Cape Leveque

We were very happy to leave Broome.

Lots of folks travelling south that we had met indicated that the Dampier Peninsula was a very beautiful place, so we had been looking forward to it for some time.  We spent close to a week on the Dampier Peninsula, the tip of which is Cape Leveque.

The first 100km north toward Cape Leveque was dirt and gravel with some corrugations and wash-a-ways.  Our first stop was a church built by some monks in the early 1900’s in Beagle Bay.  The interesting thing is that much of the altar is inlayed with mother-of-pearl which is used throughout the church as decoration, so it was a very beautiful place.

We spent two nights at Middle Lagoon, a small aboriginal community with a huge area for bush camping attached. The track in was 30km of rather slow dusty going.  One good thing about campsites at stations and communities is that there was plenty of water, all be it ground water.  As a result the shower roses were generally huge!  Overall the water has been really good. I reckon it was better than both Melbourne and Perth water!

The tides at Middle Lagoon were starting to get quite large at about 8m when we were there.  This resulted in the lagoon itself, which was about 1.5km across, being dry at low tide and about 6m deep at high tide.  That’s 6m of beautiful, clear, blue water; a magical sight.  No doubt it was full of fish at high tide, but as per normal none jumped on our line. 

Our first activity was to go mud crabbing and fishing at a small river mouth at the far side of the lagoon.

The first 800m along the beach was fine, but then we got well and truly bogged, right down to the axles.  Everyone got into the spirit by digging out the bogged wheels and finding vegetation to give the wheels some traction.  Foot by foot, metre by metre we edged or way off the beach and onto harder sand.  There was a little bit of time pressure as the tide was coming in!  When we finally got onto the harder sand the waves were running up the beach just a couple of metres from the wheels!  Ring any bells Chloe?

True to form, we didn’t catch any mud crabs but Jodi did land some unusual fish when fishing in the mangroves.  Alas, they were all too small to eat.  We spoke to some aborigines that were prowling around with spears.  They said that the tides were too high for mud crabs, and showed us the track to take to get out.

Sunsets are beautiful up here…

…and it is never too late to play on the beach.

This was our campsite at Middle Lagoon…

We farewelled Middle Lagoon and took to the northbound bitumen road to One Arm Point.  Here we refuelled and checked out a hatchery.  We saw cod and barru of all sizes, but it turns out they were breading trochus shells.  They release them back into the wild so the local aborigines can harvest them once they reach a particular size.  They eat the animal and sell the shells to Asia.

Just down the road from One Arm Point is the Cygnet Bay Pearl Farm.  No pearling as such occurs at this time of the year, but we did see where the pearl farms were (on the horizon over our shoulders).

Next stop was Cape Leveque.  We stayed several nights and did heaps of swimming, beach walks, saw some beautiful sunsets and listened to ABC radio broadcast the Geelong (thump) Collingwood Grand Final.

That wrapped up our time on the Dampier Peninsula.  We could see a short cut on our maps which would cut off a hundred kilometres on our way to Derby.  Most locals said it was OK so we risked it.  A lot of it was overgrown and a little sandy and boggy, but we were glad we took it.

Derby and the Gibb River Road, here we come…

JR's Broome Camel Riding Blog

“On the road again”

Wait a second shouldn’t it be:

“On the camel again”

Yeah, I think that’s right.

So, again. Yes, I have been on a camel before. When I was up in Kakadu in ‘03. You should know that I’ve been everywhere, man! But, come on, let’s focus on the main stuff, hey! You may of seen camel rides in Broome advertised but we actually jumped on a camel, got up, went for a joy ride, got down, hopped off and that’s it. Pretty simple, but it was a lifetime-remembering ride.

MY CAMEL

My camel’s name was Cairo, which is the capital of Egypt. I shared my camel with my mum and Ruby. Dad and Ella, on the other hand, had a camel named Isaac. Not too sure why. Wait, I’m getting side-tracked! This paragraph is called My Camel. All right, let’s obey the paragraph name! OK, Cairo (KY-row) wasn’t as tall as Dad and Ella’s (come on, Jack, focus. Your camel). Its legs were about 4 or 5 ft tall but from toes to nose, about 2m. Cairo was approximately 1.5m long. Like all the camels he had a poo-bag around its butt. Some missed-droppings that landed on the sand were picked up by the pooper-scooper boy at the back of the herd! Poor guy!

Not much to talk about on a camel ride. Sorry, off to Cape Leveque! Jack

Broome

Broome…

Broome will hold some good memories for us, but as most of you will know, we will never forget our stay in Broome for the most tragic of reasons.

After dropping the TrakShak off at the Cable Beach Caravan Park we went to the local Saturday morning markets.  As we stood at the rear of our car a 6 year old boy ran onto the road and was run over by a landcruiser.  He died later that day in hospital.  All of us except Ruby saw it happen.  It occurred no more than 5 metres from us.  Jodi and I were the first to the scene.  The boy was with a large family.   It was dreadful.  It was worst thing that has happened in our lives.

We had some friends from the previous campsite also staying at our caravan park, so they looked after the kids while Jodi and I spent a lot of time that afternoon at the police station.  We know that there was nothing that we could have done to prevent the accident.  There were lots of tears that afternoon and evening.

Sunday was a nothing day at the caravan park pool.  The kids have handled it very well, though they didn’t know the boy had passed away until some days later.  Jodi and I are doing well, but the incident replays in our minds over and over again.

We had 2 more days in Broome.  We spent some time on Cable Beach, checked out some pearling history and took a camel ride along Cable Beach.

We will never forget our time in Broome.

80 Mile Beach to Barnhill Station

We have been excited about 80 Mile Beach for some time now.  Apparently the salmon are huge, and if you get one onto the beach without a shark taking it is a miracle.  It is time for our appalling fishing tradition to come to an end!

After leaving Karratha we stopped at Whim Creek for lunch.  It was a cool place with a good pub lunch.  There was lots of history here from mining in the area over the years and from cyclone damage some years ago when the pub was nearly levelled!

After a stopover at Pardoo Roadhouse we made it to 80 Mile Beach Caravan Park.  Spectacular views of coastline and ocean had us very excited as we approached the caravan park which turned out to be huge!  We met up with a family with a TrakShak similar to ours.  We spent pretty much the next couple of days together as they have kids the same age as ours.

I’m happy to report that the highlight of our stay was the fishing.  Each afternoon both families would drive along the beach, past hundreds of other fishermen.  Everyone had been waiting for the high tide.  We got some good size salmon on both days.  The kids just mucked around and occasionally held onto a rod.  Everyone loved it.

On Wednesdays and Sundays 80 Mile Beach Caravan Park hold a market.  The kids from both families rummaged through their and their parents belongings to see what they could sell.  The markets were huge with 6 stalls!  The kids stall made $21.50 which is hard to divide by 6 so it was topped up to $24.00.  Jodi didn’t want Jack’s Swans wrist band sold so she had to buy it back!

Our next stop was Barnhill Station.  Basically it was bush camping with amenities under the stars – just what we like.  Our new best friends from 80 Mile Beach were there for the same days as us so we were all very happy.  We did heaps of swimming and a spot of uneventful fishing, but enjoyed it all the same.

This is the campsite of David, Kelly, Fraser (10), Finlay (8) and Rafferty (5).

Check out Ruby and Raff:

Next stop Broome…