fact buildings had to be certified cyclone-proof.  This also explained why the buildings we’d seen in Exmouth were of similar construction.

We waited by Johnny Chi Lane for the next Broome Explorer, which gave us the chance for a (mercifully) brief encounter with a couple of the locals, who were shouting drunkenly at each other as they walked down the street, but stopped to have a chat as they passed the bus stop. On learning that we were Brits, one of them professed to be a major fan of Iron Maiden and Def Leppard. They were clearly somewhat out of it, something that is not uncommon with people of indigenous stock, and we were happy that they were quite genial and even happier that they moved on before continuing to shout at each other as they went on down the street.

Another bus stop conversation we had later that day shed a little light on a strange alcohol-related phenomenon we’d come across when ordering drinks at the bar; we couldn’t order a double gin-and-tonic. We were offered a G&T and, separately, a shot of gin, which seemed a bit strange. In the bus stop conversation, we were told that one could only buy a couple of bottles of wine at any one time, one had to show id whilst doing so, and the transaction was logged so that one couldn’t then go elsewhere and buy more wine. It would seem not unrelated with the difficulties that the indigenous population has had in dealing with the alcohol that colonisers brought with them.

Cable Beach was a popular place to be that Sunday afternoon; lots of picnickers

and a fair few people on the beach itself.

It seemed that people were there to enjoy the sunset. We were there, though, to check out a particular scene, which was sunset camel rides. Camels were brought over to Australia in great numbers as they were more robust to withstand the extreme weather conditions than other working animals such as horses; and Australia has the largest population of wild camels in the world.

Some tame ones are used to provide rides for punters at sunset every day here in Broome, and we wanted to see this phenomenon and I wanted to photograph it. Of course.

We originally stationed ourselves up on a walkway above the beach, but then I thought a better viewpoint be down at beach level, which was a good move because once we’d moved down, we caught sight of a caravan in the distance.

So we chased along to get a better view.

 

After the ride, the camels were lined up so that people could disembark in a dignified way;

I assume they embarked the same way; much easier than the usual way which (as I understand these things) involves clambering on to a lying camel and then clinging on for dear life as it stands up.

By this time, the sun was setting in very dramatic fashion

and so we headed back to the bus stop to catch the bus home, in itself a bit of an adventure as for some reason the audio system on the bus which announces each stop was not working and  the bus driver, it seemed, was approaching the end of his shift and so was yelling out the stops amidst other, largely incomprehensible, comments. Rather than trust him, we used Google Maps to make sure we got off at the right stop and retired to our room for a welcome cup of tea.

That was it for Broome, then. It seemed slightly strange to us – very dispersed and slightly eccentric. Its population is around 15,000, which triples in its peak season (May to October), and it is the largest town of the Kimberley area.

And it is to the Kimberley area that the next segment of our trip is dedicated. Exactly what that means, and how we will be exploring it, will become clear if you keep reading these pages.