It didn’t take much persuasion by expedition leader Darrin Bennett to get us moving this morning. When he announced we would be passing through a slender gap known as The Narrows, with a warming sun on our shoulders and a burnt red landscape surrounding us, all hands were quickly on deck. During our transit the occasional Irrawaddy dolphin would arch its six foot frame just out of the water or an arrow fish would take a spasmodic flight some 50 meters over the water’s surface. With a heavy current and flooding tide hard at work the ocean surface was a matted pallet of blues and reds reflected in the circular upwellings, whirlpools, and eddies that characterize this area.
By mid-morning our transit was complete and the anchor on its way to the bottom of Talbot Bay. The remainder of our day was spent marveling at the raw power and influence of the 9 meter tides that have shaped the landscape and coaxed travelers to this area for millennia and decades. Whether from a locally operated “fast boat” or from one of our Zodiacs, the highlight of the day was to witness the shifting of the tides as they pass through a narrow constriction in the ochre colored Pentecost Sandstone surrounding us. Possible due to a geologic fluke, nine meters worth of tidal fluctuation spends most of the day trying to squeeze through a 10 meter gap in the sandstone before the tides shift and all that water tries to head back out the other way again. Like sand through an hour glass the transfer takes time and creates a very turbulent environment at that pinch point. That pinch point is where all the action was for us as we teased our Zodiacs to the edge of the class two rapids produced by the volume differential and photographed our fellow guests as they motored 900 horse-powered boats through the frothy gap.
While this tidal anomaly was the expected highlight of the day, Talbot Bay was no one-trick pony. Folded into a fluctuating series of hills and valleys by the Kimberley’s collision with the mainland of Australia billions of years ago, every turn revealed a new geologic masterpiece. Twisted silt stone intertwined into sandstone gorges overlain by a patchwork of puffy white on blue sky was the theme of our afternoon. With the tide still on the rise gentle whirlpools and eddies nudged us deeper and deeper into the landscape as we drifted silently past azure kingfishers, a family of short eared rock wallabies, saltwater crocodiles and, of course, a garden of geology drawn into the hillsides that welcomed us with a warm embrace.
