Greg and Deb's Travel Blog

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. Continue reading →

Today we visited Banjal, or Vansittart Bay – Jar Island & the Anjo Peninsula

Deb stayed on-board this morning and I took the second Explorer for the morning adventure.

There were 2 explorers from the Coral Explorer in the water near our boat, the Explorer had run out of essential supplies and was being topped up from our boat.

I saw our neighbour at the boarding area, she was wearing a mask. Her RAT (testing for 4 things) is negative. She has a scratchy throat. Last time she had Covid it took 3 days for the RAT to show +ve. I spoke to her from a distance. There are a few people on board with scratchy coughs.

My excursion this morning consisted of a cruise around Jar Island (about 1km x 0.6km). It was named after Macassan jars (Macassans came from what is now Indonesia) found on the island by Phillip Parker King. The area is a site for the pearling industry. There are pearling “String farms” scattered around the area. Pearling has been an industry here since at least the 1800’s. Initially pearling was all about the shells, used for buttons, etc. and then into pearls in the 1900’s. The oysters can be used to produce up to 3 pearls. Continue reading →

A late breakfast today ……. 7:30am.

We had Ian, the resident geologist guest lecturer join us for breakfast, he said we were elusive and wanted the opportunity to catch up with us. He is aiming for either a lunch or dinner.

It’s a LOT more humid today than it has been. As we move north that seems to be what’s happening.

We missed the first Explorer for the mornings excursion to Bigge Island by maybe 20 secs! It was full, so we had to wait for the 2nd.
Off the boat at 8:45am after a VERY slow run over to the island.
Once off the #xplorer, a dry landing, we went on to see an Art site, ceremonial site and a burial site. Continue reading →

Mitchell Falls Day. Yay!!!
Sleep-in Day. YAY!!!

We managed to get down to breakfast at about 7:45am, the room was pretty empty, which was nice.

After breakfast we stood on our balcony and watched a couple of helicopters take-off from a beach across the water from our boat.

We left the boat at about 10:05am for our zodiac ride over to the beach, where we were given another safety briefing by the pilot. There were 4 passengers in the helicopter, we both sat in the back on the trip to the falls. The chopper went at up to 150km/hr on the way there. On the way up we circled a couple of crocodiles resting in the the middle of the Mitchell River. We soon arrived at the Falls and the pilot did a couple of loops so everyone could see the them from both sides of the helicopter, and get some nice photos. Continue reading →

Hi all, the internet connection on-board our boat is tricky, seems it doesn’t like uploading larger files. I will update our blog when I have time either in Darwin or (spoiler alert) Bali.

Done

Big day today.
We were up a bit before 6am, we got our times confused! We had made our way overnight to Careening Bay(Wunbung-gu). It’s in an area of the Kimberley coast made famous by Lieutenant Phillip Parker King. His ship, The Mermaid was holed off Bowen, Qld and he eventually had to find a suitable place to Careen it (basically a place to beach it, that would also be easy to repair it) to effect repairs. King was mapping the coast of the Kimberley and knew its tides well. So he beached The Mermaid on a Spring tide, at a beach now know as Careening Beach in Careening Bay. While there, the crew carved the boats name and the date into a very large Boab tree. Continue reading →

We started our day on Doubtful Sound an early start!

The Explorers were left at 7am. We cruised around Ngumbree (Raft Point) and Steep Island and had a beach landing on the mainland at Umburi Beach, Raft Point. We had breakfast on the cruise, a breakfast roll and a cuppa. The beach was very steep and apparently, like everywhere up here, was frequented by crocodiles. None today!

On the beach we saw lots of bleached coral within the tidal zone sand, and up above the tidal zone was an old turtle shell, a lower jaw band & other bones. It looked like the turtle may have met its death via a crocodile. Continue reading →

Early start today, 6:30am breakfast, we’re up around 6am. It was still dark, so we took the opportunity to go out on our balcony a look at the night sky. So many stars, and the Milky Way.

As the sun was rising we saw that we were anchored just a little south of the entrance to the Horizontal Waterfalls. So special.
After breakfast we went out on one of the Explorers to have a cruise around bits of Talbot Bay, taking in the scenery and looking for wildlife. We didn’t see any wallabies or quolls, but did see a few different birds and a mud crab. Continue reading →

We started our day early, 7am breakfast, I mean, come on we are on holidays! But when you have to work with the tides, I guess that what it takes. And it was definitely worth it.

This morning we went for an 8 nautical mile cruise in one of the Explorers and then swimming in Crocodile Creek! Now who ever thought of that! We passed the Iron Islands and Nares Point (visiting the point a bit later in the day and having a closer look at one of the Iron islands).

We got to Crocodile Creek around 8:30am ships time, about 30 mins after a low tide of 2.91m. One of the expedition crew went to the waterhole we were going to swim in to check for crocs…… seriously. At high tide crocs can get into the area, but usually leave due to the fresh water. We were given the all clear, walked up about 8 steps and then about 15m along, a rocky trail to a small waterhole with a waterfall gently cascading into the pool. There was one of the expedition team stationed above the waterfall keeping an eye out for unwanted visitors of the salty kind! Continue reading →

The thing about expedition cruising is you have to be flexible, things don’t always go to plan, but you adapt.

• Today’s schedule was all about The Lacepede Islands at the right time of day for the tides. The first Expedition Explorer cruise was due to leave at 9:30am, BUT, the seas and winds had other plans. Rather than the 15 knot winds forecast we had 30 knot winds. The crew tried a test run of the Explorer, launch and cruise around, and found there were too many risks involved, so the plans changed. An afternoon expedition was planned and our afternoon lecture became a morning one.

We did get a distant glimpse of the Lacepede Islands, and the gap between them, from our balcony and saw a few Brown Boobies and Frigates fly around the boat.

The lecture was by Ray Andrews, the guest Geographer for our voyage. The lecture was a very broad introduction to The Kimberley (not to be confused with The Kimberleys in South Africa). His lecture covered a broad range from geography to history to geology to first inhabitants to exploration and uses.

The Kimberley : Fact File:
It covers about 6.6% of the land mass of Australia, about the same as Victoria
Population of 40,000, swollen by 300,000 a year. The aboriginals represent about 45% of the normal population and have 15 language groups.
Weather is Tropical Monsoon with temps 12-30 in the Dry and 24-33 in the Wet.
Geology is up to 1.8 billion years old, most around 400 million years.
Aboriginal settlement was said to occur around 60,000 years ago.
Two main aboriginal art types – Wangjira (the current style)and Gwion gwion (the oldest style)
Western explorers date from around 1606, with English, Dutch and French explorers visiting.
Asian travellers had been travelling to and trading in the area for much longer.
The Kimberley has over 2100 flora species including 15 mangrove species, 140 species of birds, including 3 of raptors, over 70 land mammal species and at least 3 marine mammal species and many species of reptiles. Continue reading →

Yup, you guessed it, another lazy morning.

We really didn’t do anything much other than finish packing and laze around.

The porter came by at about 11:10am, picked up our bags and us and drove us to reception. We picked our forgotten hats off the hat hooks as we left our room. He asked if we were going to the airport, we said no, going on a cruise. He asked if we would like a lift to the Cruise start hotel, we gladly said yes, another “job” taken care of. He said, there were about 15 of us. We leave from here at 2:30pm, so a bit over a 3hr wait. Continue reading →