Monday, 1 June 2026
The alarm went off at 4.25am this morning and we rolled straight out of bed to clean our teeth and get dressed, to be ready for our 5.05am pick-up. We headed out the front at 4.55am thinking we were going to be early, only to find the minibus had already arrived. Our driver, Bill, welcomed us aboard and gave us our boarding pass for the seaplane. After a couple more pick ups we started on the long route to the airport. Old Broome Road is closed at the moment for roadworks, resulting in long detours to navigate around Broome. Bill had to drive us all the way around the airport to reach the Horizontal Falls Seaplane hangars.
On the way, Bill expressed some concern about the mist, although he called it fog. To Melburnians it looked just a little bit misty. We arrived at the hangar and we were given a safety briefing. And now, we did have fog. A heavy bank of fog had come in off the Indian Ocean and settled over the airport. The sea planes cannot take off in a fog as they are flown visually rather than relying on instruments. So … we waited. Coffee orders were taken and rung through to a local café and fruit and muesli bars were put out. And we waited a bit more. Our 6.00am departure time came … and went. At 7.00am, our day trip to the Horizontal Falls was cancelled.
You can plan your holiday BUT … you can’t plan the weather. We were advised that the reservations staff would be in touch later in the day, to try to offer an alternative date for our excursion. We were assured that if an alternative date could not be scheduled for us, that we would receive a full refund. Feeling disappointed about missing the trip today and a little pessimistic about being rescheduled before we leave on Thursday, we were driven back to the Discovery Park.
Back at the park we had breakfast and looked into what else we could do today. Even though it was still early, it was too late to book onto this morning’s dolphin cruise. However, we were able to book the Broome Dolphin Sunset Cruise for this afternoon between 2.00pm and 5.30pm.
We were due to be picked up at 1.25pm, but we were sent a text to say that our pick-up would be delayed by ten minutes. At 1.25pm we were just about to walk out to the front gate when our driver, Cameron, telephoned to say he was out the front. Right on time for the original collection time! After a couple more pick ups we drove to the boat ramp near the Port of Broome, where we were transferred to the Orcaella in a nifty little sail/drive tender. The boat has wheels to drive up onto the boat ramp so that passengers can be taken aboard without getting wet feet.
This Morning’s fog bank had cleared and it was now a beautiful, sunny afternoon for cruising on Roebuck Bay looking for snubfin dolphins, rays and turtles and, if we were very lucky, dugongs. Not long into the cruise, the boom net was put out the back for us to swim. Our captain, John, told us that we would be going fast enough to keep ahead of sharks and crocodiles, but not fast enough to wash our bathers off, ha, ha.
After everyone who wanted to had swum, the net was brought in and we started looking for marine life in earnest. We sailed almost to the eastern limit of Roebuck Bay without a sighting, then turned around to sail back. Finally, we glimpsed a few snubfin dolphins. They look and behave differently from the bottlenose dolphins. Their heads are more rounded or melon-shaped and, as their name suggests, they have only a small, triangular dorsal fin. They are less inquisitive than bottlenose dolphins and stayed a hundred metres or more away from the boat. John had almost given up on finding us any other wildlife, when we spotted a huge flatback sea turtle bobbing on the surface. While we were watching for marine animals, Peyton and Georgia served drinks and middle-eastern inspired canapés.
We cruised back past the port, around to Reddell Beach and past Gantheaume Point, while the sun sank towards the horizon, before tying up at the southern end of Cable Beach. We were taken ashore in the tender before re-boarding the mini buses for the trip back to our accommodation.
During the afternoon we discovered that quite a few passengers hailed from Warragul and Drouin. It’s a small world. People were familiar with the name of Bernie’s parent’s fruit shop and, one of the passengers who grew up in Garfield, knows my cousins in Bunyip and has their cars serviced at the garage run by my cousin’s husband!
Back at the Discovery Park, the food truck in tonight was the Spanish-inspired, La Terreta. We purchased two of the last eight serves of chicken and chorizo paella. Gosh, it was only 6.20pm and they had nearly sold out of paella already. We took the paella back to our cabin and scoffed it down, so that we could return to La Terreta to buy churros for dessert. Well short of our Move and Exercise goals for today, we probably should have skipped the churros?? Who can resist freshly cooked churros though!
Steps: 3,999 (2.62kms)
