15/05/12 – Kimberley By Air

Cape Leveque post swim

Chocks away!

Derby's Boab Prison Tree

Fortunately no incidents during the night, as it was a sunrise start prior to getting transported to the airport. A very brief stint in the Cessna took us to Derby, where we had a hilarious tour driver, Jon, try and sell us the Derby lifestyle. Highlights of the visit were the Boab prison tree (yep, a tree being used historically as a prison – pretty unique!) and the pier where we saw the marks of the 11.5m tidal variations they experience there.

I'm thinking of changing my name
to DJ Air, and bring a little bit of flair...

Mitchell Falls

Back in the plane and we got treated to the more remote mainland parts of the Kimberley, all the way to the awesome Mitchell Falls. Couldn’t really get a proper appreciation for how big they were from the air, but highly impressive nonetheless. From there we headed back, over the Horizontal Falls and the Buccanneer 


Archipelago. Now Tony was bigging these up to anyone who’d listen prior to 

Annaliza's Sea Palm

Horizontal Falls - but v
limited fall action...

leaving, so some humble pie is required – the tides weren’t right to get the waterfall effect and whilst you could see how it would happen the reality at the time was a little bit ‘meh’.

Cable Beach

A hastily scribed birthday message

Cape Leveque provided the required tonic though – the incredible contrast of blue skies and seas, white sand and red cliffs just took the breath away. We even decided to head into the Indian ocean for a swim! Only landed back at Broome at 4:30pm, after over 5 hours in the air – not sure that was what you signed up for when you promised us a flight in Aus M&D (Sturge)!

Dashed to the beach for a final sunset there, another hastily scribed birthday message (hope you had a good one Al!) and an attempt to get the perfect camel + beach shot.

Some camel action

Key Learnings

1.       Mining operations are more successful than high end resorts in the Buccanneer Archipelago (ie Cockatoo Island).

2. Pilots are very competitive with those from rival airlines, and aren’t afraid to voice those thoughts to the crew…