The Great Escape at sunset, Montgomery Reef.
a Kimberley chronicle
Day Three
The day the reef came up out of the sea — and the tide fell thirteen and a half metres to let it.
Montgomery Reef · Camden Sound · Wednesday 26 August 2026
“One of the best days we’ve had so far. I’m sure there’s more to come.”
Two of them were out on the tender at four minutes past six, with the headland still holding the last of the dark. The brochure had said Doubtful Bay for today. The Kimberley had other ideas, and the boat went where the tide was.
Montgomery Reef does not sit under the sea so much as rise out of it. Four hundred and seventy square kilometres of it, and when the tide turns it drains — sheets of water pouring off the top in white steps, two centimetres a minute on the way down, thirteen and a half metres between high and low. From the air it reads as a river running through the middle of the ocean. From the tender, at eye level, it is a wall of moving water that was not there an hour ago.
And everything lives in it. Green turtles, sea snakes, sharks. Crocodiles, somewhere, which is a sentence you say differently in the Kimberley.
Somewhere in the afternoon a guest ended up in the wheelhouse with the headphones on and both hands on the controls, which prompted the only question anybody thought to write down all day.
Sent from the boat, with a photograph attached, at 10.37 in the morning.
By half past five the whole company was standing on a sandbar that the same tide had handed them, and by half past six the sun was going down behind the Great Escape with the reef flats still draining around her. It is a hard thing to photograph and they photographed it anyway.
“We saw green turtles, snakes, sharks, there’s crocodiles. It’s incredible here.”