Marina service
Port of Wyndham (Anthon's Landing)
About
Port of Wyndham (Anthon's Landing) at a glance
Wyndham has no marina pens; recreational boating uses a boat ramp beside the port's barge-loading facility and the Anthon's Landing recreational fishing pontoon (opened February 2012, use requires prior Shire consent). The commercial horseshoe-shaped wharf on Cambridge Gulf is operated by Cambridge Gulf Limited.
Service area: Kimberley
- Marina type
- government/transport wharf-marina
- Operator
- Kimberley Ports Authority / Shire of Wyndham East Kimberley
- Region
- Kimberley
- Water body
- Cambridge Gulf
Facilities and services
- boat ramp
- all-tide berthing pontoon for vessels to 50 m
- wheelchair-accessible gangway
- sea rescue berth
- tourist vessel berthing
- solar-lit jetty decking
About Port of Wyndham (Anthon's Landing)
Wyndham sits at the head of Cambridge Gulf, roughly 100 kilometres of mangrove and mudflat inland from the open Timor Sea, and it wears the title of Australia's northernmost town. There is no marina here in the pen-and-pontoon sense, and expecting one misses what the place is: a working 1886 gold-rush port whose boating infrastructure serves a small, tough community at the end of a very long road. Recreational boating revolves around two pieces of waterfront. The first is a boat ramp beside the port's barge-loading facility. The second is Anthon's Landing, where a 108-metre recreational fishing jetty and berthing pontoon opened in February 2012 on the site of the town's first jetty, built in 1894 to ship cattle south. The commercial side of the harbour, a horseshoe-shaped wharf handling live cattle exports, mining cargoes and the odd cruise vessel, is operated by Cambridge Gulf Limited and is not a casual destination for small boats. The town itself is split between the historic Wyndham Port foreshore and the Three Mile residential area up the hill, a move made in 1968 when the mudflats defeated expansion. Wyndham's past is outsized: the meatworks that ran from 1919 to 1985 were once the largest in the southern hemisphere. What draws boaters now is simpler, and wilder: barramundi, threadfin salmon and mud crabs in one of the least crowded big estuary systems in the country. The port handbook and Shire both treat the foreshore as a shared working space: cattle trucks, barge operators and grey nomads with tinnies on roof racks all use the same few hundred metres of waterfront, which gives the place a cooperative, unpolished character rare at Australian ports.
Marina facilities
Honesty first: Wyndham has no marina pens, no fuel berth, no pump-out, no hardstand, no chandlery and no showers for boaters. What it has is launching and landing infrastructure, and the standout is the Anthon's Landing facility, funded with $7 million in federal money and designed and built by Maritime Constructions for the Shire of Wyndham East Kimberley. The structure is engineered for extremes: a 108-metre long, 4.5-metre wide jetty on steel raker piles with a nine-metre T-head that takes service vehicles, connected by a 45-metre enclosed steel truss gangway, wheelchair accessible in all tide states, to a 36 by 7.5-metre berthing pontoon with recycled-plastic decking and a fendering system. The pontoon gives all-tide access to deep water for vessels up to 50 metres and is used by tourist boats, the local Sea Rescue station and marine operators running supplies to remote communities down the gulf. Solar-powered lights are set into the deck planks, and handrails, ladders and street lighting complete the fit-out. The project won the 2012 WA Engineering Excellence Award for work in a regional community, having been designed around currents, cyclone and flood debris loading and a tidal range approaching nine metres. Berthing at the facility requires prior Shire consent, so it is not a tie-up-and-go proposition; contact the Shire of Wyndham East Kimberley before arrival. Recreational launching otherwise uses the boat ramp beside the port's barge-loading area, a shore platform with no listed facilities. Fuel, ice and basic provisions come from the town's limited shops, and anything specialised should be brought from Kununurra or Darwin.
Local sailing knowledge
Cambridge Gulf is magnificent and unforgiving. Five rivers, the Ord, Pentecost, Durack, Forrest and King, feed a 1,000-square-kilometre estuary where spring tides run eight to nine metres and the current boils through narrow sections into whirlpools and standing eddies. Upstream of the port the gulf necks down to about 150 metres at the reach locals call the gut, and the water is the colour of milky coffee year round. Saltwater crocodiles live throughout the system; treat the ramp, the pontoon edges and any swimming suggestion with the seriousness they deserve, and be equally wary of bronze whalers. Small boats do best working within two hours either side of the turn of tide, because slack water fishes dead and peak run can be unmanageable. The fishing justifies the effort: barramundi, king threadfin salmon, mangrove jack, fingermark, black jewfish and mud crabs, with commercial barra, prawn and crab boats working the same waters. The dry season from May to October is the practical window; the wet brings cyclones, flooding debris and dangerous heat in Australia's hottest town by annual average. The sea approach runs 100 kilometres past Lacrosse Island between Capes Domett and Dussejour, a serious passage that visiting yachts should time to the tide. Ashore, the Five Rivers Lookout on the Bastion Range gives the classic overview of the whole system, Parry's Lagoon offers exceptional birdwatching, and the Big Crocodile statue marks the entrance to town. Kununurra, 100 kilometres south, is the nearest full-service centre. Visiting cruising yachts occasionally work down the gulf from Darwin or across Joseph Bonaparte Gulf, and for them Anthon's Landing is the only all-tide deep-water landing for hundreds of kilometres of coast, which alone justifies the pontoon's generous 50-metre rating.