I thought I knew Broome - until I discovered this 130-million-year-old secret

Leave the tourist trail behind to stand in the shadow of this ancient land's formidable past, writes Catherine Best.

On the pindan shores of the Kimberley, where ochre cliffs dissolve into brilliant turquoise, crocodiles are the apex predator to fear. But look closely and there are signs of much bigger, more formidable beasts.

You can see them in crumbling sandstone platforms on the beaches and bluffs, where monster tides swallow and exhume secrets. Dinosaur footprints. Hundreds of them. Left by at least 22 different species across a 100-kilometre stretch of coastline that makes Broome/Rubibi home to the world's most diverse collection of dino prints.

I've visited Broome twice before and ticked off the billboard attractions. I've ridden camels on Cable Beach at sunset (magical), tried mango beer at Matso's (tasty) and heard tales of fearless divers lucky to survive a month harvesting pearl shells (chilling). I've even witnessed Staircase to the Moon over the tidal flats of Roebuck Bay (mystical).

But I've never before stood in the footprint of a 40-tonne brachiosaurus. Until today. Mind boggling.

"At least 130 million years ago a dinosaur stood exactly where you stand," says dino devotee and Broome Adventure Cruises guide Myles Penegar.

The footprint looks like a flattened cow pat. Albeit deposited by one seriously super-sized cud-muncher. There's a trail of them - nine tractor-tyre-like disks embedded in a sandstone shelf exposed by the retreating tide.

We're on culturally sensitive land in a remote, boat-only accessible area of Roebuck Bay known as Kunin. Myles explains that during the time of Gondwana, this intertidal zone was part of a vast river delta.

As the supercontinent evolved, water was displaced, filling the clay flats with compressed soil, silt and sand. Over the last 500 years, the pindan cliffs hemming the beach started to erode, revealing footprints preserved in time.

In a jagged bank of rock, we can see layers of the old forest floor that have been compacted and filled with soft earth. On top is the pancake footprint of a brachiosaurus, part of the four-legged, long-necked sauropod family - the largest dinosaurs to ever roam the Earth.

On the flat sandstone nearby is the unmistakable claw-foot impression of a theropod, a two-legged carnivorous dinosaur - related to the velociraptor - with toes made for tearing and shredding.

The Traditional Owners of this region, including the Yawuru People, have their own explanation for how Australia's oldest dinosaur footprints came to be. They are the footprints of the creator spirit Marala, the Emu Man, whose tracks appear along the shoreline around Broome, a region since dubbed the Dinosaur Coast.

On this remote stretch of beach alone there are 150 documented footprints.

On the other side of the Broome peninsula at Gantheaume Point, more three-toed theropod footprints can be seen at low tide.

While north of Broome, on the Dampier Peninsula at James Price Point, lies the world's biggest known dinosaur footprint - a 1.7-metre whopper left by a 35-metre-long brachiosaurus weighing as much as 20 elephants.

All up there are 72 identified trackways across a 100-kilometre expanse of coastline.

While some of the footprints can be seen on foot independently and - in the case of James Price Point, with a good four-wheel drive - visitors can only get to the Roebuck Bay prints by boat.

It's a journey that's meticulously planned around Broome's monstrous 10-metre tides. We set off at peak high water - when the boat, Brahminy Kite, can anchor high on the beach. It's a 60-minute journey to the trackways, and then we have 30 minutes to explore - palaeontologist's hats on - before the pull of the ocean has us making a hasty exit, lest we get beached. (At Bush Point at the southern end of Roebuck Bay, the sea retreats up to 15 kilometres on the lowest tide).

The colossal movement of water (the Kimberley coast is home to the highest tides in the southern hemisphere) is the subject of much fascination - and some angst.

Low tide also reveals human-made artefacts in the form of the Catalina WWII Flying Boat Wrecks. Fifteen Allied vessels were sunk by the Japanese in 1942, killing more than 100 people.

Their rusted remains are exposed in very low tides, and you can walk a kilometre across the mudflats from Town Beach to see them, with the rising tide snapping at your heels on your return.

When we return to the beach where we embarked, after cruising through Dampier Creek to spot wildlife over champagne and canapes, the plug has been pulled. The spot where we boarded the boat is now 300 metres from the water.

We make the final journey on foot, sloshing over corrugated-iron sand flats twitching with hermit crabs. The beach is textured with worm trails, bird tracks and stingray depressions. But no dinosaur footprints. Not yet anyway.

The writer was a guest of Tourism WA