Ponant’s luxurious Le Jacques Cartier cruise explores Western Australia’s Kimberley, blending adventure, wildlife, and fine dining. Photo / Alexandre Herbrecht, Ponant
Ponant’s luxurious Le Jacques Cartier cruise explores Western Australia’s Kimberley, blending adventure, wildlife, and fine dining. Photo / Alexandre Herbrecht, Ponant
Ponant’s brand new luxury ship, Le Jacques Cartier is a sight to behold, and so is the destination it cruises – Western Australia’s Kimberley region, writes Cameron Wilson
Remi Bigonneau, who’s on stage presenting, could fairly be described as a Bird Man. “Seabirds are nature’s all-business aviators: diving for food alongside other predators, coloured plain white or grey, no energy spent on developing fancy feathers. More than 10,000 species of birds worldwide, and only 340 of them are true seabirds.” Remi has a degree in Management & Conservation of a Protected Area and is among the team of naturalists here on board Le Jacques Cartier – the newest addition to the luxury Ponant fleet, on its inaugural season along the Kimberley coast of northwestern Australia.
The Lacepede Islands are where we find ourselves for this first outing, and we’re instantly under aerial assault from some of the 18,000 pairs of Brown Boobies nesting here. A green turtle pops its head up nearby to suck down a lungful of air, but suddenly there are a hundred more, paddling about the biggest breeding site for green turtles in Western Australia. A handy moment for Sarah, who’s at the tiller of our Zodiac, to point out that a green turtle gets its name from having a layer of greenish fat, the result of its 100% seagrass diet.
Your route through the Kimberley region aboard Ponant’s latest ship. Photo / Cameron Wilson
If it were any other cruise, I’d likely not mention a ship’s own menu at all but Ponant is a French company, so fine food really matters. There are of course dazzling dinner menus and a giddying selection of international wines, but I never quite get over the daily lunch buffet of desserts – pear-and-almond torte, cheesecakes of all kinds and all equally decadent, profiteroles filled with the smoothest coffee or vanilla cream imaginable, and chocolate mousse … my god, the mousse. A 10-day gastronomic marathon for which there should probably be some kind of training programme. As fellow passenger Robin takes a seat beside me, she confides that her lunch regime mimics mine: “No fancy mains, just salads from the buffet, maybe some smoked salmon – then I’m all about the desserts.”
Cruise Director Johann (pronounced “Joanne”) is endlessly effervescent, and he needs to be. “Question Three: what kind of Kimberley seabird is this on screen?” As Trivia game host, Master of Ceremonies when dance sessions are in full swing, or ushering guests to their waiting Zodiacs, there’s not a moment in the 10 days aboard when Johann is not “on”. Similarly, the day spa staff, both of whom are also French, whether massaging an ornery travel journalist or providing facial treatments for grateful holidaymakers, are likewise patient and ever-smiling.
The Lacepede Islands host 18,000 pairs of nesting Brown Boobies, making it a birdwatcher’s paradise. Photo / Alexandre Herbrecht, Ponant
With the ship anchored on Day Two, we set out for Montgomery Reef. Plenty of inadequate words are used to describe this reef, named by Captain Phillip Parker King (who made multiple mapping journeys along the Kimberley coast), in 1821. To the Dambimangari aboriginal people it’s Yowjab, and they would have watched it rise from the sea like a mirage before disappearing again, daily, for thousands of years. Eastern Egrets patrol the “sinkholes” that pepper the reef as the 9m tide falls, and it’s not unusual to see a green turtle flailing madly as it tries to reach one of the “waterfalls” that run off the exposed reef into deeper water.
It’s early evening when I take the ship’s elevator down below the waves, to the Blue Eye lounge – a design feature that’s unique to Ponant expedition ships. A stylised “whale’s eye” window is filled with the cloudy Indian Ocean bubbling by. There’s nothing much to see (there would be in clearer waters), but the subdued lighting and sub-marine environment invite quiet meditative contemplation. I find myself wishing I had noise-cancelling headphones and a few Pink Floyd songs to hand, but there’s a bar here and my tequila margarita is served in a salt-rimmed glass, so I’m pressing on as best I can.
It’s Day Three when Captain Sylvain Lenormand eases us into Talbot Bay with its famous “Horizontal Falls”. The cluster of eight hundred islands here was named the Buccaneer Archipelago, after 17th-century English privateer William Dampier, a man for whom the word “swashbuckling” might have been invented. Two narrow gaps between sandstone gorges here funnel the six to 10m tides that create the falls. Rommy, from the Seychelles and pilot of our Zodiac, throttles back and forth in the current so we can experience for ourselves how an unwary skipper might get their boat sucked into the whirlpool.
The Buccaneer Archipelago has 800 islands named after a 17th-century privateer. Photo / Cameron Wilson
My stateroom has a bottomless (included in the cruise cost) mini-bar, and there’s time for a sunset gin-and-tonic on my private balcony before dinner. Just as the magical Buccaneer Archipelago slips from view, six humpback whales appear alongside the moving ship. It’s more common to see a single mother and calf, but this is a group of adults: a joyful reminder that whales, like us, meet up with their friends to travel together just because they like to.
The following day’s visit to Jar Island features rock art whose origins remain subject to debate. “Carbon dating of an ancient wasps’ nest on top of a painting confirms that a painting is at least as old as the wasp’s nest. The oldest Gwion Gwion, which is the aboriginal name for these, is confirmed to be 17,000 years, but it’s likely some are much older,” naturalist Lachie Long tells me. The elongated figures, often in elaborate headdresses, may be the oldest human depictions yet found anywhere. By contrast are the Wandjina spirit-beings, the oldest 6000 years, and which remain part of living Kimberley cultures. Examples of both, which are also unique to the Kimberley, are in a coffee-table book titled “We are coming to see you”.
Hunter River. Photo / Cameron Wilson
Our last day before Le Jacques Cartier motors overnight to Darwin features an 11km Zodiac jaunt along the King George V River, to its mighty twin waterfalls. Walls of banded King Leopold sandstone here range in colours from bone-white to rust-red. I spot, via binoculars, a Black-bellied Plover, Great Bowerbird, Great Crested Tern, plus a few soaring birds of prey I can’t quite identify. Remi, of course, records more than a dozen more.
The Bird Man in his happiest of happy places in the Kimberley.
The writer was a guest of Ponant.
Details
The ship has 92 staterooms and suites for a maximum of 184 passengers. There are five guest decks as well as a day spa, scenic lounge, underwater lounge (Blue Eye), restaurants, bars, naturalist lectures, multiple Zodiacs, helicopter tours and a plunge pool.
