Coast Australia (2013) s01e01 Episode Script
The Kimberley
1 Coast is on its biggest expedition ever.
After exploring Britain and Europe for eight years, we've hopped hemispheres to an extraordinary continent.
It's the furthest that Coast has ever travelled.
We've come to a land so majestic and so massive, it's breathtaking.
And makes me wonder why I haven't been here before.
But, now, I can finally say this is Coast Australia! It's a country, an island and a continent, blessed with over 60,000 kilometres for us to explore on our greatest adventure yet.
For some, this is what Australia is all about - fantastic beaches, shimmering sands, fabulous coral reefs and exotic marine life.
But that would be a disservice to this vast and fascinating continent, with the sixth longest coastline in the world, and a history of humankind that stretches backs at least 50,000 years.
Australia is 30 times bigger than Britain.
The Great Barrier Reef alone is spread over a larger area than the UK.
The scale is astonishing.
Our task is to capture the dazzling diversity of this young, modern nation but ancient land as we discover the secrets, the scenery and the stories of its people.
With such an epic canvas, you might ask, "Where do we start?" From the Kimberley, the series features stories in seven other regions - Darwin and beyond, the Great Barrier Reef, the Gold to Sunshine Coast, Sydney, Victoria, Tasmania and the Coral Coast.
I've gathered a team of experts, who will take us on this exciting journey.
Writer, palaeontologist and an Australian Of The Year, Professor Tim Flannery is peerless in his knowledge of the history and formation of the continent.
Marine ecologist Dr Emma Johnston, a New South Wales Scientist of the Year, explores the stunning biodiversity of Australian waters.
Anthropologist Dr Xanthe Mallett uses her forensic experience to unravel stories of the past.
Landscape architect Brendan Moar is passionate about the geography of the shoreline, and the folks who call it home.
And Miriam Corowa, journalist and saltwater woman herself, investigates the social evolution of this dynamic coast.
And as for me, well, I get the job of a lifetime, because I get to be your guide, and with 80% of Australians living on the coastline and so many stories to be told, I'd better get cracking.
For Coast Australia's inaugural journey, we're in one of the world's last great wilderness areas, the Kimberley, in the north-west corner of the continent.
Joining me in this episode, Tim Flannery trips over dinosaurs And there is a pink dinosaur foot.
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Xanthe Mallett explores a unique maritime war grave This is a raft.
If we do see a crocodile or a shark, do we have a safe word? .
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Brendan Moar takes to water on an ancient raft THEY LAUGH .
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Emma Johnston dishes up the mud on migratory shore birds .
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and I investigate Broome's glittering place in history.
Look at that.
It's like Jupiter compared to the earth.
Our journey stretches from Eighty Mile Beach in the west, through Broome around the Dampier Peninsula and across the Buccaneer Archipelago to Freshwater Cove.
The Kimberley region of Western Australia is three times the size of England, with a population of just 40,000 souls.
So, with so few people per square kilometre, it's one of the most sparsely populated regions on Planet Earth.
And so, when it comes to getting around, one of these is very useful.
Remote and rugged, this is a land where time began.
Ancient gorges and deep fjords fan out to magnificent bays dotted with primeval monoliths, endless horizons everywhere.
I have to say, in all my travels, this is some of the wildest, most edge-of-the-world-feeling coastline I think I've ever seen.
There's also a very strong feeling from it that, if you were to have been here 200 years ago or even 2,000 years ago .
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it would've looked just the same.
This is a landscape that dwarfs humanity.
At four billion years, Australia features some of the oldest land forms on Earth, which means an endless cornucopia of history for palaeontologist Tim Flannery, who's stepping back in time to walk with dinosaurs.
Do you know what's really special about this place? 130 million years ago, when these rocks were laid down, India was just over there.
I'm walking along what's known as the Dinosaur Coast on the Dampier Peninsula, just north of Broome.
Palaeontologists have recorded at least 15 types of dinosaur that roamed this area, leaving literally thousands of tracks and trackways.
I'm really lucky to get to see these, because they're only exposed at a very low tide, for a few hours, for a very few days every year.
Dr Steve Salisbury is a palaeontologist with a special interest in the biomechanics of dinosaurs, how they're shaped and move.
So what have we got here? A dinosaur footprint.
I reckon I've walked over hundreds of those coming to meet you.
You probably have.
So, Steve, I think I can see, maybe some toes here, is that? Am I looking at it right? Yeah so it's a three-toe track.
So there's one, two, three.
That's the back of the footprint, so he's headed that way.
So what would this dinosaur look like, you reckon? Well, the reason we're interested in this one is because this looks like tracks that, in sort of Spain and Portugal and then also North America, have been attributed to stegosaurs.
Right.
So stegosaurs are the guys with the big plates on the back? That's right.
With the help of traditional custodian Richard Hunter and research assistant Nigel Clarke, Steve is going to make a silicon cast of the footprint for further museum studies.
So, Steve, how did these tracks form? And why right here? Well, 130 million years ago, this was part of a big flood plain heading out probably into a delta.
Back then, Australia was still part of the Gondwana supercontinent that included South America, Africa and India.
Here, periodic floods would have deposited layers of mud on the sand bars that made up the flood plain, which was bordered by dense forests of cycads and ferns.
Dinosaurs roamed the boggy terrain, leaving their imprints everywhere.
Usually, the muddy prints would have dried up and crumbled away but, on the Dinosaur Coast, blankets of sand covered them and preserved them, a fossilised landscape.
So, for instance, here, this bigger one you can see, this is his big toe, that's the second toe, and then the third, fourth and the fifth, and then there's a small track of a bi-pedal ornithopod dinosaur that's overprinted it.
So sauropod - great big long neck, long tail - one of the classic dinosaurs.
Yeah, yeah, brachiosaurus or diplodocus, that kind of thing.
Footprints form all the time.
We left a trail of them on the beach when we walked down here, but rarely do they get preserved in the fossil record.
It's an incredible diversity of dinosaurs.
Like there's not really anywhere else in the world that has such a level of diversity represented by tracks.
Comes away quite cleanly, doesn't it? Oh, wow.
And there is a pink dinosaur foot, of all things! 'Today's science teaches us about our geophysical beginnings, 'but there's a much older account 'that emanates from the coast's indigenous Goolarabooloo people.
'Richard has a fascinating 'and very different reading of these ancient tracks.
' Yeah, I see.
They can fly 'A dreamtime story of Emu Man, 'the first ancestral spirit that walked the earth.
' So what's the name of that Emu Man? Marella.
OK.
Yeah.
And did he bring something to the land when he came? 'To Richard and his people, 'Marella gave the knowledge through songs, 'which are akin to aural heritage maps - 'laws to sustain balance and well-being of the land 'and its people - 'and passed down through the generations.
' You know, plenty of Australia's coastline is spectacular, but there's nothing like this.
Price's Point is just unique, because it brings together Aboriginal Australia and European Australia in a way that no other place on the continent does.
It's the origin of the dreamtime for Aboriginal people across a great swathe of the continent and, for European people, it's an incredible repository of ancient knowledge, a vanished world.
