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I’ve been meaning to do a TR on my Kimberley coast cruise from Broome to Wyndham in 2012 for a while and I’ve finally done it.
The Kimberley coast cruising season starts in April after the cyclone season has (hopefully) finished. It’s a bit of a balancing act choosing when to go. Too early and it is still very hot and humid and there is still a cyclone risk – but the waterfalls will be cranking. Go too late and the waterfalls are not so spectacular as the flow drops away quickly during May.
I opted for the third cruise of the season 19 April–2 May (13 nights). The early cruises tend to be the full journey Broome-Wyndham. Later in the season, the shorter cruises occur. The boat had already been Broome-Wyndham and Wyndham-Broome, so this was the second Broome-Wyndham trip for the season. I think the ideal would have been the Wyndham-Broome trip in mid-April but I wanted to drive to Broome, so it was necessarily Broome-Wyndham for me.
I drove to Broome over about 2½ days staying overnight at Carnarvon and then north of Port Hedland. (The mining boom was still nuts then and motel accommodation in PH was nigh on impossible, or crazily priced. I camped that night). I then had two nights in Broome, stored my car in secure covered storage and joined the boat for a late afternoon departure.
I really enjoyed the drive. There are now some very good sections of road up that way. At the time, I was driving a fairly new Subaru Liberty GT. Man, coming up behind those road trains, easing back from 110 (and-a-bit) to about 90 to check the road ahead and then flooring it in sports sharp mode to be passing through 180 next to the truck’s cab – and still accelerating hard - was just soooo sweeeet. Actually, in many ways it was much better fun than droning along on an autobahn or autostrada at 150+. Note to self: must do that drive again in the Audi…
I digress… Back to reality.
For the cruise, I opted for one of the smaller vessels. Maximum of 12 passengers (we had 10) with five crew (skipper, 2 deckhands, chef and hostess). I signed up as a willing sharer of a twin cabin, which saved me the single supplement. Regrettably, the dreamed-of 20-something natural blonde Danish backpacker roommate with the enthusiastic and experimental zest for life failed to materialise… failed to materialise… failed to materialise…
Pop! Uh, where was I? Oh yes - the boat was a 26m catamaran specially built for Kimberley coast cruising by an experienced seafarer resident of Broome. Three metal tenders were carried for excursions and fishing - much better than Zodiacs for that sort of thing.
One interesting thing was that passengers brought their own liquor. That was good from a choice and price perspective but it was a bit unknown how much to take and what type of wine (ie. a white/red split) given uncertainty about the type of meals. You could order in advance off a list that they had from a local store and it was delivered direct to the cruise company’s office and from there to the boat. As I was driving from PER, I took my own and dropped it at their office for loading.
As it turned out, I was pretty spot-on with my estimate for quantity and red/white balance. However, if I’d known just how sensational the food was going to be I think I would have taken a few more upper-level wines - and some Champagne. The fully-qualified chef (definitely not ‘just a cook’) was amazing!
The trip was Broome-Wyndham on the boat and then a bus ride to Kununurra where the tour officially ended. I stayed a night to visit some friends in KNX, then flew back to BME for the drive home. The homeward drive was a little more leisurely, spending time in Exmouth, Coral Bay and Monkey Mia on the way, taking a bit over a week. (I’d been to all those places, except Coral Bay, before so didn’t need to linger too long).
OK, that’s the broad outline.
Unfortunately, on the first day ashore I bumped my camera against the rocks and it damaged the lens-opening mechanism such that it would no longer open, so that was the end of that. All I had after that was my phone, which at that time was only an iPhone3 and, without a strap, I was a bit twitchy about dropping it overboard.
The end result was not a lot of photos and often of mediocre quality, so the TR is going to be fairly brief and I’ll again let the photos do the talking – but I hope it is enough to give a feel of this absolutely sensational part of the world.
Seriously, peeps, put a Kimberley coast cruise on your bucket list! But don’t go when you’re too old, as to make the most of it you need to be able to get ashore and do a bit of hiking IMO.
Here’s the geography lesson:
Outbound and return car journeys and detail of the region. It’s too hard to mark the cruise route, but we cruised much of the night on day one to swing around the Dampier Peninsula, cross the top of King Sound (where Derby is) to Talbot Bay (N of where it says Kimbolton on the map) and where the Horizontal Falls awaited. That point was really the start of the coast-cruising proper.
Cont...
