Cultured Kimberley- 2 Billion Years in the Making

Your expedition begins in Broome (Rubibi), where you board Paspaley Pearl for six nights. Head north along the Kimberley coast as the expedition team provides an evening briefing on the region’s landscapes, tidal patterns, and wildlife.

Spend the day in the Buccaneer Archipelago, a group of about 800 islands at the mouth of King Sound, sighted by British buccaneer William Dampier in 1688. Use expedition Zodiacs to visit white-sand beaches and the four low-lying atolls of Lacepede Islands Nature Reserve, known for their seabird colonies.

The Lacepedes support Western Australia’s largest green turtle nesting site, the Indian Ocean’s largest lesser frigatebird colony, and one of the world’s largest brown booby breeding colonies, with up to 18,000 pairs. Fishing opportunities in the archipelago include Spanish mackerel, coral trout, and golden snapper.

These two days offer an opportunity to experience the Kimberley’s two best-known tidal phenomena.

At Horizontal Falls (Garaanngaddim), a place Sir David Attenborough once called ‘one of the greatest wonders of the natural world’, massive amounts of sea water, equivalent to six Olympic swimming pools every second, pour through two narrow gorges, producing standing waves, whirlpools and waterfalls up to three meters high.

Twenty kilometers offshore, at Montgomery Reef (Yowjab), tidal ranges of up to 10 meters create one of nature’s most extraordinary spectacles: 400 square kilometers of ancient reef rising out of the Indian Ocean, cascading waterfalls and fast-flowing rapids punctuating its edges where the water drains back into the sea. In your expedition Zodiacs, you explore channels within the reef, watching turtles and reef sharks speed through the clear, retreating waters while ospreys and sea eagles soar overhead.

The waters of Kuri Bay, 223 kilometers from the nearest town and named after Japanese pearling pioneer Tokuichi Kuribayashi, were the birthplace of Australia’s cultured pearl industry, making it a place to take a guided tour of a working pearl farm.

On selected sailings, gain access to Paspaley Pearl’s Kuri Bay operation, where you’ll learn how cultured pearls form in a partnership between humans and the sea, watch pearl technicians seed oysters with polished pieces of mussel shell, handle live Pinctada maxima oysters and see pearls at various stages of development, right up to the grading of the finished product. Lunch is served while anchored in the bay that has been central to the Paspaley family business for over 60 years.

Today you’ll see a different side of the Kimberley coast by exploring one of its largest inlets. Fed by the Hunter and Roe Rivers, Prince Frederick Harbor is a coastal ecosystem that changes with the tides. Explore monsoon forests above the tidal zone, venture into mangroves and onto mud flats at low tide. Crabs, saltwater crocodiles, birds and fish move through the landscape with the tides.

With Paspaley Pearl anchored beneath two high sandstone formations at the mouth of the Hunter River – Wunggurr (snake) to the east and Aamba (kangaroo) to the west – use the Zodiacs to explore pockets of rainforest and listen for the calls of more than 200 bird species. Try your luck fishing for barramundi in the tidal reaches, cool off with a swim in a crocodile-free swimming hole or relax on deck while navigating back through this aquatic landscape.

As you travel south-west along the Kimberley coast en route to Broome, there's time to reflect on the myriad experiences you've had over the past six days and stand on deck watching for seabirds and other marine life.

After arriving in Broome, where red pindan cliffs meet turquoise waters, you’ll disembark Paspaley Pearl, taking with you memories of pristine islands dominated by seabirds, the tidal wonders of Horizontal Falls and Montgomery Reef, behind-the-scenes insights into Australia’s pearling history, wild beaches, ancient rivers and mangrove systems bursting with life.