Horizontal Falls Sea Plane Adventure

Wow, what a day!!!

I got picked up at 5.30am for the morning tour, while Gill was waiting for the arvo tour. We weren't taking the kids as it was costing a small fortune as it was. 

The trip to the falls was in a Cessna Caravan Float Plane. There were three planes leaving Broome one after the other for the falls when I left in the morning. We were the first to leave but we got to the falls second. I asked the pilot how they passed us and he told me our plane was due for an engine change and could only get to an altitude of 7500ft as the engine would run out of puff at higher altitudes, the other plane was cruising at 9500ft so was able to fly faster and pass us. Nice one hey...

The flight into the horizontal waterfalls flys over King Sound Bay and the Buccaneer Archipeligo, awesome, awesome views.

This is where the plane landed near the falls. There was a couple of cruise ships anchored, the house boats, are where the planes pulled up. They are anchored there from March to Octobr and during the wet season they are towed to nearby cyclone creek, for obvious reasons.

Soon after arriving I spotted this big sucker in the water. These sharks are Tawny Nurse sharks, or Lemon sharks, and soon after we were swimming with them.

It's just so funny feeding sharks isn't it!!

As you can see from the pictures these sharks only have small mouths, so if they got hold of you, you wouldn't lose a limb but your limb could get sucked into their mouth and they would do a good job of shredding you up as you tried to pull your arm or leg free. They said it has happened a few times.

After the sharks the real business of going through the falls started and into the aptly named boat "Full Throttle". 

I don't think it has enough horsepower...

After a quick tour through Cyclone Creek, (named because it is the safest refuge for boats and ships in a cyclone) we headed to the first horizontal waterfall. The first fall is 20m wide.

After a few runs through the wide fall we went over to the narrow fall. But due to the current full moon, the tides are big 10m tides at the moment and the water flow was too big to safely pass through. The narrow fall is only 7.5m across. There was about a 2m height difference between each side of the fall when I was there and about 3m when Gill was there later in the day.

The driver did back the boat right up to the falls though and hold us in position so we could get a good look.

On Gill's ride in the arvo, it was a different story. The skipper couldn't go within 20m of fall as it was too dangerous. They would of got halfway through the pass and been knocked sideways against the rocks- said the skipper!

These photos do not show the ferocity of the falls and speed at which the water is moving through these passes.

This is Cape Leveque and we will be camping here next week, also known as Kooljaman.