The Kimberley coast cruising season starts in April after the cyclone season has (hopefully) finished. It’s a bit of a balancing act choosing when to go. Too early and it is still very hot and humid and there is still a cyclone risk – but the waterfalls will be cranking. Go too late and the waterfalls are not so spectacular as the flow drops away quickly during May.
I opted for the third cruise of the season 19 April–2 May (13 nights). The early cruises tend to be the full journey Broome-Wyndham. Later in the season, the shorter cruises occur. The boat had already been Broome-Wyndham and Wyndham-Broome, so this was the second Broome-Wyndham trip for the season. I think the ideal would have been the Wyndham-Broome trip in mid-April but I wanted to drive to Broome, so it was necessarily Broome-Wyndham for me.
I drove to Broome over about 2½ days staying overnight at Carnarvon and then north of Port Hedland. (The mining boom was still nuts then and motel accommodation in PH was nigh on impossible, or crazily priced. I camped that night). I then had two nights in Broome, stored my car in secure covered storage and joined the boat for a late afternoon departure.
I really enjoyed the drive. There are now some very good sections of road up that way. At the time, I was driving a fairly new Subaru Liberty GT. Man, coming up behind those road trains, easing back from 110 (and-a-bit) to about 90 to check the road ahead and then flooring it in sports sharp mode to be passing through 180 next to the truck’s cab – and still accelerating hard - was just soooo sweeeet. Actually, in many ways it was much better fun than droning along on an autobahn or autostrada at 150+. Note to self: must do that drive again in the Audi…
I digress… Back to reality.
For the cruise, I opted for one of the smaller vessels. Maximum of 12 passengers (we had 10) with five crew (skipper, 2 deckhands, chef and hostess). I signed up as a willing sharer of a twin cabin, which saved me the single supplement. Regrettably, the dreamed-of 20-something natural blonde Danish backpacker roommate with the enthusiastic and experimental zest for life failed to materialise… failed to materialise… failed to materialise…
Pop! Uh, where was I? Oh yes - the boat was a 26m catamaran specially built for Kimberley coast cruising by an experienced seafarer resident of Broome. Three metal tenders were carried for excursions and fishing - much better than Zodiacs for that sort of thing.
One interesting thing was that passengers brought their own liquor. That was good from a choice and price perspective but it was a bit unknown how much to take and what type of wine (ie. a white/red split) given uncertainty about the type of meals. You could order in advance off a list that they had from a local store and it was delivered direct to the cruise company’s office and from there to the boat. As I was driving from PER, I took my own and dropped it at their office for loading.
As it turned out, I was pretty spot-on with my estimate for quantity and red/white balance. However, if I’d known just how sensational the food was going to be I think I would have taken a few more upper-level wines - and some Champagne. The fully-qualified chef (definitely not ‘just a cook’) was amazing!
The trip was Broome-Wyndham on the boat and then a bus ride to Kununurra where the tour officially ended. I stayed a night to visit some friends in KNX, then flew back to BME for the drive home. The homeward drive was a little more leisurely, spending time in Exmouth, Coral Bay and Monkey Mia on the way, taking a bit over a week. (I’d been to all those places, except Coral Bay, before so didn’t need to linger too long).
OK, that’s the broad outline.
Unfortunately, on the first day ashore I bumped my camera against the rocks and it damaged the lens-opening mechanism such that it would no longer open, so that was the end of that. All I had after that was my phone, which at that time was only an iPhone3 and, without a strap, I was a bit twitchy about dropping it overboard.
The end result was not a lot of photos and often of mediocre quality, so the TR is going to be fairly brief and I’ll again let the photos do the talking – but I hope it is enough to give a feel of this absolutely sensational part of the world.
Seriously, peeps, put a Kimberley coast cruise on your bucket list! But don’t go when you’re too old, as to make the most of it you need to be able to get ashore and do a bit of hiking IMO.
Here’s the geography lesson:
Outbound and return car journeys and detail of the region. It’s too hard to mark the cruise route, but we cruised much of the night on day one to swing around the Dampier Peninsula, cross the top of King Sound (where Derby is) to Talbot Bay (N of where it says Kimbolton on the map) and where the Horizontal Falls awaited. That point was really the start of the coast-cruising proper.
Cont...
. I'd suggest trying to go fairly early in the season to maximise the waterfalls - and to have the opportunity to get the full-length trips that are more common then.
