Somewhere in the Buccaneer Archipelago
The islands of the Buccaneer Archipelago lie randomly scattered to the northeast of Cape Leveque in Western Australia. It’s roughly 130 kilometres north of Derby, where we stayed while exploring the Kimberley. If you visit this part of the world, you can’t avoid the noise about a nearby phenomenon once described by natural historian and broadcaster David Attenborough as one of the great natural wonders of the world. Here, large tidal ranges create surges of massive volumes of water between the narrow cliff-sides of two deep gorges in the McLarty Range.
For some reason – sleep deprivation, energy-sapping heat-and-humidity, inadequate research, a simple mistake – or a combination of several, I confused what I much later learned was called Waterfall Reef with the way-more famous Horizontal Falls. Even as we left Cygnet Bay Resort early one morning, I believed we were headed for Horizontal Falls; and whoever I booked the trip with mustn’t have realised my mistake.
If I had studied a map a bit more carefully beforehand, I might have worked out it was highly unlikely we could visit the famous Falls from where we were staying on the Dampier Peninsula in just a couple of hours.
I can laugh about it now, but at the time, clinging on to whatever I could in a small but speedy powerboat skimming a ‘lumpy’ ocean, I was so scared, soaked and spooked that a few tears augmented this water world. I was concerned a far-from-home seascape was the last thing I would see in my life. Our fellow passengers on the boat, totally focussed on enjoying themselves, hooted and whooped at every wave we smashed. They had laughed earlier when we realised we weren’t going to the place we originally thought we were; and I imagined they’d be similarly amused by a scaredy-cat Pom not enjoying the wild ride. I had a fleetingly wicked thought that one of them might topple over the side of the boat in their over-exuberance.
One man fell and hurt his head before we departed, and was unable to continue. My immediate thought was, what a shame for the poor chap; but now, with hindsight, I’m thinking, if that had been me, I could have avoided what was a rather harrowing experience.
Our boat felt small in the water between swells, rising and falling like a leaf swept along in a swollen stream. Later, I wondered how much worse conditions would have needed to be for the trip to be cancelled. Much later, I wondered how I’d ever got in the thing in the first place, but of course I was looking forward to what I envisaged would be a relaxing sail in beautiful weather; not a mad-dash endurance test in turbulent waters.
We eventually reached slightly calmer waters surrounding the reef, and the boat cut its speed. I had composed myself enough to remember I should probably take some pictures of what we’d come to see. If I’m honest, however, this was not a reef as I knew it: possibly because my first experience was on the Great Barrier Reef off the coast of northern Queensland, where brilliant tropical skies show off ocean, reef and its inhabitants in the best possible light. But this one looked… well… rather brown. And not a particularly nice brown, if I’m honest.
I thanked the weather gods it was as warm as it was. The thought of being so wet for so long in your average English-summer temps – well, brrrrr! The return journey to Cygnet Bay was no calmer nor enjoyable – that is, just as lumpy and wetting. We were re-soaked and, once we got back to the Resort for breakfast, we dripped all over the terrace rather than the restaurant floor. It took an uncomfortably long while to dry out. I hadn’t worked on a fashion magazine in a long while, but I’m pretty sure ‘Beautifully bedraggled’ was never a new-season headline.
There were whirlpools and circular calm patches on the surface of the ocean: the calms reminded me of a whale’s ‘footprint’, the flat, smooth circle left after it flicks its tail or a fluke prior to diving.
In case you’re thinking of visiting, you should know Horizontal Falls will soon no longer be visited via powerful speedboats ploughing through the gorge’s churning white water. In 2022, a tourist boat struck rocks, an accident that required a challenging and lengthy rescue operation in remote, extremely inaccessible country.
Few people will be surprised to learn that the Indigenous Traditional Owners have never been happy with thrill-seeking activities in what they consider a sacred site. So tourist boats will sit further out in Talbot Bay, and their passengers will have to content themselves with peering at the Falls from just beyond the entrance to the gorge.
Increasingly, the tourism industry must consider wider issues of cultural and environmental concern. Hopefully, tour companies and visitors alike will respect the need for compromise in assessing the ever greater impact of human activities on the natural world.
'No, you go first!'
