Diary of an aviation nut: Horizontal Falls & The Horizontal Hotel

The centrepiece of this flying trip in Australia was a float plane flight out to the Horizontal Waterfalls and night staying in floating accommodation at the falls.

We had flown into Derby airport and were collected from there by an amphibious Cessna Caravan and flown about 30mins north to the falls. It was nice to sit back and let someone else do the flying and watch the world slide by. The approach into the water landing site involved flying down a short twisting gully and was probably not necessary but good fun. Both Simon and I were watching the wingtips carefully as they were just about clipping the trees.

Horizontal Falls Seaplane Adventures has two "house boats" moored just outside the falls that sleep about 50 guests. There are various pontoons clustered around the house boats with helicopter landing pads, swimming cages, a bar, etc. A high standard of accommodation is offered in small but very nice rooms. I had the best sleep of the whole trip so far in a very comfortable bed - it may also have been the sea air.

When we arrived it was hot and stayed warm right into the evening as we dined outside on the upper decks.

The highlight was the fast boat ride through the falls. The Horizontal Falls are formed by water filling and draining from the enclosed Talbot Bay. We did two rides through the falls; one late in the afternoon and one early in the morning when there was about 1 - 2 metres of tidal difference on either side of the falls. There are times during a spring tide that there can be up to 4m of difference but that can be too dangerous to get a boat through.

The boat was powered by four 300hp outboard motors and was skillfully guided through the falls fast and slow by a young guy. This morning he allowed the falls to suck the boat in backwards and held it there. It was like being in a washing machine. Damn good fun in a beautiful part of the world.