FOR MANY YEARS, THE ROWLEY Shoals Marine Park has flashed like a shipping lane beacon in my brain, promising access to a reef so remote and ill-frequented that as few as 200 tourists a year arrive to indulge in its beauty. I ask myself what could possibly go wrong on an adventurous, 300-kilometre overnight steam from Western Australia’s northern outpost of Broome, leaving the shelter of shore and heading across the open Indian Ocean to one of Australia’s least frequented reefs?
Well, quite frankly, everything
