Horizontal Falls
Interesting facts
- The ridges the tide squeezes through are quartz sandstone roughly 1.8 billion years old, folded so hard that layers once lying flat now stand almost vertical.
- The gaps themselves were cut by ancient streams that ate down along joints in the upended rock, later widened where softer layers weathered away.
- The two gorges are only about 300 metres apart, so the tide has to fight its way through two bottlenecks in quick succession.
- The Kimberley coast has some of the largest tides on Earth, and here the range can exceed 10 metres at its peak.
- The ridges of the McLarty Range that hem in the falls rise only some 150 to 200 metres above the sea.
- Locals and tour operators affectionately call the falls the 'Horries'.
- Talbot Bay itself carries the Indigenous name Ganbadba in the sea country of the Dambimangari people.
- Elsewhere in Talbot Bay, Turtle Reef spreads over more than 25 square kilometres, a coral reef thriving in murky intertidal water where few would expect one.
- A neighbouring reserve proposed for the area was named Maiyalam, a word meaning 'between islands' or 'a gap through'.
Why it is worth it
The Horizontal Falls are a waterfall made by the sea. In Talbot Bay, on the Kimberley coast of Western Australia, the tide has to pass in and out through two narrow gaps in the iron-red ridges of the McLarty Ranges: the seaward gap is about 20 m wide, the inner one only about 10 m. The tidal range here is typically eight or nine metres and grows considerably larger at the summer king tides, and the water simply cannot pass through the gorges fast enough. It piles up on one side until the surface stands visibly higher than on the other, and the sea pours through the gap as a horizontal cascade up to about 4 m high.
What makes the spectacle so strange is that it keeps turning around. As the tide floods, the falls run inward into the basins behind the ridges; when it ebbs, they reverse and run back out to sea. David Attenborough called the falls one of the greatest wonders of the natural world, and the name "Horizontal Falls" is often said to have been his own coinage. From the air the scene makes sense at once: parallel ridges of red rock, the bay between them, and a white seam of rapids at each gap.
The falls belong to the sea country of the Dambimangari people, the traditional owners, who call them Garaanngaddim. The surrounding waters are protected as Lalang-garram / Horizontal Falls Marine Park; the name chosen by the Dambimangari speaks of saltwater as a spiritual place as well as a place of natural abundance. The bay lies in the Buccaneer Archipelago, among islands and inlets on a coast without road access, north of Derby and north-east of Broome.
Getting there
There is no road to Talbot Bay: the falls are reached only by boat or seaplane. Scenic flights and seaplane tours run from Broome, roughly 250 to 270 km away, with a flight of a little over an hour, and from Derby, about 40 minutes by air; some trips also leave from Cygnet Bay. Flights from elsewhere in Australia arrive at Broome International Airport (BME).
On these lists
From the encyclopaedia
The Horizontal Falls, or Horizontal Waterfalls, nicknamed the "Horries" and known as Garaanngaddim by the local Indigenous people, are an unusual natural phenomenon on the coast of the Kimberley region in Western Australia, where tidal flows cause waterfalls on the ebb and flow of each tide. The Lalang-garram / Horizontal Falls Marine Park is a protected area covering the falls and wider area.
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