The Kimberley weathers two distinct seasons - a searing dry and the surging wet, which floods the rivers and bays that divide the rugged plateaus.
It's a dramatic wilderness sculpted by time, pressure and water.
The Kimberley region has the greatest tidal range in the whole of the southern hemisphere.
And the second highest in the entire world.
The 12-metre tidal change here is magnified by the shape of the coast.
The currents increase considerably to squeeze huge volumes of tidal water in and out of the bays and rivers through narrow gaps.
I'm going to discover how this stunning coastline was formed with the help of a quick geology lesson and then wrestle with that surging tide at one of the greatest natural wonders of the Kimberley, the Horizontal Waterfalls in Talbot Bay.
All right.
Thank you.
'Geologist Dr Ian Tyler has written the book 'on this serene emerald setting.
' This is an interesting spot.
It is indeed.
'His sandbox shows how two continental masses collided 'to create this stunning billion-year-old vista.
' We're compressing five million years into several minutes.
The Horizontal Falls are in this bit of the model.
'The creation of folds and thrusts 'that make up the crumpled geology of Talbot Bay.
When that was buckled, like a rug pushed up by an opening door, that was solid? It wasn't It's not pushing in sand.
It's folding rock.
It was old enough to be solid rock when that happened.
So it's The pressure is enough and is held for a long enough time, that it starts to flow like toffee.
Right, now that I've had my geology lesson, it's time to see the Horizontal Falls up close.
Hi there.
Right, so tell me, Adrian, what's happening here? Well, basically, it's what you call a tidal pinch.
The tide's actually rising faster in this bay than it is in the next bay over.
The gaps are pinching how much water it'll let through, so we actually go downhill.
I think it's risen today about nine metres in the last six hours.
One hell of a lot of water moving through there at the moment.
It peaks at about a million litres in a second.
The reason it can do that is it's not a normal rapid.
It's not fast water going over the top of shallow rocks, it's extremely deep, 50 metres of water underneath it.
So it's like 50 metres deep?! 50 metres deep.
So it's, it's like a column of water powering through there.
Time to run the first gauntlet - the 20 metres seaward-facing gap.
That was relatively sedate and now onto a smaller, more powerful boat, and the narrower ten-metre gap.
The water speed we're doing at the moment, about 30 kilometres per hour.
Just sitting holding the boat here still.
The sounder's reading 44 metres.
So So it's about 150 feet of water.
Yeahunderneath us, yeah.
And we should be moving forwards Yeah, yep.
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at 30 kilometres per hour.
Yeah and I've got the boat, you know, probably, you know, 600 horse power, a third throttle, just holding us still here.
It's like a It's like an ocean trying to get through a letter box, isn't it? Yeah, absolutely.
HE LAUGHS The stunning colours of Australia are most vivid along the Kimberley Coastline - ochre sandstone cliffs, red pindan sand folding into the turquoise waters of Broome's Roebuck Bay.
It's a unique setting but, as anthropologist Dr Xanthe Mallet discovers, 70 years ago, this tranquil vista was shattered when the war spilled over to Australia.
And I'm going to follow the tide out to see the dramatic evidence for myself.
By early 1942, the Japanese were pushing through Indonesia, or the Dutch East Indies as it was known then.
In a rush to escape, Allied military planes were commissioned to evacuate Dutch refugees from their colonial homes in Java.
On the 2nd of March, they landed in Broome's Roebuck Bay to refuel.
Given the area's large tidal movement and the lack of facilities to ferry more than a 100 refugees to and from the small port town, the passengers stayed on board for the night.
At 9:20 the next morning, nine Japanese Zeroes appeared and couldn't believe their luck.
Before them, 15 flying boats lay at anchor, each with 30 or more Dutch refugees, mostly women and children.
With no Allied resistance, the Zeroes opened fire, strafing the flying boats repeatedly before turning to the airfield and destroying a further seven military aircraft.
In a vain attempt to save them, parents threw their children into the water only to see it set alight by burning fuel.
Many who didn't die in the attack were incinerated or drowned as they attempted to swim the kilometre back to shore.
It was a harrowing massacre that lasted an hour, but lingers on today in the mudflats of Roebuck Bay.
Dr Silvano Jung's been studying Roebuck Bay's unique maritime museum for two decades.
They're the first aircraft wrecks to be heritage listed in Australia.
And they're only exposed at a king low tide for a few days of the year.
So which one is this? This is the X-23.
It was Sir Rudolf Idzerda's Dornier flying boat.
There was only one person on board at the time it was lost and he's still missing.
There are six exposed at low tide and there's another nine in deep water.
So nine you've never seen? I've seen four of them, but there's still five missing.
So this was more exposed? Yeah, it was exposed right down to the keel before.
Was it? Ten years ago.
'Silvano has been surveying the wreck site 'and returns every ten years to record the changes.
' We're just going to take a photograph of the bow section to show the amount of sedimentation over time.
Yeah.
Can you just set up this scale? All right.
Where do you want it? Just over here, I think.
Right.
On this side.
Why is it important to document it? This is one of the most significant sites in Australia.
There is like a battlefield here, so it's documenting rare flying boats in a way that, so they will We'll never see these aircraft again.
It's very important that they remain in situ, and it's the best conservation measure, is to do nothing.
Yeah.
In a way.
But it also feels more appropriate that they stay here.
As there were no accurate records of passenger numbers, we'll never know exactly how many people lost their lives, but Silvano estimates more than 100.
Husbands, mothers and children.
Ghosts swirling in the eddies of Roebuck Bay, while the survivors live with the memories of war's deathly embrace.
With just 15,000 residents, Broome is the Kimberley's big town.
It was built on pearling, a story that can be told in two parts.
In the beginning, it was all about the shell.
I've come here to investigate how the humble oyster has come to define Broome and its glittering place in Australia's history.
By the turn of the 19th Century, this modest settlement had global currency, thanks to a coastline replete with one of nature's most beautiful shells.
This is Pinctada maxima and it was buttons like this, made from the mother of pearl, that made this material so valuable in the 1800s.
But the Broome pearling industry story began much earlier than that.
Pearl oysters were noted here during the voyage of the Beagle in 1839, but it wasn't until the 1860s, when colonists noticed Aboriginal people wearing and trading the distinctive mother of pearl shell, that the industry grew to supply international demand for buttons, knife handles and fascias for wristwatches.
The settlers didn't just acknowledge that ancient indigenous custom, they enslaved Aborigines and worked them ruthlessly to harvest the shell in earnest.
This statue is a reminder of the very worst form of exploitation.
It often involved kidnapping.
It almost always involved slavery.
Aboriginal girls were forced to dive with no kit whatsoever, naked and with no air supply.
Unbelievably, it was often pregnant girls, because the belief was that pregnant girls had greater lung capacity and so could hold their breath for longer.
When slave trading - or blackbirding - was outlawed in 1869, Broome had to find others to dive for shell.
In 1901, the White Australia Policy restricted non-white immigration, but Broome, which by 1910 was the world's largest pearl shell centre, was given a special exemption.
