Should you ever find yourself on a bus from Kununurra to Wyndham, or return, and the bus driver tells you his name is Keith and that he’s a good talker, get off immediately!  A very long hour’s drive was not so much enlivened as bludgeoned by Keith’s non-stop commentary – most of it only mildly interesting, all of it strongly coloured by Keith’s unique view of the world and his starring role in it.  Didn’t bode well.

Arrival in Wyndham gave Grant, our boat skipper, a chance to walk us around town for another long hour while baggage and stores were loaded and distributed to cabins etc (It’s a shambles if we don’t do it this way).  Boding worse? 

Wyndham port was once a bustling hub but is little more than a ghost town now, but it did have a sense of humour.  The TV series “Mystery Road” featured the derelict and defunct Wyndham Hotel (renamed Patterson Hotel but only on one side of the sign), up the road there was a big concrete crocodile, there was a dead video store for me and the curiosity shop had an old but excellent window poster.  But…not looking great!

A safety briefing and a life jacket drill later and we were on our way across the always-brown waters of Cambridge Gulf.  Did I mention that this trip was extortionate? 

Turned out, it was cheap!  Sensational!

Every day, there was activity and interest.  Eco Abrolhos is a peculiarly named 40 year old catamaran refitted for tourism.  It’s not fast but it is strong, useful when we “kissed” the Berkely River bar a couple of times.  Its particular appeal is the 4 super-sold aluminium tenders it carries which allowed us to explore places that bigger boats just don’t go and, maybe even more importantly, a skipper who was intent on showing us those places.  The tenders were built by Austal and, including the 150hp Suzuki outboards (shoulda got Yamahas) were about $200K each – for defence interest, Austal are currently building the nation’s Evolved Cape-class Patrol Boats in Geraldton. We passed Ponant’s luxurious Le LaPerouse but our crew sniffed at it – they have to use zodiacs, infinitely inferior, was their opinion (still looked pretty posh!).

The Kimberley coast is a massively eroded, largely sandstone expanse, that’s most magnificent at sunrise and sunset and merely spectacular the rest of the time.  There are 3 types of sandstone (Pentecost, Warton and Wunaamin Miliwundi*) and we know this, not because we’re keen geologists but because we’re keen Quiz Night competitors.  Lesley shamelessly bribed the skipper with a cuddle to get this information, and yes, winners are grinners.  Despite our team’s comprehensive victory, I’m ashamed to admit that I couldn’t remember that the fifth Beatle was George Martin.  You can tell by these two questions that it was a Rock Quiz.

*This is a name change from King Leopold, the systemic brutalist of the Congo, whose name has been erased from our geography, thankfully on this particular occasion. Ben Boyd – ha, just a beginner.

There were gorges and gullies all along the way, some with waterfalls and swimming holes and we seemed to stop into most of them as we chugged our way the 1000 nautical miles towards Broome (1850km round numbers).  A fair bit of our motoring was done in the dark which gave more time for excursions during the day.  Early on, we visited a handful of different rock art galleries with the oldest verified art being minimum 24,000 years old.  Several different styles of art with Bradshaw (tassel and sash), Gwion and Wandjina getting mentions.  Just like the scale of the physical country, the scale of time is almost incomprehensible.  We were once amazed by Skara Brae in Orkney but that was only 5 thousand years ago, not 25.

It’s also true to say that after a few days of this, sitting in a hot tin dinghy, looking up at a huge orange rock face in the baking sun trying to see an imaginary wombat started to pall a bit for some of us. (Is it a wombat? No, it’s just a mark on the rock!). Others remained fascinated.  They included the crew, where there was a genuine connection plus some aboriginal heritage.

In this weather, nothing beats a good swim.  There were, however, plenty of visible reasons not to be too cavalier.  Swims were therefore confined to places where we had to climb rocky paths to get to them.  Allegedly, the crocs don’t climb.  We did have one swim in the actual sea, in a clear, shallow, sandy bay with our guides keeping watch in the tenders just off shore.  It wasn’t super comforting to see them with their feet up catching a few zzz’s while on watch – but nobody died.  Happy days!

One of our waterfall, rock climb, swimming hole adventures gave us a close up of another tourist boat, Great Escape 2, which had 6 guests and its own helicopter (Bell Jetranger 206 since you ask).  As we laboured up the rocks past Kings Cascades to our totally brilliant swimming hole, they choppered to the top, making both a racket and no effort.  I was conflicted – was I envious that we were not similarly exclusively equipped OR was I simply annoyed that these over-paying clowns were buggering up my serenity?  Hmm, the latter.

Another surprise (there were so many) was that we had to hunt and gather if we were to eat well.  Our one-man chef team, Connor, slaved away in his galley all day every day producing mostly terrific meals, if not fine dining (see GE2).  Fortunately, we didn’t have to go and dig for yams or collect almost-certainly poisonous berries, but we did have to catch fish and crabs.  What a trial!

