Cape Leveque

The rugged coast at Cape Leveque.

The peninsula of land north of Broome is the Dampier Peninsula. It extends north about 200 kilometres. It is remote and spectacular country, with the peninsula fronting the Indian Ocean and Timor Seas to the west and north west, and the waters of King Sound to the east. It is remote country, accessed by a road that is sand and dirt for the first 90 kilometres, then sealed for the remainder. We have decided to explore this region over a couple of days, leaving the caravan safely at Cable Beach. We will be staying overnight in a safari tent at the Cygnet Bay Pearl Farm, Australia's oldest family owned pearl farm, established in 1946. Like many businesses in the Kimberley, they have added tourism to there product range, and because "the season" is over, they have specials on offer!

The road to Cape Leveque.

A little rain would make
the road a nightmare

The drive up is an experience in itself. The dirt section, is mostly red sand and compressed red mud. It is like driving along a huge drain, with high sides along the road, which varies in width from a single car width, up to ten car widths in other places. Everyone travels at speed, to lesson the corrugations, so you drive fast as you don't want someone overtaking in a cloud of dust and rocks! The 90 kilometres of dirt is behind us in less than an hour, and thankfully with not much traffic. There are a number of Aboriginal communities along the road, and it is after we reach the sealed section of road we start to see the turnoffs to the communities.

Sacred Heart Church Beagle Bay.

We decide to take a look at Beagle Bay. "The HMS Beagle" was Charles Darwin's ship, and he and his staff explored the north of Australia extensively. We find Beagle Bay as quite a large Aboriginal community, with every facility available. It is difficult to explore the aboriginal communities, as photographs are banned without permission, and the streets have signs erected "Locals Only Do Not Enter". Consequently we come to the General Store, and that is as far as we can go. We never get to see Beagle Bay.To our surprise, there is a beautiful Spanish church in the park next to the school, so we take a look. For a gold coin donation we obtained a small brochure telling the history of the church. Catholic missionaries came to the area in 1883, and it was ultimately Trappist Monks who built a church. The current white washed brick church, was built by German priests, interned at Beagle Bay during the first world war. All the bricks were hand made, and the alter is magnificently inlaid with mother of pearl shell, the work being done by local community people.

Our safari tent.

Says it all.

Back on the main road we continue on to the end of the road at One Arm Point, another large Aboriginal community. Here if we wish to have a look around, and access the water front, boat ramp and beachfront, we need to buy a permit at the local administration office. We decide to head out to the pearl farm instead, where we can access the beach and coastline.
We find the reception area, where there is a surprisingly nice cafe, so after check in we try the coffee and cake. Excellent! We drive about a mile out to where the safari tents are set among

The boudoir.

the trees and along the beach. We find out tent, which is in a

The view.

lovely setting, then step inside and it is like a sauna! We opened everything we could open, turned on every fan, even got a spare fan out of the car I'd bought along, and the temperature fell from extreme to almost extreme, so we changed into swimmers and just went and sat in the sea to cool off. Thankfully the tide was in! As we found out next morning it would be a 500 metre walk to the water at low tide! When booking, we had been told the restaurant was shut as the season was over, but we could eat in the mess tent with the staff for $37.50 per person, but we'd have to wash up! otherwise we could self cater, using their camp kitchen. We chose the latter option, and Carolyn had wonderful picnic of cold meats and salads, and of course a cold bottle of champagne!

Our Sea Legs.

The waters of King Sound are studded with the islands of the Buccaneer Archipelago, and experience some of the

Local Aboriginal Elder, Bruce.

most severe and dramatic tidal movements anywhere in the world. The pearl farm runs a boat tour called Giant Tides, and we picked our time to visit ensuring we coincided with a big tide. Today the tide drops 9 metres, and our tour heads out onto the water two hours before the low tide mark. We board the boat at reception, on dry land! They have these amazing Zodiac style boats that drive on land as well as water. They are called Sea Legs, and are apparently made in New Zealand for use where there are huge tidal movements. We head out onto the sound and transfer to our high speed Gemini Boat for

Off to see the Giant Tides.

the tour. We have a special guest on board, meeting Bruce who is an elder of the local Bardi people. He is a real character, wearing a heavy orange western shirt and jeans, and a huge black cowboy hat which he has painted and adorned with flowers. He reckons he's going to sell his hat to an American for $3,000. I told him that the American he's looking for hasn't been born yet! He told us how he'd met some American Indians when he went to America, and I think he was sold on their look! He was born at a mission on nearby Sunday Island, and he added a lot of great history to the tour, telling us his peoples interpretations of the land and the water.