Over the coming decades, Asian and Islander immigrants arrived to work in what was still a very difficult business.
With a history of their own in pearling, Japanese divers were targeted as the most skilled and so began a long association with Broome.
Itsuhi Shioji came here as a deckhand in 1966.
How dangerous was it? It was the vulcanized canvas suits topped by copper helmets or hard hats and lead-weighted boots introduced by the Japanese that assured their place in the industry.
To get a wee taste of all that hard history, I'm going to try it on.
Looking at what's involved in suiting up, diving might have been the easy part.
Very natty Shetland wool stockings.
Shetland wool jumper.
Made from fine Scottish travelling rugs by the look of things.
This is how I dress at home, you know.
Do you know what this is for? I'll leave the rest to your imagination.
I can promise you there's not much to see.
These are all the rage in Carnaby Street at the moment.
This is a cushion to take the weight.
Feels great.
So if you imagine that a typical Japanese diver, in real life, in his vest and pants, probably weighed about 60 kilos.
On the sea bed, when he was fully togged up, you can make that about 180 kilos.
Lumbering about in all of this for hours at a time.
The arrival of plastic buttons soon after World War II killed the pearl shell business.
But in the mid-1950s, the industry was revitalized by cultured pearls, which is Broome's story today.
By the early 1900s, Broome was supplying 80% of the world's demand for buttons and textiles.
In 1946, a local man, Dean Brown, decided to head further north to wild, uncharted territory in search of fresh beds of the Kimberley's renowned Pinctada maxima shell.
Fortune favoured the brave.
The prize was abundant shell in King Sound's sheltered waters, shallow reefs and the protected harbour of Cygnet Bay.
But Dean Brown was still in it for shells, not pearls, as grandson James Brown tells me.
How are you doing? G'day, Neil.
He wouldn't have had the faintest idea about cultured pearls.
It was a secret that was held by the Japanese and only used in Japan and it wasn't until ten years later that that technology started coming to Australia.
And how did he go about making the transition, then, from just harvesting the natural shell to thinking about setting up a farm? He got the insight when the Japanese started running Kuri Bay.
And that was an American-owned company.
My grandfather ended up running the supplies up for that pearling company.
Was that nearby? It was about 200 kilometres further up the coast.
He managed to convince my uncle that it was a good idea that he come up and try some experiments.
And so, as a young 20-year-old, my uncle did that and miraculously succeeded and, to this day, he's acknowledged as the first non-Japanese person in the world to figure out how to culture pearls and then to do it commercially.
Three generations later, and the Brown family is still cultivating pearls at Cygnet Bay, the oldest pearl farm in Australia.
I think I imagined that the oysters would just be left out here, doing whatever oysters do, but it turns out they need regular maintenance.
The farm's 50,000 shells are cleaned once a month of marine weed and barnacles which hamper the oysters' ability to feed.
Pinctada maxima grows larger than other pearl oyster species, which means potentially bigger pearls.
The natural lives of these oysters are heavily influenced by science.
Right, OK.
Oh, it's like a biology class.
Absolutely.
What would happen naturally, in one of these big shells if it was just living its normal sea bed life, that would cause it to create a pearl without any interference from? There's a range of things that can do it but, generally, it's almost an immune response, so something irritates it and it can't get rid of it.
So like a grain of sand or whatever? Or a little bit of a crab claw might get in there or a worm might bore through so the animal will actually just start laying nacre down around it.
So, wherever a little grain of sand went in, say it landed there, that mantle would start to lay down more of this shiny shell around it to make it smooth.
Yeah, you're absolutely right.
Culturing pearls means that we introduce the irritant into the oyster in the form of a small ball, shaped from shells, which the oyster then coats with its silvery-white substance, called nacre, to produce a lustrous, round pearl.
Hopefully! OK, Neil.
Are you ready to harvest your first pearl? OK.
Take a seat.
Mm-hm.
Now bring the shell up.
Put it on the stand.
Uh-huh.
Put that edge in.
Oh.
Oh, now I can't feel it.
I've lost the baby's head! Oh, no.
'Two years of hard work by the oyster and' Look at that! Well done.
That's-that's like a little bit of magic, that's like the most elaborately wrapped birthday present ever.
Look at that, a little jewel of the sea.
After 50 years of trialling and working, this is what we've managed to come up with.
Oh, wow! HE LAUGHS Right, OK.
Now what is that? That's the world's largest fine-quality round pearl, 22.
2 millimetres.
Look at that.
It's like It's like Jupiter compared to the earth.
Yeah.
So how much is this one worth, would you say? That'd be worth about a couple of hundred dollars once we've set into a jewellery piece.
And the grandaddy? Well, that's possibly a couple of million dollars.
My goodness.
Not bad for a mollusc.
Sharing the Dampier Peninsula, just east of Cygnet Bay, One Arm Point is home to the Saltwater Bardi people of the Kimberley.
This is old Australia, where tribal knowledge has evolved from the natural cycles of the earth, particularly the tide, which has brought Brendan Moar here to discover how people used to get around before the arrival of boats and outboard motors.
These waters are well known for their huge tidal movements.
Tides up to 12 metres flow through this bay every single day.
It's a fact that the traditional owners of this land acknowledge and respect.
The local Bardi people used the power of the tides to move around the coast.
I'm meeting Bardi tribesman Albert Wiggan, who's going to show me how they did that and hopefully catch some dinner too! Good morning.
Brendan.
Brendan, I'm Albert.
How are you? Very good.
Very pleased to meet you.
Welcome, welcome to our country.
Thank you.
It is absolutely stunning.
This water is something else.
Well, this is One Arm Point, you know.
This is the land of the Bardi people.
We're going to be going and making a raft and finishing a raft and I'll basically show you how, in a traditional way, the old people used to navigate using the tides.
What inspired the Bardi people to actually build the raft? If you look just straight down here.
This is the foam.
The foam sort of inspired the idea of the raft, because it just floats on the surface.
Right? There's no sort of restriction.
There's no sort of friction there between the water movement underneath and the raft itself, because the raft is virtually just gliding over the surface of the water.
All right, Brendan.
Here's the other half.
Right, so this is it.
Basically this is what you've got.
This is the raft.
Tell me about the design, like, it looks pretty simple but I'm sure there's more than meets the eye there.
Obviously, it's about buoyancy, and obviously the thicker areas are going to be more buoyant than obviously the skinny part.
So the principal is to combine both skinny ends so that the two fat ends are floating.
You know? If we do see a-a crocodile or a shark, do we have a safe word? Nah, I'll just push you off.
BOTH LAUGH As long as you know how to swim! I'm just going to get rid of this.
I reckon I'm not going to have much use for that.
Oh, mate.
Now, I'm a white dugong, right?! Look, I reckon, yep, you sit somewhere around here.
I'll get up the front and we'll just see how we go, eh? OK.
Good luck.
Oh, look.
Do you know how to swim? That's the main thing.
Yeah.
As long as you know how to swim, mate.
Is it meant to go down this much? Not really.
Right.
Like you said, you're the white dugong here.
You're right.
I am the big, white dugong.
Let's go.
