LUXURY

Small-ship luxury cruising
Kimberley Wilderness Cruise aboard True North
Story: Michael Gebicki
Photo by Michael Gebicki
I am between a rock and a soft place, drifting on my back in
cool, dark water. Scorched red sandstone walls bracket the
view on one side, pandanus palms stroke the surface on the
other. Pink water lilies raft together at my feet and at my back
a waterfall tumbles 10 metres down a rock face. It’s the perfect
spa bath as designed by Mother Nature - warm, soothing and
scenic. This is Atlantis Pool, about a kilometre upstream from
Atlantis Bay along the eastern coast of Western Australia’s
Kimberley, and it’s moments like this that remind you this is a
very special place.
A wild, arid plateau at the northern end of Western Australia,
the Kimberley is almost three times the size of the South
Island, yet it has a population of barely 40,000. Only two
roads cross it, the coastline is inaccessible except from the sea,
the cattle stations are measured by the million acres and the
climate, the vegetation and the scenery come from another
planet. Remote, intense, surreal - the reality of the Kimberley
leaves you speechless.
There are plenty of operators that run four-wheel drive
camping expeditions in the Kimberley – but it’s hot and
dusty and chances are you’ll be sleeping in a crowded
campground, which might not respect your need to fall
asleep before midnight.
But there is another option because from the waterline, the
Kimberley tells another story. Between Wyndham and Broome
the coastline is a wild kingdom of waterfalls that plunge
straight into the sea, white beaches where crocodiles bask
in the sun, crystalline waters where sharks nose against the
stern of your vessel and quiet backwaters where barramundi
lurk. If comfort is a high priority, nothing beats a cruise.
I’m signed on for the six-night Kimberley Wilderness Cruise
aboard True North, from the Hunter River to the port of
Wyndham, one of several variations on the vessel’s Kimberley
cruises. From a lonely bush airstrip at the Mitchell Plateau,
an X-shaped scar 330 kilometres from the nearest town, a
Bell 407 helicopter collects us and we head out to the vessel,
with a fly-by of Mitchell Falls en route. It’s truly wondrous, a
succession of four cascades with blue pools cradled by red
sandstone gorges in between. You’d be happy to have it as
your screensaver, but the real wonders are yet to come.
From the moment we bump down on the deck of True North,
it’s obvious that this is the sybarite’s expeditionary vessel. In
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Clockwise from top left: Eagle Falls, King George Falls, True North