Horizontal Falls Trip

Tuesday 10th June 2014

Today was the big day. We got picked up from the caravan park at 2pm and were taken to the Derby Airport where we boarded a float plane for the flight to Horizontal falls. Here is the picture of the float plane. It has little wheels which come out of the floats so it can land on hard surfaces

This is a view of the tidal mud flats around Derby taken on the flight. These mud flats go for kilometres and in the wet season king tides are covered in water.

This is the float plane landing in Talbot Bay near where the pontoons are tied up

This is the first view of Horizontal Falls from the air as we come in by plane. The gap nearest the bottom of the picture is the narrow falls and the one nearer the top is the wider falls. If you look closely you can see the pontoons anchored in Talbot Bay near the top of the picture

This is another view of the falls.

This is a picture of the pontoons all tied together. There is a sleeping pontoon with 11 cabins and 4 bathrooms. On top of this is an entertainment area where we ate. There are pontoons for the high speed boats to tie up and another for the float planes to dock at. There is also a pontoon for the luxury Kimberley Cruise vessels to tie up so their passengers can be taken through the falls. There are also 2 helicopters for people who want to do private trips.

This is a view of the water swirling through the narrow falls. Waiting to go through was like sitting is a washing machine. The boat was idle but the speedo shoed it was actually doing 32 knots just to keep still in the swirling water.

Another view looking through the falls

When you come back from the high speed boat trip through Horizontal Falls, you can go into the shark cage and the staff feed lemon sharks and a spotted groper of around 200lbs outside and you can get real close from the safety of the cage. These are 2 of the lemon sharks swimming around.

This is a batfish waiting to be fed

Margaret and John with their life jackets on ready to go on the boat ride

Ray and I ready to go

Margaret and John in the shark cage having a swim.

This is George the spotted Groper being hand fed just beside the shark cage. He was about 200lb in weight

The sharks circle the pontoons all night so the staff tell everyone to be extra careful and don't wander around aimlessly at night.
Bull and Tiger sharks have also been spotted in this area.












After the swim with sharks we went on another boat ride further up Talbot Bay in Cyclone Creek, so called because it is a safe anchor when the cyclones are on. There is some spectacular rock formations along the water including this one which is supposed to resemble an Indian head

This is a view looking up Cyclone Creek. It was late afternoon when we got there and it was so utterly peaceful. It was like we were the only people around. The skipper turned the motors off and we just drifted.

Sunset on Talbot Bay. A beautiful end to a wonderful day.

Margaret and Maura up on the entertainment deck of the pontoon just before we had a lovely Crispy Skinned Barramundi Barbeque Dinner with some delicious salads. This was followed by some luscious desserts.

Ray and John ready for another boat trip

One of the helicopters doing some manoeuvres and some showing off.

Ray, John and Margaret with the beautiful scenery of Talbot Bay in the background.

This is a view of the coastline of the Buccaneer Archipelago taken from the plane on the trip back home on Wednesday morning.

This is the 4 of us after we had returned from another high speed boat ride through the falls on Wednesday morning. It was cool and windy so we are pretty wind blown but it was great fun.

This will be the last blog for a couple of weeks. We are going on to the Gibb River Road for 2 weeks and reception is poor so I will Blog again when we get to Kununurra.