Kimberley Expedition Voyage: Broome to Darwin

Broome is where the Indian Ocean meets the ancient red earth of the Kimberley, and it is the right place to begin one of the great Australian wilderness voyages.

Gateway to the oldest and most elusive of all Australia’s nine regions, Broome is where your Kimberley adventure begins. The ancient landscape has long held travellers spellbound: The Kimberley is three time larger than England but has a population of just 35,000, is over 65,000 years old and is home to 2,000 km of coastline. Almost impenetrable, incredibly remote, the red baked earth, prolific wildlife, majestic canyons and swimming holes are the stuff of Australian wilderness dreams.

English explorer William Dampier was the first explorer to set foot in Broome in 1668. However, the land had long been used as a trading route between east and west Kimberley for Aboriginal families. These semi-nomadic tribes respected strict unwritten rules regarding ownership of the land. The Yawuru people remain the Native Title holders for the township of Broome to this day. Broome itself has over 84 Aboriginal communities affiliated to it, 78 of which are considered remote. The city grew from its nascent pearling industry of the late 19th century. Pearl diving was dangerous in the waters surrounding Broome and for many years divers were limited to Aboriginal slaves, skin divers who faced cyclones, sharks, crocodiles, ear and chest infections in order to bring up as many pearl shells as possible for their masters. Natural pearls were rare and extremely valuable, and when found, were placed in a locked box. At the peak of its industry, around 1914, Broome was responsible for 80% of the world’s pearl trade.

Horizontal Falls are the most dramatic tidal phenomenon in Australia, and approaching them by Zodiac in Talbot Bay is the defining experience of this voyage.
The 12-metre tides of the Buccaneer Archipelago force massive volumes of water through two narrow gaps in the McLarty Range, creating the rare spectacle of water appearing to fall horizontally as it surges between the rock faces. The flow reverses completely with the tide, which is why the phenomenon is called the Horizontal Falls rather than a waterfall. The Silversea expedition team leads Zodiac approaches at safe distances as the current roars past. Silver Cloud anchors in the sheltered waters of the Archipelago’s 800-island chain as your expedition team explores the surrounding reefs and mangrove coastline by Zodiac throughout the day.

A second day in the Buccaneer Archipelago and the expedition team takes the Zodiacs deeper into the island chain.
The vast tidal range that creates the Horizontal Falls also exposes extraordinary reef systems twice daily, and the snorkelling and Zodiac exploration around the outer islands of the Archipelago reveals a marine environment of exceptional diversity. William Dampier, the first European to sight this coastline in 1688, described the islands as among the most remarkable he had encountered anywhere in the world. The rich iron ore deposits of Koolan Island on the eastern side of Yampi Sound have been mined continuously since the mid-20th century and are visible from the ship as Silver Cloud moves through the sound.

The Hunter River is one of the most wildlife-rich waterways in the Kimberley, and the expedition Zodiacs spend the morning weaving through mangrove channels in search of saltwater crocodiles, mudskippers, fiddler crabs and seabirds.
The soaring red sandstone cliffs above the mangroves are among the most dramatic geological features on this coast. The headline experience of the day is the optional helicopter flight to Mitchell Falls: four tiers of waterfalls plunging into deep pools before flowing into the Mitchell River, seen from above in a landscape that no road has ever reached. The headwater pools at the base of the falls are cool and clear, and the descent from the flight to the Zodiac return to Silver Cloud is one of the great transitions of the entire voyage.

Swift Bay is a remote anchorage on the northern Kimberley coast, sheltered from the open Timor Sea by the headland of the Anjo Peninsula and used by Silver Cloud as a base for Zodiac exploration of the surrounding coastline.
The bay itself is pristine and largely undisturbed, with the red rock formations of the northern Kimberley rising directly from the water’s edge. Silversea’s expedition team deploys throughout the day for snorkelling, wildlife observation and shore landings. The transition from the tidal drama of the Buccaneer Archipelago and Hunter River to the quieter, more intimate scale of Swift Bay is part of what makes the Kimberley’s variety so compelling.