Varieties of fish that were previously unknown to us have leapt to the top of our eating chart, maybe even bypassing coral trout, which must be blasphemy for Queenslanders.  Fingermark, scarlet perch, rock cod, striped perch (so pretty) and even spanish mackerel were all on the menu (you can keep the mackerel but it was good when smoked or served as sushi).  For us, the single best meal was perfectly grilled fingermark, chips and salad – so fresh, so simple, so delicious!

Mud crabs were also fantastic but our haul was meagre.  We gathered only 24 crabs to feed 30 guests and another 10 crew, so, not enough crabs. But Lesley landed the biggest one; some consolation.  One of the other dinghy crowd were able to watch in wonder as a croc attacked their baited crab dilly and then dragged it away into the muddy mangroves – I would have liked to have seen that!  Crabs can be fiddly to eat so it was pretty clever to serve all the claws by themselves with just lemon and aioli as a back deck, pre-dinner-drinks snack.  There’s hardly any effort required to eat a well cracked crab claw and I can attest that, if required, a Coopers Pale Ale stubby is the perfect cracking utensil.  Empty is fine.

And it’s all recorded.  Unbelievably, each of the paying passengers had to have an official fishing permit, acquired early-on for some measly sum.  Obviously a joke, until a couple of uniformed fish inspectors with striped epaulettes and guns (ok, no guns) boarded us in, literally, the middle of nowhere, asking for the documentation.  After much “Yes Minister” style kerfuffle, the papers were eventually found and we were allowed on our way.  We saw the Fisheries “mother ship” a little later and it looked like pretty easy duty – not Ponant, but not bad.  Purely for their information, during the trip, we caught 29.5m of fish (tip to tail) and a disappointing 2.5m of crab (measured across the carapace).

Two fantastic “wonders” merit mention.  The Montgomery Reef is a huge brown coral reef that is completely submerged by the full tide and then embarrassingly exposed as the tide falls – the key is that the tide is around 9m, so it has to move pretty damn fast in just 6 hours.  And move it does. This vast and very flat reef then cascades zillions of litres off its back until the tide eventually rises to meet it and starts the process again.  It looks dead but is swarming with life.  We set out to see it at dawn, with a nearly full moon over the reef and 30 minutes later, the rising sun behind us.  Maybe pictures can tell the story but it’s really one of those “you’ll never never know if you never never go” places.  Nothing to do with anything, but the place was full of sea turtles as well.

The second wonder is also caused by the massive tide.  We’d seen the Horizontal Falls in pictures and we’d heard about boat crashes too.  Nonetheless, we paid our money and took our chances with the 3^rd party operated speedy boats.  It’s what’s called a “pinch rapid”. Usually caused by a downhill flow of water being constricted and therefore turning into a boiling cauldron.  Exactly the same here, except it’s a cauldron going one way when the tide comes in and then reversing when the tide goes out through a tight gap in the cliff face – awesome.  There are two “falls” but the second one is too tight and too steep, so off limits to us.  Amazingly, independent adrenaline junkies can do what they like.  You’ll be unsurprised to hear that it’s no longer just a thrill ride but a chance to better understand the spirit of the great serpent Woongudd that formed these gorges and who may become angry if disrespect (thrill riding) is shown, so no more than three ins-and-outs is the owners’ decree!  My personal commercial cynicism aside, take nothing away from it – it was amazing!

But what of the near time history?  Macassans from Indonesians have been in these waters for hundreds of years, harvesting, drying and then on-selling the disgusting beche-de-mer (trepang or sea slug).  Philip Parker-King explored these waters a couple of times in his tiny cutter Mermaid and then again in the Belfry.  Some misguided Victorian entrepreneurs established a settlement called Elliot near Camden Harbour, which was established, populated, built and deserted within 12 months, leaving the last 300 of their 3000 sheep to struggle on (you guessed it) Sheep Island.  We even saw a DC3 which had failed to navigate its way to Broome from Perth – out of fuel, it was skilfully crash landed and everyone survived!  At virtually every spot, someone had carved “FOO was here” type messages into the big, fat Boab trees.

Group travel is always a bit of a lottery but our entire guest list managed to rub along pretty well.  Our skipper was very experienced and appeared to be connected to every single person in the Kimberley – his surname appears on half the buildings in Broome.  He ran a tight ship and his crew did him proud.  One memorable night, we sat on the beach as the sun set and the moon rose, drank champagne and delicious snacks in front of a beach bonfire while a couple of the crew kids played guitars and sang songs we knew.  Not too shabby!

Finally, en route to Broome, we stopped at Cone Bay barramundi farm and caught a few just to see what it’s like (like shooting fish in a barrel as it turned out, but still fun).  We ate them for dinner and they were great.  Some playful sunset whales and a long night’s motoring took us around Cape Leveque and into port. 

We’d left ATGANI in a semi-secure storage spot in the van park in Kununurra, we were on wobbly feet after 2 weeks at sea and we had a plane to catch to be reunited with our van – if we could just find any of them.  And we’d be back in Broome in a couple of weeks, this time by land. What could possibly go wrong?