I’m sipping steaming coffee in the soft unfurling of the day’s first rays, barefoot and tousle-haired on the sundeck of the True North II. We’re slicing across the pure, mirrored surface of an endless blue, diamonds of dancing light chasing us on the water as we disappear between majestic ridges of glowing Kimberley rock into this vast and true wilderness.
If there’s such a thing as peak Australia, it might lie here, within this 1.8-billion-year-old landscape: this rugged testament to the massive, ancient collision and rearrangement of rock, the groaning grandeur of giant building blocks locked at improbable angles along the coastline a reminder of the massive tectonic power that lies beneath us all.
This wild place, full of wild things: deadly saltwater crocs, mesmeric manta rays, sharks, turtles, bottlenose and snubfin dolphins, dugongs, Spanish mackerel, barramundi; around a third of all our bird species, including red-headed honeyeater, osprey, azure kingfisher,