What's the plan? Where are we going? What are we doing? So we're going to head straight over to that little sand bar over there, all right? There's a nice little fishing spot over there.
There's a fair distance between here and there.
Yeah, it's a good work-out, mate.
Keep ya fit, find you half an hour a day, they reckon.
THEY LAUGH It was designed purely and simply because of the tides.
The main reason was obviously transportation.
But obviously it became the main hunting tool.
The Bardi people have been living in and around One Arm Point since the last ice age.
The sea has been central to their lives as a source of food and spiritual significance.
And that's basically why I build the raft, you know, that's why I go out and I teach people how to make spears and stuff and my children, you know, because I feel that's the legacy that our elders pass onto us young people, you know? All this culture, and it's just really It's all you really need.
It's our identity.
I wouldn't sell it for the world.
Paddle! Paddle, boy! Righto, this fish isn't going to catch itself! So, like the foam that inspired the idea, we've floated gently over to a fishing spot on the other side of the bay to spear ourselves some dinner.
Spending time on the Dampier Peninsula, you get that overwhelming sense of just how beautiful the Australian coastline can be.
How pristine it is and how much of it has this innate sense of spirituality.
So much so that this place is truly timeless.
Well, there you go, mate.
That's dinner.
Can't get it any more fresher than that.
I want to know.
Is it just too good to be true? Like, how much of this life is left? It's up to us, as indigenous people, how much is left.
And so, as long as there are people like me who feel really strong and proud about being an Aboriginal, as long as we are alive, I think our culture will always stay alive.
250 kilometres south-west of Broome, another golden crescent seemingly runs for ever.
The splendid remoteness of Eighty Mile Beach is a haven for nature's migrants.
Marine ecologist Dr Emma Johnston has travelled to this newly-declared marine park to explore why this area is a world-famous stomping ground for some of the planet's most adventurous travellers.
Every year, around half-a-million migratory shore birds descend on Eighty Mile Beach from their breeding grounds in the Arctic Circle.
Amongst a variety of shore birds, these Great Knots arrive here in enormous, whimsical clouds every year after an epic 8,000 kilometre journey.
Dr Jutta Leyrer is part of the Global Flyaway Network, a scientific organisation that studies the ecology of migratory shore birds.
They would have arrived here in about October, November, pretty much exhausted after a long trip from Siberia.
They would have changed their feathers.
They're pretty much worn after thousands of kilometre non-stop migration.
And then by sort of February, they start to put on body mass again.
As a secluded marine reserve, this is one of the world's richest foraging grounds.
The birds feed undisturbed along the vast tidal mudflats on snails, crabs and worms.
Long, thin bristle worms - polychaetes - that made these tubes.
Now THAT is good bird food.
That definitely is good bird food.
How much do they need to feed when they come here? A lot.
They basically double their body weight in three, to four, to five weeks.
Mudflats are ocean meadows with invisible pastures.
Every day, the tide comes in, bringing nutrients that feed tiny microscopic bacteria and phytoplankton on the surface of these sediments.
This is rich, nutritious food for the invertebrates that hide beneath.
So this is a type of marine snail.
The snails are eating the bird poo.
The birds are eating the snails, there's fish in the middle and it's such a productive ecosystem.
Refreshed and replenished by this abundant strip of coast, come April, the flocks take flight for their arduous journey north to summer in Siberia.
I'm flying north, too, but only a couple of hours from Broome to a special place, a window to the Dreaming - the sacred time in Aboriginal culture, when ancestral spirits created the world and rhythms of life.
I'm heading to Freshwater Cove to see some living history .
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the extraordinary restoration of some very old and sacred artwork.
I'm really privileged to be welcomed into this country by traditional custodian and elder Donny Woolagoodja.
I'm Donny.
Welcome to Freshwater Cove.
Thanks very much.
It's called Freshwater Cove but what is this place called in your language? We're going to a very significant place along this dramatic coastline, where Donny has to perform some special maintenance.
We're heading for Ngumbri, or Raft Point.
I receive a ceremonial marking, which comes with a dreamtime story of two women who collected some honey while hunting.
And why does it go on my face when I'm here? OK.
Lead on.
And up we go, accompanied by nephew and cultural apprentice Callum, along the red earth track.
The Timor Sea, a shimmering backdrop and into a primeval art gallery.
So, this is the place.
Yeah.
Ngumbri.
Yeah.
Oh, look.
How long have those paintings been there? Aw, maybe 50,000 years, maybe more.
What can you tell me about these figures, Donny? Who are they and what do they mean? Is there one Wandjina or many? So all of these figures are-are Wandjina? Why are the Wandjina white? So from the spirit world? Yeah.
The spirit world, yeah.
And then there's obviously fish.
Yeah, the fish.
Yeah.
You can see the fish.
The faces are very, very simple.
It's just two eyes and a stroke for a nose.
Right.
Following in his father's footsteps, Donny is a senior Worrorra tribal elder with a special responsibility - restoring the Wandjina artwork to keep it vivid.
He paints with a profound sense of respect for his ancestors.
And for me to witness this is a rare privilege indeed.
Art and spiritual conservation, which Donny is training Callum to assume in time.
First, he has to learn the stories and then he can touch the art.
So an important part of the people coming back to the country, is to maintain this.
Yeah.
You don't need anyone to tell you that this is a special place.
It speaks for itself.
And then you find out that people have been coming here for 50,000 years In fact, for heaven knows how long.
And there's definitely a a comfort about realising you're just one of a long, long line of people who've sat in here and looked out at the coast.
To end what has been a spectacular day in this beautiful wilderness of Wijingarra Budd Budd, I must undergo a farewell ritual.
What does the smoke do? Of what? The spirits in the cave? Yeah.
So what would happen if I wasn't smoked? The spirits? Yeah.
Right, let's get in the smoke! Do I just step into it? Your foot.
Left foot.
Your hands.
Hands.
Your head.
And you smoke the smoke.
The Wandjina of Freshwater Cove left their images on the cave walls before they returned to the spirit world.
And it's the responsibility of the living, Donny, after his father, Sam, to repaint and maintain those images.
I've just been cleansed to make sure I don't take any of the spirits with me when I go.
And I'm glad about that, because enough people have left here over the years and I like the idea of leaving the spirits behind here, where they and the people belong.
# Home sweet home, Wijingarra Budd Budd # Home sweet home, home sweet home # Home sweet home Home sweet home, Wijingarra Budd Budd.
It's been an incredible journey through the colours and eternal landscapes of the Kimberley.
Australia's last great wilderness.
The Kimberley is a region of extremes.
Extreme temperatures, extreme humidity, even extreme tides.
It's not for the faint-hearted.
For some, though, any hardships or challenges are outweighed by the rewards.
For me, it's definitely a place best suited to those who've adapted to survive.
Next time, from remote to radiant.
The Coast team explores stunning Sydney Harbour.
City built on blood, sweat, tears of convicts and oyster shells.
There was to be no escape or was there? "Ready, aim, fire!" What a place to be quarantined.
Feels more like Saint Tropez.
Look at this underwater garden.
This little bit there, that can be Sydney.
