Don't Put Your Fingers in the Shark's Mouth

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We walk out of our apartment to see a long line of elegantly dressed women, complete with high heels, fancy dresses and fascinators, waiting for transport. It seems that the Broome Cup is on today, and it looks just like Melbourne Cup Day back home; well except for the minor matter of the weather. I wonder what these now very fashionably dressed ladies will look like by day's end - broken heels, smudged makeup and grazed knees are a fair bet if other cups I've experienced are anything to go by. I hope they'll think it was worth it.

Today we've booked a seaplane flight to the iconic Horizontal Falls which are somewhere around 250 kms north-east of Broome, and only accessible by boat or plane. We board our ten-seater craft and track north along Cable Beach, past Cape Leveque, and then turn east across the Dampier Peninsula to King Sound. As we heard a few days ago, this is home to the world's second highest tide range at a staggering eleven metres. We fly low over the Sound, and the power of the outgoing tide is clearly evident even from the air; it's gushing past the many islands at breakneck speed. We track on towards the Falls across the 800 or so totally uninhabited islands of the Buccaneer Archipelago. This must be one of the most remote and sparsely populated regions on the entire planet; the nearest road's more than a hundred kilometres away. The Falls are spectacular even from the air. We hadn't realised before, but there are actually two sets of falls, some 300 metres apart, separated by a lake.

Our trusty little seaplane lands and pulls up to a large pontoon moored in Talbot Bay, and we're herded from there into a speedboat. First stop is the so called Wide Gap, which is some 40 metres across, and is the site of the first of the two falls. It's a massive torrent of water. The cruise has been relatively sedate until now, but our trusty captain tells us that he's about to start driving the boat "like it's been stolen". We're jetted backwards and forwards through the Gap a few times. It's a rough, bumpy, wet and spectacular ride, and it's not hard to see why the great Sir David Attenborough once referred to this as "one of the greatest wonders of the natural world". We're told that we won't be able to go through the Narrow Gap, the site of the second set of falls, because it's too dangerous at this point in the tide cycle. This Gap is apparently only about seven metres wide and the difference in water level across it right now is somewhere around three metres. Our trusty captain is however happy to try to get us as close to it as he can. He manoeuvres the boat carefully into the Gap's mouth, but with the bow pointing away from it. The engine's revving full steam, but we're not going anywhere, and torrents and eddies are frothing past us like there's no tomorrow. We're told that if we were in still water and the boat was revving this hard we'd be screaming along at 40 kms per hour. I really hope this bloke knows what he's doing. I'm sensing that if we got swept a couple of metres backwards we'd get sucked into the vortex, smashed against the rocks, and that'd be it for both boat and passengers. Our skipper decides he hasn't had quite enough fun with us yet, so he jets us back and forth through the Wide Gap a couple more times just to make sure that we've all had our fill of thrills for the day. The tide range here is apparently somewhere around seven metres, and the two sets of falls are created by the tide rising and falling so fast that the water can't get through the gaps quickly enough to allow the levels to equalise.

But it seems that the danger is not yet over. Back at the pontoon we're invited to swim in a cage while one of the staff throws fish to the dozen or so sharks swimming around in the water next to it. He warns people not to put their fingers through the holes in the wire. Really? They can't see the massive sharp toothed monsters swimming around right in front of them waiting to snap off any body parts that get anywhere within reach? Where might these warnings stop. Next they'll be putting signs on the tops of forty storey buildings warning people not to jump off.

Next stop is a slightly more leisurely cruise up Talbot Bay and into Cyclone Creek. It seems that this is so named because you might have some hope of surviving a Category 5 storm in your boat if you took refuge in here. There's the inevitable question about whether there are any crocs here as well as the sharks. Apparently yes, but only small ones. It seems that larger crocs need to eat large animals such as horses and pigs to survive, and there aren't any of these food sources here due to its remoteness. I'm pretty sure there weren't too many pigs or horses anywhere in Oz before the Europeans turned up, which leaves me wondering whether maybe our presence has made the crocs grow bigger. I wonder if they've reached their peak yet. Maybe it's good that we've come here now; I don't think anybody'd be safe if the crocs up in this neck of the woods got any more enormous.

We head back to the pontoon and onto our trusty seaplane for the long flight back to Broome. We agree that the Falls are right up there with anything we've seen anywhere in the world, and that today has been the highlight of the entire trip so far.

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Comments

[D MJ Binkley]

Stunning Island
The colors are awesome!

[D MJ Binkley]

Too much signage
The world puts a warning on everything. It is crazy. I say if you don't have the common sense.... well....

[DaveandIssy]

Too much signage
So your country is just like ours? Europe at least seemed to be a bit more encouraging of people needing to take a bit more self responsibility. Sigh.