The four-in-one Australian ship that can go anywhere

Oligarchs will find the Coral Geographer compact. The regular cruise contingent looking for a swimming pool, casino and sequined entertainment will be disappointed too. Nor is there a smidgen of bling, unless you count attractive Indigenous artworks.

Going places that bigger shops can’t – the Coral Geographer at sea.

Nothing on this ship is superfluous to Coral Geographer’s confident focus, which is the exploration of remote regions in reasonable comfort.

The lounge doubles as a bar and lecture room. You get a single restaurant, small gym, outdoor space that wraps the ship so you never miss a view and a top-deck bar for sunset drinks.

Any parties afterwards? No. Passengers are satiated with sun, salt and adventure. The only nightclub sparkle is created by staggering outback stars.

The 120-guest Coral Geographer was launched in early 2021. You can’t fit much on a 93-metre ship with minimal draft and only five decks, but you can nudge into shallow waters, pootle through tiny islands and visit small coastal communities that regular cruise ships can’t get to.

This is the exhilaration of Coral Geographer. It gets you off even the unbeaten track, to wild and strange places, to extraordinary outback landscapes, and into convoluted coastlines.

You can’t boast you’ve had French haute cuisine or a perfumed spa treatment. But you can boast you’ve been to the outer edges of our incredible continent: Montgomery Reef, the Montebello Islands, the Bunda Cliffs.

The Coral Geographer’s lounge area.

Anyway, who needs escargots and fuss when you can have white wine and seared-kangaroo canapes on East Wallabi Island, toes in the sand, salt in your hair. The mainland is 60 kilometres east, Perth 500 kilometres south, your normal stresses a million miles away.

The most brilliant thing about Coral Adventurer, however, is that you don’t just get one vessel but four. This is the mother ship, but you aren’t confined to it.

Two purpose-built Xplorer tenders are a Coral Expeditions innovation for excursions. They’re lowered hydraulically into the water after guests have boarded at deck level, making embarkation easy and efficient.

Coral Geographer and its purpose-built Xplorer exploration tenders.

With barely a draft, the Xplorers can skip over shallow lagoons and reefs and nudge ashore for beach landings. In places such as the Kimberley, they take you up rust-red canyons.

You might say the Xplorer tenders are the safari Jeeps of the sea, but where even they can’t go, six Zodiacs take over. They’ll get you into mangroves for wildlife spotting, shoot you through the Horizontal Falls, and penetrate up the narrowest gorges.

On expedition cruises with a big snorkel and dive focus, such as those on the Coral Coast, the Zodiacs are a reassuring presence on reefs as expedition crew patrol the perimeter of your snorkel sites.

Interaction with crew is a highlight of this Australian company’s cruises. The expedition team is chirpy, informative and safety conscious on excursions and, back on the ship, give intelligent lectures on regional history, geology and wildlife.

Expedition staff dine with guests: a chance for conversation about their field of expertise. Meanwhile the engineer will take you on a tour of the engine room, and you can chat to the captain on the open bridge.

Just as you think you can go no further, kayaks provide a fourth way to get about, at least in crocodile-free destinations. I take one at Post Office Island in the Abrolhos archipelago, and slip into a knee-deep turquoise bay lined by blinding white shell and coral.

How else could I get here? It has taken a small ship, a nimble tender, then a kayak. This is as far from mainstream cruising as you can reach. Coral Geographer gets you far away from anywhere, and you’ll discover that’s just where you want to be.

The writer travelled as a guest of Coral Expeditions.

THE DETAILS

Coral Geographer operates expeditions along Australia’s south and west coasts, including the Kimberley, and international voyages to destinations such as New Zealand and Indonesia. An example is a 12-night “Abrolhos Islands and the Coral Coast” itinerary between Fremantle and Broome that visits places such as Ningaloo Reef, Dampier Archipelago and Shark Bay. The next departures are in February, March and September 2024. From $9570 a person, twin share.
See coralexpeditions.com