The day began before dawn as the National Geographic Orion met up with a pilot boat that guided us up Cambridge Gulf towards the old town of Wyndham on our final day in the Kimberley.
With the ship at dockside and breakfast finished, we split into two groups and boarded local tour company buses and headed for the township of Kununurra. Our buses wound their way through scrubby bush and sandstone ranges, scattering the occasional flock of birds as the heat of the sun began to build. We were right on the edge of the Kimberley now, and our bus driver regaled us with the history of the region and its two main towns.
We arrived at the Ord River in Kununurra, boarded a "fast boat," and headed upriver to the Diversion Dam, a distance of roughly 55 kilometers. Several hundred meters wide at first, the river slowly narrowed as we headed upstream. Our guests were amazed by the density and diversity of wildlife found in this lush, riverine environment. We passed colonies of flying foxes hanging from trees, both little red and black varieties. We saw pelicans feeding with little black cormorants in tow, male comb-crested jacanas incubating eggs and – later – guarding a small group of fledglings. We saw flashes of color as azure kingfishers and rainbow bee-eaters flitted from tree to tree. We saw magpie geese haul themselves into the air, and white-bellied sea eagles majestically survey us from on high. We saw plenty of freshwater crocodiles trying to get a bit of basking time in as the sun beat down, and we were lucky enough to see a number of short-eared rock wallabies peering at us from within shaded caves on the sandstone walls.
Lunch was served on the banks of the river, a veritable smorgasbord of tasty snacks. An hour later, we resumed our trip towards the dam wall, a massive construction over 100 meters high. Leaving the boat and boarding the bus once more, we motored to the top of the dam wall as we surveyed the Ord River in one direction and Lake Argyll in the other. Our final stop for the day was the Durack Homestead, or rather a reconstructed facsimile of what it once looked like, a reminder of how hard life must have been in this country. While some guests caught up on this history, others tried to get a great photograph of a great bowerbird, who had other things on his mind than posing for pictures. The double-barred finches, on the other hand, were all too willing.
In the evening, our ship set sail into the sunset, saying goodbye to the Kimberley and indeed to Australia. As our guests enjoyed a seafood barbeque on the back deck, we headed across the Timor Sea onto a new adventure in Timor-Leste and Indonesia.
