Berkeley River

Darwin to Broome – June to September

The Kimberley Coast, as the crow flies around the edge of it, is roughly 600 nautical miles long from Broome in Western Australia to the Northern Territory Border. Of course, it is vasty longer than this, encompassing inlets, rivers, bays and islands. The scenery can range from the spectacular to the mundane and you will find the water’s edge abutting mangroves, sandy beaches, muddy inlets and spectacular escarpments. The birdlife is prolific but you need time – and quiet – to enjoy it. Crocodiles are plenty, more prolific in some places than others. Sengo spent three months traveling from Darwin to Broome (7 June to 3 September), her crew taking in as much as they could, but three months is no where near enough time to experience all of this coast. Most of the land along the Kimberley Coast is Aboriginal land and you need permission to go to shore; in some cases you are restricted to specific locations and in other cases specific locations need a fee payed permit (with time limits). At this stage there are no restrictions on the time anchored in the water. We knew three months was never going to be enough time to see it all but we now have a taste and we have a list of things we missed that we hope we can get back to (including some iconic waterfalls – but we may just take a helicopter ride to see them (instead of slogging up rock strewn gorges)).

Travelling by personal craft means that, in the main, you can take your time. The big disadvantage of this, is that no matter how much information you read up on beforehand, you miss out on the interpretation guidance of experts that the commercial tour operators have access to.

Photographically, some of the Kimberley is spectacular but a camera never captures the true colours (and philosophically what are true colours anyway – we all see the world differently). That said, a professional photographer would get a great portfolio spending time here. I am not a professional photographer. And I don’t have professional cameras. Add to this most of my photographs for the journey were taken whist I was on board a moving or rocking boat. To try to counter shake I had the automatic settings mostly on the ‘sports’ function. The downside of this of course is that you lose focal length (needed for landscape photographs) and the ability to manipulate the settings. As a result, photographs for the Darwin to Broome trip may not be in perfect focus… but you will get the idea. A selection of photographs is at the end of this post.

Our anchorages for the journey are listed below as well as the birds we identified along the way. Also listed are the commercial tourist boats we came across in our journey (just in case you are interested in taking in the Kimberley the luxurious way). I suspect it was probably a result of us leaving so late in the season but we only saw around a dozen private vessels.

Aboard Sengo newsletters for June, July and August will be published separately.

Anchorages

The following table lists the ‘approximate’ location of where we anchored during our three month journey. Some anchorages were prettier than others and quite a few were just overnight stops as part of an ongoing journey. (Note: We take no responsibility for the safety of any vessel or individual that tries to anchor in the same locations as those listed below).

Commercial Tourist Operators

Apart from one notable exception, all interaction with commercial tourist operators has been terrific, some crew quite inquisitive, and all friendly. Listed below are the commercial tourist operators we came across during our three-month journey. Each has its own appeal (and its own price tag!).

True North – http://www.truenorth.com.au
Ocean Dream – www. oceandreamcharters.com.au
Eco Abrolhos – http://www.ecoabrolhos.com.au
Great Escape -www.greatescape.net.au
Caledonia Sky – http://www.aptouring.com.au
L’ Austral – http://www.ultimatecruising.com.au
Kimberley Quest II – http://www.kimberleyquest.com.au
Lady M – http://www.ladymcruising.com
Coral Discoverer – http://www.coralexpeditions.com
Kimberley Explorer – http://www.kimberleycruise.com.au
Diversity Charters -www.diversitycharters.com.au
Reef Prince – http://www.kimberleyexpeditions.com.au/reef-prince

Other paces of interest…

Honeymoon Bay Campground – phone (08) 9161 4378
Horizontal Falls Seaplane Adventures–www.horizontalfallsadventures.com.au
Cygnet Bay Pearl Farm – www.cygnetbaypearlfarm.com.au
Cape Leveque – http://www.kooljaman.com.au

The Bird list

Whilst we weren’t on a ‘bird watching tour,’ we did however take the binoculars just about everywhere we went. Of course we saw many more birds than we actually identified and on some days I’ve listed our daily bird list, whilst on other days I haven’t listed any at all. The list that covers the entire trip is below (they are in no particular order)..

1. Brown booby
2. Darter
3. Pied cormorant
4. Least frigatebird
5. Great billed heron
6. White faced heron
7. Great egret
8. Intermediate egret
9. Eastern reef egret
10. Striated heron
11. White ibis
12. Pacific black duck
13. Osprey
14. Black kite
15. Brahminy kite
16. Whistling kite
17. Collared sparrowhawk
18. White bellied sea eagle
19. Wedge tailed eagle
20. Peregrine falcon
21. Orange footed scrub fowl
22. Buff banded rail
23. Brolga
24. Beach curlew
25. Pied oyster catcher
26. Sooty oyster catcher
27. Masked lapwing
28. Mongolian plover
29. Oriental plover
30. Red capped plover (dotterel)
31. Black winged/pied stilt
32. Ruddy turnstone
33. Eastern curlew
34. Common sandpiper
35. Curlew sandpiper
36. Emerald ground dove
37. Peaceful dove
38. Bar shouldered dove
39. Common bronze wing pigeon
40. White quilled rock pigeon
41. Red tailed black cockatoo
42. Sulphur crested cockatoo
43. Red winged parrot
44. Sacred kingfisher
45. Collard kingfishers
46. Rainbow bee eater
47. Black faced cuckoo shrike
48. Mangrove robin
49. Sandstone shrike thrush
50. WiIly wagtail
51. Purple crowned fariy wren
52. Little Friarbird
53. Singing honeyeater
54. Brown honeyeater
55. Mistletoe bird
56. Red browed pardalote
57. Yellow oriole
58. Great bowerbird
59. Pied butcherbird
60. Toresian crow
61. Channel billed cuckoo
62. Diamond dove
63. Double barred finch
64. Chestnut fronted manikin
65. Broad billed flycatcher
66. Rufous whistler
67. Mangrove gerygone
68. White gaped honeyeater
69. Red backed wren
70. Red collared lorikeet
71. Little shrike thrush
72. Silver Gull
73. Common bronze wing pigeon
74. White quilled rock pigeon
75. Red tailed black cockatoo
76. Sulphur crested cockatoo

King George River

King George River

Yampi Sound

Morning. Talbot Creek

Horizontal Falls

Mining

Dugong Bay

Dugong Bay

Sunrise Horizontal Falls

Hunter River

Hunter River

Hunter River

Berkeley River

Mermaid Tree

Surveyors Creek

Mitchell River

Mitchell River

Berkeley River

Berkeley River

Careening Bay

Hunter River

Berkeley River

Raft Point

Montgomery Reef

Montgomery Reef

Porosus Creek

Porosus Creek

Porosus Creek

Porosus Creek

Porosus Creek

Sailing up the Berkeley

Surveyors Creek

Searching for four men

Surveyors Creek

Swift Bay

Swift Bay

Swift Bay

Swift Bay

Swift Bay

Swift Bay

Swift Bay

Swift Bay

Swift Bay

Biggie Is