Giant Whirlpools.

Water rushes of Tallon Island.

The sea around us is unbelievable to watch. It seems to be going in all sorts of directions, then there are smooth sections turbulent areas, and even huge whirlpools. Even our powerful high speed vessel is thrown around quite violently at times. At one stage our guide turns the boat into the rushing tide near an island, and with the 700hp of the motors revving at 3500rpm, we are stationary in the water. In flat water we'd have been travelling at 35 knots! The highlight came when we pulled along side Tallon Island, which is completely covered by water at high tide. As the tide drops, the island emerges from the sea, and it happens so quickly that the water continues to flood off the island for some time, as more and more of the island appears. Just quite incredible. This is where the Kimberley starts, and you can see it in the rock formations. The 2 billion year old Kimberley rocks were broken apart by the newer 300 million year old rocks of Asia, as the two great lands separated.  Bruce, with a twinkle in his eye, reckons his ancestors saw it all happen! He's been spending too much time with the white man!

Beautiful, and the pearls
aren't bad either!

In the morning, we went on a tour of the Pearl Farm. This was very interesting, learning about how the family became involved in the industry, and how pearls are cultured. I am always fascinated by, and stand in awe of those people who just take their life on a totally new adventure. Dean Brown was one such man. He left Perth in 1946, heading to the Kimberley to see if he could make a life fishing. He couldn't, so he shot crocodiles instead to make money, and together with his son, got friendly with the local Aboriginal people, bought some land, and started to process pearl shell. He went to a local Japanese run pearl farm and learnt how to culture pearls, brought the knowledge back to Cygnet Bay and started his own business. Today, his grandson manages the day to day. They grow around 20 to 30,000 pearls a year, based on current demand which is low. There are lots of different grades, with around 5% being perfect round specimens.They have produced up to 60,000 pearls when demand allowed. They have produced the world's largest perfectly round pearl, which we saw at their shop in Broome. It is worth $1 million! Of course they have a shop, and Carolyn tried on everything!

The road to Kooljaman Resort
Cape Leveque.

We left the Pearl Farm, and headed across to Cape Leveque,

where there is another resort, called Kooljaman. It is an

Lunch with a view.

upmarket Safari Tent style resort, that has a small campground, which caters for camper trailers and tents only. It is run by the local aboriginal people, and is a good example of the good things happening with black and white co-operation. The road in was soft sand and very narrow in parts. The new main building is very nice, with an excellent restaurant. We had to pay a $5.00 fee each to wander

Red Cliffs of Cape Leveque.

around!! It was worth it. This is where the Kimberley starts,

Lunch at Kooljaman Resort.

and the contrasts of the red cliffs, white sand and blue/turquoise ocean was simply beautiful. We decided on lunch as it all looked so nice. So we took up a prime position on the veranda overlooking the ocean. Prices up here had continually amazed us, so we were pleasantly surprised when we read the menu. We chose to share a Caesar Salad with prawns. Carolyn asked if we could get the anchovies on one side only, as she doesn't like them, and we got an even more pleasant surprise when the chef arrived with two separate salads! All he'd halved was the prawns! And John got lots of anchovies! It just keeps amazing us what is out here in some of the most remote parts of Australia. 

The drive back to Broome was more dust and corrugations. We did start to take a diversion into another community called Middle Lagoon, but we were unable to ascertain if it was open. The road was diabolical, and when we saw the sign that said more permit money was required, we opted out. We arrived back at Broome covered in red dust, but flushed with the adventure from a couple of days at remote Cape Leveque.