Australia’s Top End: this cruise showcases the northern Kimberley region’s majestic natural beauty
Exploring the prehistoric art galleries, teeming wetlands and ancient landscapes of northern Australia’s Kimberley region is enough to leave even the most seasoned travellers in awe
In the Kimberley region, everything is magnified. Somehow, here, in what Australians call the Top End, and perhaps because you’re so far from any town, the nights are darker. Almost pitch black – the better to show off the Milky Way, thick with shimmering constellations and dense with red and blue nebula. By day, the horizon, under a domed sky of sapphire blue lined with white, hangs in the gathering heat. Despite the soft mincing steps of black-necked storks on sea-wet reefs exposed by the falling tides, or the silhouette of a white-bellied sea eagle drifting on ribboned air currents high above, the absolute stillness catches the attention. It’s almost as if the land is holding its breath.
A Zodiac cruise takes guests along King George River, visiting its famous twin waterfalls in the background. Photo: Seabourn
And that landscape. Its rugged, tectonic form defies human comprehension in its rawness and primal beauty. Formed billions of years ago, when a land mass the size of California slammed into northwest Australia, this sheath of corrugated Precambrian rock cut by millennia of rising and falling seas is ancient beyond reckoning.
Beneath one of the stunning waterfalls at King George River. Photo: Seabourn
Though, perhaps not for the traditional owners – the Wunambal Gaambera, Dambimangari, Yawuru, Balanggarra and Larrakia people who arrived here 16,000 years ago and who still mark time through their Songlines and Dreamtime – for whom yesterday is today, and tomorrow has already happened.
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For the 250-plus passengers who set sail from Broome this past June for the inaugural Australian voyage of Carnival Corporation-owned Seabourn’s second expedition ship – the 132 all-veranda suite Pursuit – the Kimberley’s unique topography, geology, flora and fauna, so singularly apart from the rest of Australia, promised plenty. Not least 100-metre-high waterfalls, great swathes of mangrove swamps crowded with snubfin dolphins and saltwater crocodiles, rock art that was already 13,000 years old by the time the pyramids were built and tropical forests, woodlands and mudflats teeming with comb-crested jacanas, mudskippers and migratory shorebirds.
A shore excursion at Freshwater Cove, an old camping ground for the Dambimangari traditional owners. Photo: Seabourn
Also on board is a crack squad of geologists, historians, photographers, marine biologists and naturalists who double as guides and drivers of the Zodiac tenders that ferry passengers between the Pursuit and daily shore excursions.
Given that this is the winter dry season, there is plenty to see as the ship hugs the Western Australian coastline, inching its way north through hot, sunny days, the still waters of the Mitchell River National Park, the Paspaley Pearl Farm at Kuri Bay and the towering sandstone gorges of Koolama Bay towards Darwin.
Watching the official christening of the Seabourn Pursuit off Jar Island in Vansittart Bay, on its maiden voyage. Photo: Seabourn
It certainly helps the cause that the Pursuit is an expedition ship. At 558 feet long and carrying so few passengers, it is considerably smaller and lighter (literally, in terms of weight and carbon footprint) than your average ocean liner. As Michael Mihajlov, Carnival Group Australia’s director of destination management, notes during an evening debrief, “This expedition goes through the countries of five traditional owners. Small ships give greater access to remote communities and provide a more enriching experience for both parties.”
At Hunter Valley, the deep water marks on the rocks are evidence of the huge tidal surges in the Kimberley. Photo: Seabourn
For starters, the names of some of the places we visit are straight out of a Robert Louis Stevenson escapade – Buccaneer Archipelago, Cyclone Creek, Whirlpool Pass, Camden Sound, King George Falls – though there is a determined push to restore the names they had been given millennia ago by the traditional owners.