Those stories and more from Sydney.
Another day in paradise.
After exploring Britain and Europe for eight years, we've hopped hemispheres to an extraordinary continent.
It's the furthest that Coast has ever travelled.
We've come to a land so majestic and so massive, it's breathtaking.
And makes me wonder why I haven't been here before.
But, now, I can finally say this is Coast Australia! It's a country, an island and a continent, blessed with over 60,000 kilometres for us to explore on our greatest adventure yet.
For some, this is what Australia is all about - fantastic beaches, shimmering sands, fabulous coral reefs and exotic marine life.
But that would be a disservice to this vast and fascinating continent, with the sixth longest coastline in the world, and a history of humankind that stretches backs at least 50,000 years.
Australia is 30 times bigger than Britain.
The Great Barrier Reef alone is spread over a larger area than the UK.
The scale is astonishing.
Our task is to capture the dazzling diversity of this young, modern nation but ancient land as we discover the secrets, the scenery and the stories of its people.
With such an epic canvas, you might ask, "Where do we start?" From the Kimberley, the series features stories in seven other regions - Darwin and beyond, the Great Barrier Reef, the Gold to Sunshine Coast, Sydney, Victoria, Tasmania and the Coral Coast.
I've gathered a team of experts, who will take us on this exciting journey.
Writer, palaeontologist and an Australian Of The Year, Professor Tim Flannery is peerless in his knowledge of the history and formation of the continent.
Marine ecologist Dr Emma Johnston, a New South Wales Scientist of the Year, explores the stunning biodiversity of Australian waters.
Anthropologist Dr Xanthe Mallett uses her forensic experience to unravel stories of the past.
Landscape architect Brendan Moar is passionate about the geography of the shoreline, and the folks who call it home.
And Miriam Corowa, journalist and saltwater woman herself, investigates the social evolution of this dynamic coast.
And as for me, well, I get the job of a lifetime, because I get to be your guide, and with 80% of Australians living on the coastline and so many stories to be told, I'd better get cracking.
For Coast Australia's inaugural journey, we're in one of the world's last great wilderness areas, the Kimberley, in the north-west corner of the continent.
Joining me in this episode, Tim Flannery trips over dinosaurs And there is a pink dinosaur foot.
.
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Xanthe Mallett explores a unique maritime war grave This is a raft.
If we do see a crocodile or a shark, do we have a safe word? .
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Brendan Moar takes to water on an ancient raft THEY LAUGH .
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Emma Johnston dishes up the mud on migratory shore birds .
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and I investigate Broome's glittering place in history.
Look at that.
It's like Jupiter compared to the earth.
Our journey stretches from Eighty Mile Beach in the west, through Broome around the Dampier Peninsula and across the Buccaneer Archipelago to Freshwater Cove.
The Kimberley region of Western Australia is three times the size of England, with a population of just 40,000 souls.
So, with so few people per square kilometre, it's one of the most sparsely populated regions on Planet Earth.
And so, when it comes to getting around, one of these is very useful.
Remote and rugged, this is a land where time began.
Ancient gorges and deep fjords fan out to magnificent bays dotted with primeval monoliths, endless horizons everywhere.
I have to say, in all my travels, this is some of the wildest, most edge-of-the-world-feeling coastline I think I've ever seen.
There's also a very strong feeling from it that, if you were to have been here 200 years ago or even 2,000 years ago .
.
it would've looked just the same.
This is a landscape that dwarfs humanity.
At four billion years, Australia features some of the oldest land forms on Earth, which means an endless cornucopia of history for palaeontologist Tim Flannery, who's stepping back in time to walk with dinosaurs.
Do you know what's really special about this place? 130 million years ago, when these rocks were laid down, India was just over there.
I'm walking along what's known as the Dinosaur Coast on the Dampier Peninsula, just north of Broome.
Palaeontologists have recorded at least 15 types of dinosaur that roamed this area, leaving literally thousands of tracks and trackways.
I'm really lucky to get to see these, because they're only exposed at a very low tide, for a few hours, for a very few days every year.
Dr Steve Salisbury is a palaeontologist with a special interest in the biomechanics of dinosaurs, how they're shaped and move.
So what have we got here? A dinosaur footprint.
I reckon I've walked over hundreds of those coming to meet you.
You probably have.
So, Steve, I think I can see, maybe some toes here, is that? Am I looking at it right? Yeah so it's a three-toe track.
So there's one, two, three.
That's the back of the footprint, so he's headed that way.
So what would this dinosaur look like, you reckon? Well, the reason we're interested in this one is because this looks like tracks that, in sort of Spain and Portugal and then also North America, have been attributed to stegosaurs.
Right.
So stegosaurs are the guys with the big plates on the back? That's right.
With the help of traditional custodian Richard Hunter and research assistant Nigel Clarke, Steve is going to make a silicon cast of the footprint for further museum studies.
So, Steve, how did these tracks form? And why right here? Well, 130 million years ago, this was part of a big flood plain heading out probably into a delta.
Back then, Australia was still part of the Gondwana supercontinent that included South America, Africa and India.
Here, periodic floods would have deposited layers of mud on the sand bars that made up the flood plain, which was bordered by dense forests of cycads and ferns.
Dinosaurs roamed the boggy terrain, leaving their imprints everywhere.
Usually, the muddy prints would have dried up and crumbled away but, on the Dinosaur Coast, blankets of sand covered them and preserved them, a fossilised landscape.
So, for instance, here, this bigger one you can see, this is his big toe, that's the second toe, and then the third, fourth and the fifth, and then there's a small track of a bi-pedal ornithopod dinosaur that's overprinted it.
So sauropod - great big long neck, long tail - one of the classic dinosaurs.
Yeah, yeah, brachiosaurus or diplodocus, that kind of thing.
Footprints form all the time.
We left a trail of them on the beach when we walked down here, but rarely do they get preserved in the fossil record.
It's an incredible diversity of dinosaurs.
Like there's not really anywhere else in the world that has such a level of diversity represented by tracks.
Comes away quite cleanly, doesn't it? Oh, wow.
And there is a pink dinosaur foot, of all things! 'Today's science teaches us about our geophysical beginnings, 'but there's a much older account 'that emanates from the coast's indigenous Goolarabooloo people.
'Richard has a fascinating 'and very different reading of these ancient tracks.
' Yeah, I see.
They can fly 'A dreamtime story of Emu Man, 'the first ancestral spirit that walked the earth.
' So what's the name of that Emu Man? Marella.
OK.
Yeah.
And did he bring something to the land when he came? 'To Richard and his people, 'Marella gave the knowledge through songs, 'which are akin to aural heritage maps - 'laws to sustain balance and well-being of the land 'and its people - 'and passed down through the generations.
' You know, plenty of Australia's coastline is spectacular, but there's nothing like this.
Price's Point is just unique, because it brings together Aboriginal Australia and European Australia in a way that no other place on the continent does.
It's the origin of the dreamtime for Aboriginal people across a great swathe of the continent and, for European people, it's an incredible repository of ancient knowledge, a vanished world.
