Sunday 27th July Highlights and Hunting

This morning we awoke to another beautiful sunrise in Vansittart Bay. Our morning excursion on the Explorers took us to a nearby beach on the Anjo Peninsula. From here we walked about 1km to visit the historic C35 plane wreck. Our guide, Sandra explained that this plane crash-landed here in 1942 on its way to Broome. At the time, the town of Broome had been under attack from the Japanese and so had turned most of the lights off at night. The pilot of the aircraft missed Broome due to it being in darkness and with fuel running low, crashed landed at this remote site. There were six people on board, and all survived with very minor injuries and were later rescued. The pilot had been aiming for a nearby salt pan but the plane had skidded off and landed in the bush. We spent time investigating the wreck as well as listening to another guide, Greg explaining more about the boab tree and other native vegetation. In the afternoon we departed the ship once again on the Explorer to view the stunning Jandal art sites. This is one of the Kimberley’s most iconic sites. We landed on a rocky ledge to disembark and walked about 500 metres into the bush to view the art. We have seen rock art in several places but this was by far the most impressive. Indigenous ancient art by the Gwlon Gwlon and Wandijina groups were on show in these beautiful rocky galleries. After viewing these wonderful, indigenous art styles we walked back to the spot where we were to meet the Explorer boat to take us back to the ship. It had been nearly flat calm when we cruised over but the wind had really picked up and the young woman driving the Explorer found it quite difficult to find a safe spot to come into to collect us all. It was a bit tricky and required some rock scrambling to safely board the boat but with the help of the fantastic expedition team members and a few other able-bodied people we all made it safely back on board.