DID THAT REALLY
JUST HAPPEN?
A T ourist A dventure I n T he K imberley
“
Oh, for crying out loud,” no
one heard me. The voice in my
head telling me this wasn’t ide-
al. Had I really just seen the
pilot reach across and push his
front seat passenger aside to
get a better view from the righthand
side of the aircraft?
We were no longer flying; the small
aircraft was falling from the sky, the
pale blue sky had been replaced with
a much deeper blue of the waters
of King Sound. The small aircraft
was on a collision course with the
water, we wouldn’t survive … but if
we did, the sharks would get us, we
wouldn’t survive … but if we did, the
crocodiles would get us, we wouldn’t
survive …
The plane straightened and we
hit the water. The oversized floats
graciously skimmed the surface as
our pilot with his ‘Biggles’ moustache,
flicked switches and greeted us with
a cheesy grin, “Welcome to Talbot
Bay”.
TRAVERSE 73
“Shit!” my partner was grinning
too.
“I’d like to have another crack at
that.” The idiot thought this was
great, he didn’t even flinch when the
cockpit alarms were sounding like an
old school telephone switchboard.
Idiot!
Did that really just happen? Our
pilot had deliberately made a perfect-
ly good aircraft drop from the sky in
an attempt to audition for the remake
of Top Gun, I wanted firm ground. I
couldn’t believe we’d been riding our
bikes for the best part of five weeks
without incident to be almost killed
at the hands of a pilot with a twirly
moustache … tally ho!
Talbot Bay. Home to a unique oc-
currence, something that famed nat-
uralist David Attenborough describes
as “one of the greatest wonders of the
natural world”. This is the Horizontal
Waterfalls.
Two distinct breaks in the McLarty
Ranges have seen ocean water rush in