The Kimberley weathers two distinct seasons - a searing dry and the surging wet, which floods the rivers and bays that divide the rugged plateaus.
It's a dramatic wilderness sculpted by time, pressure and water.
The Kimberley region has the greatest tidal range in the whole of the southern hemisphere.
And the second highest in the entire world.
The 12-metre tidal change here is magnified by the shape of the coast.
The currents increase considerably to squeeze huge volumes of tidal water in and out of the bays and rivers through narrow gaps.
I'm going to discover how this stunning coastline was formed with the help of a quick geology lesson and then wrestle with that surging tide at one of the greatest natural wonders of the Kimberley, the Horizontal Waterfalls in Talbot Bay.
All right.
Thank you.
'Geologist Dr Ian Tyler has written the book 'on this serene emerald setting.
' This is an interesting spot.
It is indeed.
'His sandbox shows how two continental masses collided 'to create this stunning billion-year-old vista.
' We're compressing five million years into several minutes.
The Horizontal Falls are in this bit of the model.
'The creation of folds and thrusts 'that make up the crumpled geology of Talbot Bay.
When that was buckled, like a rug pushed up by an opening door, that was solid? It wasn't It's not pushing in sand.
It's folding rock.
It was old enough to be solid rock when that happened.
So it's The pressure is enough and is held for a long enough time, that it starts to flow like toffee.
Right, now that I've had my geology lesson, it's time to see the Horizontal Falls up close.
Hi there.
Right, so tell me, Adrian, what's happening here? Well, basically, it's what you call a tidal pinch.
The tide's actually rising faster in this bay than it is in the next bay over.
The gaps are pinching how much water it'll let through, so we actually go downhill.
I think it's risen today about nine metres in the last six hours.
One hell of a lot of water moving through there at the moment.
It peaks at about a million litres in a second.
The reason it can do that is it's not a normal rapid.
It's not fast water going over the top of shallow rocks, it's extremely deep, 50 metres of water underneath it.
So it's like 50 metres deep?! 50 metres deep.
So it's, it's like a column of water powering through there.
Time to run the first gauntlet - the 20 metres seaward-facing gap.
That was relatively sedate and now onto a smaller, more powerful boat, and the narrower ten-metre gap.
The water speed we're doing at the moment, about 30 kilometres per hour.
Just sitting holding the boat here still.
The sounder's reading 44 metres.
So So it's about 150 feet of water.
Yeahunderneath us, yeah.
And we should be moving forwards Yeah, yep.
.
.
at 30 kilometres per hour.
Yeah and I've got the boat, you know, probably, you know, 600 horse power, a third throttle, just holding us still here.
It's like a It's like an ocean trying to get through a letter box, isn't it? Yeah, absolutely.
HE LAUGHS The stunning colours of Australia are most vivid along the Kimberley Coastline - ochre sandstone cliffs, red pindan sand folding into the turquoise waters of Broome's Roebuck Bay.
It's a unique setting but, as anthropologist Dr Xanthe Mallet discovers, 70 years ago, this tranquil vista was shattered when the war spilled over to Australia.
And I'm going to follow the tide out to see the dramatic evidence for myself.
By early 1942, the Japanese were pushing through Indonesia, or the Dutch East Indies as it was known then.
In a rush to escape, Allied military planes were commissioned to evacuate Dutch refugees from their colonial homes in Java.
On the 2nd of March, they landed in Broome's Roebuck Bay to refuel.
Given the area's large tidal movement and the lack of facilities to ferry more than a 100 refugees to and from the small port town, the passengers stayed on board for the night.
At 9:20 the next morning, nine Japanese Zeroes appeared and couldn't believe their luck.
Before them, 15 flying boats lay at anchor, each with 30 or more Dutch refugees, mostly women and children.
With no Allied resistance, the Zeroes opened fire, strafing the flying boats repeatedly before turning to the airfield and destroying a further seven military aircraft.
In a vain attempt to save them, parents threw their children into the water only to see it set alight by burning fuel.
Many who didn't die in the attack were incinerated or drowned as they attempted to swim the kilometre back to shore.
It was a harrowing massacre that lasted an hour, but lingers on today in the mudflats of Roebuck Bay.
Dr Silvano Jung's been studying Roebuck Bay's unique maritime museum for two decades.
They're the first aircraft wrecks to be heritage listed in Australia.
And they're only exposed at a king low tide for a few days of the year.
So which one is this? This is the X-23.
It was Sir Rudolf Idzerda's Dornier flying boat.
There was only one person on board at the time it was lost and he's still missing.
There are six exposed at low tide and there's another nine in deep water.
So nine you've never seen? I've seen four of them, but there's still five missing.
So this was more exposed? Yeah, it was exposed right down to the keel before.
Was it? Ten years ago.
'Silvano has been surveying the wreck site 'and returns every ten years to record the changes.
' We're just going to take a photograph of the bow section to show the amount of sedimentation over time.
Yeah.
Can you just set up this scale? All right.
Where do you want it? Just over here, I think.
Right.
On this side.
Why is it important to document it? This is one of the most significant sites in Australia.
There is like a battlefield here, so it's documenting rare flying boats in a way that, so they will We'll never see these aircraft again.
It's very important that they remain in situ, and it's the best conservation measure, is to do nothing.
Yeah.
In a way.
But it also feels more appropriate that they stay here.
As there were no accurate records of passenger numbers, we'll never know exactly how many people lost their lives, but Silvano estimates more than 100.
Husbands, mothers and children.
Ghosts swirling in the eddies of Roebuck Bay, while the survivors live with the memories of war's deathly embrace.
With just 15,000 residents, Broome is the Kimberley's big town.
It was built on pearling, a story that can be told in two parts.
In the beginning, it was all about the shell.
I've come here to investigate how the humble oyster has come to define Broome and its glittering place in Australia's history.
By the turn of the 19th Century, this modest settlement had global currency, thanks to a coastline replete with one of nature's most beautiful shells.
This is Pinctada maxima and it was buttons like this, made from the mother of pearl, that made this material so valuable in the 1800s.
But the Broome pearling industry story began much earlier than that.
Pearl oysters were noted here during the voyage of the Beagle in 1839, but it wasn't until the 1860s, when colonists noticed Aboriginal people wearing and trading the distinctive mother of pearl shell, that the industry grew to supply international demand for buttons, knife handles and fascias for wristwatches.
The settlers didn't just acknowledge that ancient indigenous custom, they enslaved Aborigines and worked them ruthlessly to harvest the shell in earnest.
This statue is a reminder of the very worst form of exploitation.
It often involved kidnapping.
It almost always involved slavery.
Aboriginal girls were forced to dive with no kit whatsoever, naked and with no air supply.
Unbelievably, it was often pregnant girls, because the belief was that pregnant girls had greater lung capacity and so could hold their breath for longer.
When slave trading - or blackbirding - was outlawed in 1869, Broome had to find others to dive for shell.
In 1901, the White Australia Policy restricted non-white immigration, but Broome, which by 1910 was the world's largest pearl shell centre, was given a special exemption.
Over the coming decades, Asian and Islander immigrants arrived to work in what was still a very difficult business.
