All at sea

July 27, 2025

All at sea

Today is Sunday 27th July and at the moment we're anchored off the entrance to King George River. Yesterday was spent at sea. How do a few hundred passengers spend a day at sea? We eat a lot, drink even more and sit through endless briefing about what you're going to do the next day...and you have the Captain's welcome.

Yesterday there were lectures on how to improve your smartphone photography, an introduction to Kimberley and the mandatory snorkel briefing for those snorkelling at Ashmore Reef. I joined in both the Team Trivia and Name That Tune quizzes and then at 6 pm there was the Expedition briefing for the next day's exciting .... expedition. An unexpected pleasure was a musical show "John v Joel", where our entertainments manager Nick from Liverpool and Dan a pianist from Newcastle, sang the hits of Elton John and Billy Joel. The room was packed as we wallowed in memories from the 1970's and 80's.

Today I missed breakfast, not because I overslept but because at 8 am we were to zodiac up the King George River...except we didn't leave until 8:30 some executive cock up ...so I could have had my boiled eggs.

We were colour coded. If your suite pass key was blue, pink or yellow you went on the morning expedition, other colours went in the heat of the afternoon. There we all were, kitted out with sunscreen, hat, tough shoes and water bottles, not forgetting our life jackets, foregathered in the reception area before being called down to the zodiac deck 3. One woman asked for a bag to carry her things before she got on the zodiac. She has her flippers and had to be told gently and in words of one syllable that snorkling off Ashmore Reef was on another day. She looked crest fallen.

I had plastered myself with suncream and slipped onto the zodiac. The river runs through a long sandstone cliff for about 20 kms where it abruptly stops at Oomari (King George Fall). We were so desperate to see wildlife = and we did. A couple of humpback dolphins teased us with their fins and tails. Someone thought they saw a rock wallaby on the massive sandstone rubble and cliffs, so we spent quite a while miss seeing and sending up false alarms. We did see seawater crocs, one hidden in the mangroves, another shamelessly swimming mid river. We could all tick the box, along with sighting of lots of unnameable birds but they looked native.

And we came to Oomari. I'll quote what our briefing said about them. "The king George River plunges over the ancient sandstone into tidal waters, creating a truly astounding spectacle - Western Australia's highest twin waterfalls. It was just a trickle, our gutter's overflow is more spectacular - but it is the dry season so it can be excused.

Bizarrely, halfway down the river was our entertainments manager dishing out glasses of champagne from a zodiac. He and his crew were all dressed in white and he waved a huge Seabourn flag. You can't get wilder than that.

As we'd spent so much time hunting for wildlife our zodiac driver put on a turn of speed and we rushed back the 20 km to the mouth of the river and our ship in no time. It was exhilarating and just in time to change for lunch.

No idea what we're doing tomorrow, I'll be washing my smalls.

A final note, I went down to the laundry to take a photo and I followed a lady. When asked she said she too was looking for the laundry. We arrived and I excitedly exclaimed "Look 4 washers and tumble driers and two iron boards with irons." She said she was just there to collect some detergent,she said she wouldn't want to mix her clothes with other people's dirty washing!

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