Stuck in Darwin

We woke early to another perfect Darwin day. After a quick breakfast we took an Uber to Fort Hill Wharf, just five minutes away. By 8 am, all 72 passengers had arrived at the wharf for our cruise, so we were ushered aboard the Coral Discoverer.

After a welcome drink and some intros, we were able to go to our cabins. Ours is tight, but quite clean and comfortable. The obligatory fire drill and safety talk followed, before our purser went through the housekeeping.

With that out of the way, Richard, one of the scientists on the crew, gave his first presentation, which was essentially an overview of the history of human interaction with the Kimberley, along with a few brief notes on the geology and geography. He’s promised to cover more info on the wildlife and other matters in subsequent talks.

It was a relaxed beginning to the cruise. Most people seem to be around our age, and most are Aussies.

Our ship’s captain, Sam, attended the briefing to introduce himself. He told us he had some bad news. The crew had noticed a small oil leak this morning, only about half a litre. The ship would not be leaving the wharf until that was repaired, as he did not want to be responsible for polluting the Kimberley ecosystem as we continued our cruise. He told us some divers had been commissioned to inspect the issue and for the necessary repairs to take place. The captain said that he hoped it wouldn’t take too long before we’d be underway.

Unfortunately, the matter seems to be taking longer to resolve than he was hoping. We boarded the boat at 8 am, and it’s now 4.30 pm as I’m typing this blog entry. We’re still sitting alongside the Darwin wharf. We’ve eaten lunch and in about an hour, we’ll be called for dinner. Although it’s a bit dull with nothing much to do or see at the moment, I guess we haven’t missed much, as today was going to be spent on the water in transit to the place where we’ll undertake our first land excursion tomorrow. I assume that, even if the boat is still not ready for a few hours, we’ll still be able to reach that location by the time we need to be there. The captain told us that a number of shore excursions, reef visits and so on are dependent on the timing of the tides, which happen to be quite extreme in this region. For example, I believe that in Derby, a little further around the coast, the variation between high tide and low tide can be as great as twelve metres.

That’s about all I can say about today. It does appear that internet access will be quite patchy over the next ten days, and sometimes it will be unavailable completely. I’ll post blog entries when I can, if I can. For now, I’ll just enjoy the perfect Darwin weather.

UPDATE

We were all invited up to Captain’s Drinks about 6 pm. The ship’s captain told us that the divers had discovered a bit of floating rope from the harboour had been tangled up with the propellor and this affected one of the oil seals. The rope was successfully removed and the oil was no longer leaking. We could not sail, however, as the pilot boats had finished work for the day, so that boat will stay moored to the wharf overnight in Darwin and depart at 9am on Tuesday morning. This means we will lose one day in the Kimberley, but the program director can choose what day that will be. Our director, Dave, wisely chose to lose the day where we would go into the bush to see a plane crash site. We won’t lose any of the days where we visit rock art, wildlife or places of geological importance.

Our first 24 hours will be at sea, crossing the Joseph Bonaparte Gulf, so I won’t attempt another post for a couple of days, though I can’t promise I’ll have any internet access.