With a history of their own in pearling, Japanese divers were targeted as the most skilled and so began a long association with Broome.
Itsuhi Shioji came here as a deckhand in 1966.
How dangerous was it? It was the vulcanized canvas suits topped by copper helmets or hard hats and lead-weighted boots introduced by the Japanese that assured their place in the industry.
To get a wee taste of all that hard history, I'm going to try it on.
Looking at what's involved in suiting up, diving might have been the easy part.
Very natty Shetland wool stockings.
Shetland wool jumper.
Made from fine Scottish travelling rugs by the look of things.
This is how I dress at home, you know.
Do you know what this is for? I'll leave the rest to your imagination.
I can promise you there's not much to see.
These are all the rage in Carnaby Street at the moment.
This is a cushion to take the weight.
Feels great.
So if you imagine that a typical Japanese diver, in real life, in his vest and pants, probably weighed about 60 kilos.
On the sea bed, when he was fully togged up, you can make that about 180 kilos.
Lumbering about in all of this for hours at a time.
The arrival of plastic buttons soon after World War II killed the pearl shell business.
But in the mid-1950s, the industry was revitalized by cultured pearls, which is Broome's story today.
By the early 1900s, Broome was supplying 80% of the world's demand for buttons and textiles.
In 1946, a local man, Dean Brown, decided to head further north to wild, uncharted territory in search of fresh beds of the Kimberley's renowned Pinctada maxima shell.
Fortune favoured the brave.
The prize was abundant shell in King Sound's sheltered waters, shallow reefs and the protected harbour of Cygnet Bay.
But Dean Brown was still in it for shells, not pearls, as grandson James Brown tells me.
How are you doing? G'day, Neil.
He wouldn't have had the faintest idea about cultured pearls.
It was a secret that was held by the Japanese and only used in Japan and it wasn't until ten years later that that technology started coming to Australia.
And how did he go about making the transition, then, from just harvesting the natural shell to thinking about setting up a farm? He got the insight when the Japanese started running Kuri Bay.
And that was an American-owned company.
My grandfather ended up running the supplies up for that pearling company.
Was that nearby? It was about 200 kilometres further up the coast.
He managed to convince my uncle that it was a good idea that he come up and try some experiments.
And so, as a young 20-year-old, my uncle did that and miraculously succeeded and, to this day, he's acknowledged as the first non-Japanese person in the world to figure out how to culture pearls and then to do it commercially.
Three generations later, and the Brown family is still cultivating pearls at Cygnet Bay, the oldest pearl farm in Australia.
I think I imagined that the oysters would just be left out here, doing whatever oysters do, but it turns out they need regular maintenance.
The farm's 50,000 shells are cleaned once a month of marine weed and barnacles which hamper the oysters' ability to feed.
Pinctada maxima grows larger than other pearl oyster species, which means potentially bigger pearls.
The natural lives of these oysters are heavily influenced by science.
Right, OK.
Oh, it's like a biology class.
Absolutely.
What would happen naturally, in one of these big shells if it was just living its normal sea bed life, that would cause it to create a pearl without any interference from? There's a range of things that can do it but, generally, it's almost an immune response, so something irritates it and it can't get rid of it.
So like a grain of sand or whatever? Or a little bit of a crab claw might get in there or a worm might bore through so the animal will actually just start laying nacre down around it.
So, wherever a little grain of sand went in, say it landed there, that mantle would start to lay down more of this shiny shell around it to make it smooth.
Yeah, you're absolutely right.
Culturing pearls means that we introduce the irritant into the oyster in the form of a small ball, shaped from shells, which the oyster then coats with its silvery-white substance, called nacre, to produce a lustrous, round pearl.
Hopefully! OK, Neil.
Are you ready to harvest your first pearl? OK.
Take a seat.
Mm-hm.
Now bring the shell up.
Put it on the stand.
Uh-huh.
Put that edge in.
Oh.
Oh, now I can't feel it.
I've lost the baby's head! Oh, no.
'Two years of hard work by the oyster and' Look at that! Well done.
That's-that's like a little bit of magic, that's like the most elaborately wrapped birthday present ever.
Look at that, a little jewel of the sea.
After 50 years of trialling and working, this is what we've managed to come up with.
Oh, wow! HE LAUGHS Right, OK.
Now what is that? That's the world's largest fine-quality round pearl, 22.
2 millimetres.
Look at that.
It's like It's like Jupiter compared to the earth.
Yeah.
So how much is this one worth, would you say? That'd be worth about a couple of hundred dollars once we've set into a jewellery piece.
And the grandaddy? Well, that's possibly a couple of million dollars.
My goodness.
Not bad for a mollusc.
Sharing the Dampier Peninsula, just east of Cygnet Bay, One Arm Point is home to the Saltwater Bardi people of the Kimberley.
This is old Australia, where tribal knowledge has evolved from the natural cycles of the earth, particularly the tide, which has brought Brendan Moar here to discover how people used to get around before the arrival of boats and outboard motors.
These waters are well known for their huge tidal movements.
Tides up to 12 metres flow through this bay every single day.
It's a fact that the traditional owners of this land acknowledge and respect.
The local Bardi people used the power of the tides to move around the coast.
I'm meeting Bardi tribesman Albert Wiggan, who's going to show me how they did that and hopefully catch some dinner too! Good morning.
Brendan.
Brendan, I'm Albert.
How are you? Very good.
Very pleased to meet you.
Welcome, welcome to our country.
Thank you.
It is absolutely stunning.
This water is something else.
Well, this is One Arm Point, you know.
This is the land of the Bardi people.
We're going to be going and making a raft and finishing a raft and I'll basically show you how, in a traditional way, the old people used to navigate using the tides.
What inspired the Bardi people to actually build the raft? If you look just straight down here.
This is the foam.
The foam sort of inspired the idea of the raft, because it just floats on the surface.
Right? There's no sort of restriction.
There's no sort of friction there between the water movement underneath and the raft itself, because the raft is virtually just gliding over the surface of the water.
All right, Brendan.
Here's the other half.
Right, so this is it.
Basically this is what you've got.
This is the raft.
Tell me about the design, like, it looks pretty simple but I'm sure there's more than meets the eye there.
Obviously, it's about buoyancy, and obviously the thicker areas are going to be more buoyant than obviously the skinny part.
So the principal is to combine both skinny ends so that the two fat ends are floating.
You know? If we do see a-a crocodile or a shark, do we have a safe word? Nah, I'll just push you off.
BOTH LAUGH As long as you know how to swim! I'm just going to get rid of this.
I reckon I'm not going to have much use for that.
Oh, mate.
Now, I'm a white dugong, right?! Look, I reckon, yep, you sit somewhere around here.
I'll get up the front and we'll just see how we go, eh? OK.
Good luck.
Oh, look.
Do you know how to swim? That's the main thing.
Yeah.
As long as you know how to swim, mate.
Is it meant to go down this much? Not really.
Right.
Like you said, you're the white dugong here.
You're right.
I am the big, white dugong.
Let's go.
What's the plan? Where are we going? What are we doing? So we're going to head straight over to that little sand bar over there, all right? There's a nice little fishing spot over there.
