Today we visited and "rode" a tidal phenomena called The Horizontal Falls. These falls are located about 120 miles North and a little East of Broome and to visit them we took a 1 hour flight in a small plane to Cockatoo Island, followed by a 4 hour ride in a fast and powerful boat (3 x 250 Yamaha outboard engines) with 18 other people, and then a return flight (passing over the Horizontal Falls) back to Broome.

As we came in to land on the dirt strip on Cockatoo Island the obvious question was; why does this little island have a landing strip? The answer turned out to be surprising. Cockatoo Island, and a number of other islands in the area, have very rich iron ore deposits (68%), and in the case of Cockatoo have been mined for that mineral since the 1930s. So the airstrip was originally to support the mining operation and is now also used by the tour company which leases accommodation on the island from the mining company.

The Horizontal Falls consists of a pair of lagoons that are trapped between low hills of rock but still have tidal waters from the ocean. The entrance ways for the oceans tidal water are very narrow and when Spring Tides are running the flow of water through the narrow entrance creates a powerful flow (2,000,000 litres or 500,000 gallons per second) with a height difference from one side to the other of 3-4 feet. To add to the spectacle the lagoons are "in series", that is water flows from/to the ocean into the first lagoon and then from/to the first lagoon into the second. The entrance to the second lagoon is very narrow indeed, too narrow for our boat to negotiate. The second last photo is of these narrow entrance ways from the air on our return flight. The open ocean is at the bottom of the photo and the two lagoons above.

That last sentence correctly implied that part of our boat ride experience was to pass back and forth through the entrance into the first lagoon a number of times. It was quite an exciting ride and running against the flow of water needed every one of the 750 horses attached to the back of our boat.

In addition to the excitement of the falls the day was extremely picturesque as we powered through the turquoise sea, past many unihabited islands.

Thanks to the crew who looked after us (Bianca and Ben) and to the tour company Go Horizontal Falls.

Back in Broome Nina rushed off to Cable Beach just on sunset to get the last photo, camels on the beach with a background of sunset colors.