Montgomery Reef

The largest inshore reef in the world is located off the Kimberly coast. It’s 154 square miles in size. Virtually all of it is submerged in high tide. When the tide recedes, lagoons and islets emerge, with water cascading down into the channels for hours, before the rising tide covers it all again. The tides rise and fall by forty feet. As fish struggle to get to the main waters during the ebbing tide, birds and sea creatures of prey are waiting. All this happens twice a day. The waters teem with wildlife. David Attenborough featured this reef in one of his many wildlife specials.

For our own trip, initially we enjoyed the tumbling waters flowing every hundred yards or so from the rising reefs. At first I thought there weren’t an exceptional number of birds to view—but then we turned our attention to the channel waters. Here we saw numerous turtles and many other aquatic animals. I at first tried to capture the sights on my iPhone, but eventually I gave up and enjoyed the show. We watched an eagle ray leap many feet out of the water, likely to evade a shark. We saw a nearby shark and a gigantic sea snake (and a smaller one). Turtles were so numerous that we stopped calling them out when spotted. We will have to wait until the end of the cruise to get access to the extraordinary photos the ship’s photographer has been taking.

The larger of the two sea snakes we saw was large indeed.

I filched from the internet a drone shot of the reef draining process and a picture of an eagle ray mid-jump. The one we saw was going the other direction.

For many, the afternoon excursion was a visit to Freshwater Cove. The highlight here was exceptionally colored aboriginal wall art. Unfortunately, the route to the art was declared to be arduous, so we missed the tour. Brian went so we’ll get a summary and perhaps a few photos from him. I’ve included a photo with an example of the art as shown at our briefing. All this is a reminder to readers to travel as much as possible while one’s health, stamina and physical condition can take best advantage of what our world has to offer.

Missing the hike allowed us to attend a ship captain’s reception for a small group of diamond-level cruisers plus those of us in the high-end suites. (We’re learning how the other half live. We could get used to this—as soon as our lottery number hits.) I’m glad we went as the hors d’oeuvres were lobsters and caviar.

Tomorrow it’s the “horizontal falls”.