There's a fair distance between here and there.
Yeah, it's a good work-out, mate.
Keep ya fit, find you half an hour a day, they reckon.
THEY LAUGH It was designed purely and simply because of the tides.
The main reason was obviously transportation.
But obviously it became the main hunting tool.
The Bardi people have been living in and around One Arm Point since the last ice age.
The sea has been central to their lives as a source of food and spiritual significance.
And that's basically why I build the raft, you know, that's why I go out and I teach people how to make spears and stuff and my children, you know, because I feel that's the legacy that our elders pass onto us young people, you know? All this culture, and it's just really It's all you really need.
It's our identity.
I wouldn't sell it for the world.
Paddle! Paddle, boy! Righto, this fish isn't going to catch itself! So, like the foam that inspired the idea, we've floated gently over to a fishing spot on the other side of the bay to spear ourselves some dinner.
Spending time on the Dampier Peninsula, you get that overwhelming sense of just how beautiful the Australian coastline can be.
How pristine it is and how much of it has this innate sense of spirituality.
So much so that this place is truly timeless.
Well, there you go, mate.
That's dinner.
Can't get it any more fresher than that.
I want to know.
Is it just too good to be true? Like, how much of this life is left? It's up to us, as indigenous people, how much is left.
And so, as long as there are people like me who feel really strong and proud about being an Aboriginal, as long as we are alive, I think our culture will always stay alive.
250 kilometres south-west of Broome, another golden crescent seemingly runs for ever.
The splendid remoteness of Eighty Mile Beach is a haven for nature's migrants.
Marine ecologist Dr Emma Johnston has travelled to this newly-declared marine park to explore why this area is a world-famous stomping ground for some of the planet's most adventurous travellers.
Every year, around half-a-million migratory shore birds descend on Eighty Mile Beach from their breeding grounds in the Arctic Circle.
Amongst a variety of shore birds, these Great Knots arrive here in enormous, whimsical clouds every year after an epic 8,000 kilometre journey.
Dr Jutta Leyrer is part of the Global Flyaway Network, a scientific organisation that studies the ecology of migratory shore birds.
They would have arrived here in about October, November, pretty much exhausted after a long trip from Siberia.
They would have changed their feathers.
They're pretty much worn after thousands of kilometre non-stop migration.
And then by sort of February, they start to put on body mass again.
As a secluded marine reserve, this is one of the world's richest foraging grounds.
The birds feed undisturbed along the vast tidal mudflats on snails, crabs and worms.
Long, thin bristle worms - polychaetes - that made these tubes.
Now THAT is good bird food.
That definitely is good bird food.
How much do they need to feed when they come here? A lot.
They basically double their body weight in three, to four, to five weeks.
Mudflats are ocean meadows with invisible pastures.
Every day, the tide comes in, bringing nutrients that feed tiny microscopic bacteria and phytoplankton on the surface of these sediments.
This is rich, nutritious food for the invertebrates that hide beneath.
So this is a type of marine snail.
The snails are eating the bird poo.
The birds are eating the snails, there's fish in the middle and it's such a productive ecosystem.
Refreshed and replenished by this abundant strip of coast, come April, the flocks take flight for their arduous journey north to summer in Siberia.
I'm flying north, too, but only a couple of hours from Broome to a special place, a window to the Dreaming - the sacred time in Aboriginal culture, when ancestral spirits created the world and rhythms of life.
I'm heading to Freshwater Cove to see some living history .
.
the extraordinary restoration of some very old and sacred artwork.
I'm really privileged to be welcomed into this country by traditional custodian and elder Donny Woolagoodja.
I'm Donny.
Welcome to Freshwater Cove.
Thanks very much.
It's called Freshwater Cove but what is this place called in your language? We're going to a very significant place along this dramatic coastline, where Donny has to perform some special maintenance.
We're heading for Ngumbri, or Raft Point.
I receive a ceremonial marking, which comes with a dreamtime story of two women who collected some honey while hunting.
And why does it go on my face when I'm here? OK.
Lead on.
And up we go, accompanied by nephew and cultural apprentice Callum, along the red earth track.
The Timor Sea, a shimmering backdrop and into a primeval art gallery.
So, this is the place.
Yeah.
Ngumbri.
Yeah.
Oh, look.
How long have those paintings been there? Aw, maybe 50,000 years, maybe more.
What can you tell me about these figures, Donny? Who are they and what do they mean? Is there one Wandjina or many? So all of these figures are-are Wandjina? Why are the Wandjina white? So from the spirit world? Yeah.
The spirit world, yeah.
And then there's obviously fish.
Yeah, the fish.
Yeah.
You can see the fish.
The faces are very, very simple.
It's just two eyes and a stroke for a nose.
Right.
Following in his father's footsteps, Donny is a senior Worrorra tribal elder with a special responsibility - restoring the Wandjina artwork to keep it vivid.
He paints with a profound sense of respect for his ancestors.
And for me to witness this is a rare privilege indeed.
Art and spiritual conservation, which Donny is training Callum to assume in time.
First, he has to learn the stories and then he can touch the art.
So an important part of the people coming back to the country, is to maintain this.
Yeah.
You don't need anyone to tell you that this is a special place.
It speaks for itself.
And then you find out that people have been coming here for 50,000 years In fact, for heaven knows how long.
And there's definitely a a comfort about realising you're just one of a long, long line of people who've sat in here and looked out at the coast.
To end what has been a spectacular day in this beautiful wilderness of Wijingarra Budd Budd, I must undergo a farewell ritual.
What does the smoke do? Of what? The spirits in the cave? Yeah.
So what would happen if I wasn't smoked? The spirits? Yeah.
Right, let's get in the smoke! Do I just step into it? Your foot.
Left foot.
Your hands.
Hands.
Your head.
And you smoke the smoke.
The Wandjina of Freshwater Cove left their images on the cave walls before they returned to the spirit world.
And it's the responsibility of the living, Donny, after his father, Sam, to repaint and maintain those images.
I've just been cleansed to make sure I don't take any of the spirits with me when I go.
And I'm glad about that, because enough people have left here over the years and I like the idea of leaving the spirits behind here, where they and the people belong.
# Home sweet home, Wijingarra Budd Budd # Home sweet home, home sweet home # Home sweet home Home sweet home, Wijingarra Budd Budd.
It's been an incredible journey through the colours and eternal landscapes of the Kimberley.
Australia's last great wilderness.
The Kimberley is a region of extremes.
Extreme temperatures, extreme humidity, even extreme tides.
It's not for the faint-hearted.
For some, though, any hardships or challenges are outweighed by the rewards.
For me, it's definitely a place best suited to those who've adapted to survive.
Next time, from remote to radiant.
The Coast team explores stunning Sydney Harbour.
City built on blood, sweat, tears of convicts and oyster shells.
There was to be no escape or was there? "Ready, aim, fire!" What a place to be quarantined.
Feels more like Saint Tropez.
Look at this underwater garden.
This little bit there, that can be Sydney.
Those stories and more from Sydney.
Another day in paradise.