17th August 2008

This was an exceptional morning as we had stayed overnight on the beautiful catamaran. As we started to get up, the moon was setting over the hills to our west.

Everyone that was in our tour group had to be up by 0600 to start a lovely breakfast. It started with a large choice of cereals followed by bacon, eggs, tomato and toast. Breakfast was a great chance to chat with our fellow travellers.

About 0650, the Cessna Caravan returned to firstly drop off a group and secondly to take all of us back to Derby. We tracked a bit west of our previous track with the flight taking about 35 minutes. As we flew along, our pilot told us various bits about the area. As we flew over one particular area, he told us that it was one of the areas that the Paspaley Pearls were grown. They have numerous areas including just along from our overnight location.

It has never ceased to amaze me how big this country is when we flew over all the hills and mud flats on the way back to Derby and we only saw two boats. There were a few tracks on the land but I suspect they were used to check on navigation equipment that I noticed on our way back.

We passed over Derby Jetty and Derby town.

Quite soon, we were on final approach to Derby Airport and a nice landing by our Kiwi pilot. He was quite a character with his commentary in-flight and various comments after we landed. A few photos as we left the Cessna Caravan and then onto the shuttle bus back to our caravan park.

The rest of the day was quiet as we had ‘nanna naps’ to recover from our trip. We had lunch at one of the cafes in Derby which was nice. It was doing a roaring trade as the annual Rodeo was on and many competitors were coming in for a feed. Early evening we ordered a barramundi burger from the Jetty restaurant for Sunday night dinner. It was only just passable.

A reasonably early night to get over the Horizontal Waterfall trip, which I think may be close to the highlight of our tour, so far. We can only encourage you to try to do that before you get too old.