The mechanics are straightforward, even if the effect is startling. Talbot Bay (known to the Dambimangari people as Ganbadba) is enclosed on the seaward side by the McLarty Ranges, with only two narrow gaps connecting the bay to the open ocean. When the tide rises or falls by up to 10 metres, water cannot pass through those gaps quickly enough to keep pace with the tidal movement. It stacks up on one side, creating a head difference — and where there is a head difference, water flows downhill, or in this case, sideways, with the force of a river. The falls reach up to 4 metres in height. As the tide turns, the whole system reverses: what was flowing in begins flowing out, and the waterfall flips direction entirely. The Dambimangari people know the falls as Garaanngaddim.

David Attenborough, who has seen a great deal of the natural world, called the Horizontal Falls "one of the greatest wonders of the natural world." The falls sit in the Lalang-garram / Horizontal Falls Marine Park, jointly managed by the Western Australian government and the Dambimangari (Worrorra) people, whose traditional country this is. The park's name comes from a Worrorra word meaning "the saltwater as a spiritual place as well as a place of natural abundance." For the Dambimangari, Garaanngaddim is not merely a natural curiosity but a sacred site. Access has always been challenging — the falls are reachable only by sea or air, in a region patrolled by estuarine crocodiles and box jellyfish. The remoteness is part of what has preserved them.

On 27 May 2022, a high-speed tour boat carrying 28 passengers and two crew was conducting a trip through the gorge gaps when it collided with a rock wall. More than a dozen tourists were left with serious injuries, including broken bones and head trauma. The rescue was complicated by the falls' remoteness and the presence of crocodiles and box jellyfish in the surrounding water. The accident prompted an investigation and, eventually, a policy change: from 2026, the Western Australian government began phasing out boat trips through the gaps entirely, with all operators ceasing by 2028. The decision reflected both the safety record and the Dambimangari Aboriginal Corporation's view that the gap passages intruded on the sacred significance of the site. Visitors can still travel to the entrance of the falls and observe the tidal movement and rock formations from a safe distance.

The Horizontal Falls sit within the Buccaneer Archipelago, a scattered chain of islands, reefs, and waterways on the Kimberley coast that has some of the most extreme tidal ranges in the world. The broader Lalang-gaddam Marine Park — amalgamating the Horizontal Falls, Camden Sound, North Lalang-garram, and the proposed Maiyalam Marine Parks — protects a vast stretch of this coastline. Camden Sound, just to the north, is one of the most important humpback whale nursery grounds in the southern hemisphere. This is a coast that rewards the effort it takes to reach it: wild, biodiverse, and shaped by forces that operate on their own schedule, twice a day, without exception.