An early start again for our last day of exploration, 6.30am breakfast and we headed out at 7:15am
We got the second Explorer off the boat to head up the King George River to see the Oomai (King George Falls).
We were told that Dugongs frequent the lower mouth area of the river. Dugongs and sea turtles feed on sea grasses in this area, we didn’t see any.
We passed a huge Osprey nest, maybe 1m+ tall, on our way upstream. It was perched on a rock shelf halfway up a cliff face. Normally they are on the top of rocky outcrops.
As we approached the falls area, we first saw the falls to the right and then the single falls to the left, they are divided by large high WM sandstone “headland”. Beautiful. And as the light changed the falls and the cliffs took on new colours and vibrance.
Everyone on the Explorer was offered either a dry or wet (Kimberly Shower) zodiac run. Deb opted for the dry run, and I stayed on the Explorer. Just after we got settled and the zodiac pulled up along side, a crocodile was spotted off to the right near the cliff face. What could go wrong – a rubber boat going under a waterfall with a crocodile 10m away! Turns out that’s perfectly safe. Thank goodness!
The whole time we were at the Falls the light was continually changing, highlighting different aspects of the scene as it did. Crazy amazing.
As we left we were offered champagne and orange to toast the last of our excursions.(We both had orange juice)
We had a slower run back down the river taking in the sights.
We saw a pair of Wedgetail eagles, apparently in some sort of mating ritual, a rare sighting in the Kimberley.
The WM rock faces all the way along the river, to quote Deb, ‘are mesmerising’. The colours of the Kimberly Red Rocks, Green Vegetation and Blue Skies and Waters. We will both miss this country.
We were back on-board by 10:20am and the crew started reading the boat for our passage to Darwin. We set sail around 11am (Do motor driven vessels really set sail?)
And that wraps up our expedition of the Kimberley.
The wind had picked up and we had a “long” stretch of open water across to Darwin, so we thought it may get a bit rough. Turned out as soon as we were in the open waters of the Joseph Bonaparte Gulf the wind dropped and the seas calmed, smooth sailing, a win for us.
Entertainment from here on were a documentary on a local “mutiny”, a lecture on preservation of our National Parks and a sales talk from Coral Expeditions. We passed on all of these, except the Coral Expeditions Sales talk.
The talk was interesting. This was followed by a slideshow of photos from our time on the expedition. It was both interesting and amusing at times.
This was followed by Captain’s Drinks, just to wind up the formalities.
We had dinner in our cabin again, a mixed roast with Yorkshire pudding, and a Bethany Shiraz.
Breakfast and bags out at 7am tomorrow. We disembark at 8:30am to start two days, well, about 40hrs really, in Darwin and then we head to Bali for a week.
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