Dampier Peninsula, Cape Leveque

15-16 July

Just north of Broome is the turnoff onto the Cape Leveque Road which takes you to the top of the Dampier Peninsula.  The first 30 km or so is bitumen then there’s about 90km that’s unsealed, sandy, dusty, corrugated and in parts feels like driving up a dry riverbed due to the road being below ground level.  It’s hard to see in the photo, but the sides of the road are way higher than the road surface.  The colour of the sand is unbelievably intense.

Anyway, after a couple of detours to check out some of the bush camping spots for on the way back (a bushfire went through here last weekend so much of it’s burnt out), we finally reached bitumen again.  Once we reached the Cape Leveque turnoff, there was another 5km of very rugged sandy track … just after the bushfire further south, this area had 200mm of rain last Sunday and the track’s severely gouged and has big puddles of red, muddy water.  However, once we checked into the campground and saw the beach the effort to get here was forgotten!  Our campsite overlooked the red cliff tops and the Indian Ocean, with views along the pristine white beach. 

 

Sunset over the ocean from our campsite

About 6 am next day

Our first thought was to get down onto that beach and what a treat we were in for with the setting sun reflecting on the red sandstone cliffs.  The colours in the photos are true.  We’ve never seen anything so intense; it outdoes Uluru easily.  We walked right along the beach enjoying this truly beautiful sight.

Simply spectacular

Looking south

Cape Leveque is on the tip of a peninsula so there’s a western beach and eastern beach, with the Kooljaman campground between the two.  The next morning we went for a walk along the eastern beach and over the rocky tip of the peninsula around to the western beach.  The tide was low meaning good access.  The tides up here are massive, approximately 9.5 metres at the moment, so high tide’s very high and low’s very low.  Much of the activity around here and also Derby on the other side of King Sound is dictated by the tides.  Anyway, the low tide meant we could wander around the rocks, find some nice seashells and enjoy the wide sandy beach.

We finally dragged ourselves away from the beach to drive about 8km north then follow another sandy track east to visit the Cygnet Bay Pearl Farm.  As the farm tours were fully booked for today, we decided to do the Pearl Patrol tour which includes going out on the boat tour.  This commenced with a really informative talk and dvd about pearling, the foundation of this particular farm and the anatomy of the oyster and shell in which the pearls are cultivated. 

The boat part was fun, the water a little choppy but not as bad as the driver thought it might be.  It only seats about 6  (there were 4 of us). We rode out to see the rows of ropes on which the pearl shell racks hang.  We saw the cleaning boats, where they haul the racks up every 28 days and clean the shells before returning them to the ropes.  There’s also a barge out there which contains xray machines – Lyndon Brown who developed the farm believes this has been the biggest innovation to the business.  We could see the seeding shed on the shore, where they put shells in baskets into water which simulates the tides.  When the tide’s low the shells open slightly and staff take the opportunity to put a wedge in to keep them open so they can inject tissue into them as part of the cultivation process.  

We saw some of the islands of the Buccaneer Archipelago while we were out there. Then it was back to land and into the ‘gallery’ for ‘pearl appreciation’.  Here we were shown and able to feel various types of pearls, learning the difference between a valuable (perfectly round & lustrous) pearl and lesser ones.  We were encouraged to try on an $18,000 string of pearls – pity we didn’t get a photo of that!

Returning to the Cape Leveque Road, it was only another 6km or so up to One Arm Point (Ardyaloon) which is an Aboriginal community.  There’s a $10 admission charge each which included a visit to the hatchery where they breed trochus for both its meat and its shell products.  This is a shelter with about a dozen round tanks containing various species of marine animals..  A young German woman guided us around, lifting creatures from the water so we could see them clearly – trochus (a bit like abalone meat), urchins, clams etc.  She fed the clown fish (which are vey cute!) and explained how each has its own anemone and they look out for each other.

The trochus hatchery

Clown fish and their anemones

sea urchin

In one tank were a couple of barramundi.  She gave a piece of fish to a gentleman to feed to the barra and it came up and sucked it swiftly and noisily from his fingers!  Glad it wasn’t me feeding it.  This young German woman really seemed to know her stuff. We learned plenty.  Mind you we both wondered why there were no indigenous people working there? 

We stopped by one of the beaches for a bit of lunch, watching the water which is forced through the funnel shape of King Sound running in several directions then stopping as the tide turned.  The tide activity is phenomenal up here.

The Ardyaloon airstrip (red dirt) runs alonside the beach

Through the bedroom window