Ashmore Reef Marine Park is one of Australia’s most remote and biodiverse marine environments, an external territory of Australia in the Timor Sea that very few people ever have the opportunity to visit.
Spanning 583 square kilometres, the reef is a sanctuary for over 100,000 breeding seabirds annually, including crested terns, white-tailed tropicbirds and great frigatebirds. The reef supports 255 species of reef-building coral — more than any other reef on the Western Australian coast — along with sea turtles, whale sharks and an extraordinary diversity of reef fish. Silver Cloud’s visit to Ashmore Reef is required under Australian government regulations, and the Silversea expedition team leads Zodiac exploration of the reef subject to weather and sea conditions. For most passengers this is the most remote place they will ever visit.

Vansittart Bay holds two of the most extraordinary sites on the entire voyage, separated by 20,000 years of human history.
The walk across salt flats to the wreckage of a US Air Force C-53 that crash-landed near the bay during World War II is one of the most unexpected encounters in the Kimberley. Jar Island’s Gwion Gwion (Bradshaw) paintings date back more than 20,000 years, making them among the oldest figurative art in the world. The two different rock art styles visible at Vansittart Bay, Gwion Gwion and the later Wandjina tradition, represent a living cultural record spanning millennia. The Silversea expedition team provides interpretation at both sites.

King George Falls is the defining natural spectacle of this voyage’s final wilderness days, and approaching them by Zodiac through the King George River gorge is an experience of scale and silence that stays with people for years.
The King George River cuts through the northern Kimberley plateau in a gorge system of soaring sandstone cliffs, the walls rising hundreds of metres on both sides as the Zodiac moves deeper into the canyon. The falls themselves drop 80 metres in two tiers from the plateau edge into the pool below. Silver Cloud anchors in Koolama Bay, and the day description of the ship would be incomplete without acknowledging the bay’s name: the MV Koolama was bombed by Japanese aircraft here in 1942, an episode that connects the Kimberley to the broader Pacific War history explored in Darwin tomorrow.

Wyndham is the most remote port on Australia’s northern coast, a small outback township of 900 people at the convergence of five rivers on the Cambridge Gulf, and it earns its place on this expedition as the gateway to two of the Kimberley’s most extraordinary landscapes.

The Bungle Bungle Mountains in Purnululu National Park are now a World Heritage Site. In excess of 350 million years have shaped geological formations of giant orange and black striped domes rising out of the ground into a landscape unlike any other. Known to the local Aboriginal people for thousands of years, the Bungles were only discovered by the outside world in the mid-1980s. Conversely, cruising the peaceful and tree-lined Ord River is a chance to look for freshwater crocodiles, fruit bats, short-eared rock wallabies and a variety of birds, including Mangrove Herons and Mangrove Gerygones. Please note: All destinations on voyages in the Kimberley region, and the order in which they are visited, are subject to tidal variations and weather conditions.

A final sea day as Silver Cloud crosses the Timor Sea toward Darwin, and the expedition draws toward its close.
Ten nights in the Kimberley leaves most passengers in a state of quiet astonishment — the scale of what has been seen, from the Horizontal Falls to King George Falls, from Gwion Gwion rock art 20,000 years old to a WWII crash site on a salt flat, is genuinely difficult to absorb in sequence. The Connoisseur Club, La Dame and the Panorama Lounge are all excellent companions for a final day of reflection before Darwin arrives tomorrow. The expedition team’s farewell programme typically includes a recap lecture covering the voyage’s wildlife encounters and cultural highlights.

Darwin is the most distinctive capital city in Australia, shaped by Japanese bombing in 1942 and by Cyclone Tracy on Christmas Eve 1974, and its resilience in the face of both events gives the city a character unlike anywhere else in the country.
Australia’s only tropical capital reaches toward the equator 2,000 miles from Sydney, and the multicultural frontier culture that has developed here feels genuinely closer to Southeast Asia than to the southern cities. The WWII Oil Storage Tunnels memorial, the Adelaide River jumping crocodile cruise and the Mindil Beach Sunset Market are three completely different Darwin experiences that are all outstanding. The George Brown Darwin Botanic Gardens and the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory offer excellent shelter from the July sun. Disembark Silver Cloud this morning and let Darwin make its own impression before your flights home.