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Published: July 31st 2010
The best Hump on Cable Beach
I think I was the only one who thought they were cute!Leaving Cape Range National Park behind was difficult. We’d had such a great experience there, and knew that it may be one of the last opportunities to swim and snorkel before we hit Croc country.
Inland we went and with a quick stop in a rest area not far from a mining town called Tom Price, we made our way to Karijini National Park. To be honest, I don’t think I’d ever heard of Karijini before this trip. I make a point of chatting to as many travelers as I can to find out where and what they thought was worthwhile, and so many people had raved about Karijini I just had to see it!
Dales Gorge campground wasn’t as fantastic as I had imagined, but the gorging itself was soooo much fun! The kids had a ball climbing up and down cliffs, rock hopping across the bottom of the gorges, playing in the waterfall and swimming in the pools. What a great adventure we had there!
Leaving Karijini we REALLY needed to have a night in a caravan park and catch up on showers and washing so we headed toward Port Hedland to find a caravan park.
What a rip off place! A crappy caravan park right on the highway was asking $66 for a camp site. Not a chance in the world was I going to pay that, so we kept on driving. That night we pulled into a free camp called De Gray River, and were really glad we did. Some friends that we’d met back in Kalbarri were already there and it was great to catch up with them. We had a camp fire complete with guitars and singing, courtesy of some muso’s that we had befriended next door.
Eighty Mile Beach Caravan park was our next stopover, we were keen to catch one of the big fish that everyone talks about! This little caravan park was apparently flattened by a cyclone about eight months ago - aside from the trees all being cut of at about 6 feet tall, I wouldn’t have been able to tell at all. The funny thing about this place is the fact that the beach is jam-packed with mad keen fishermen (and women), and it’s out in the middle of nowhere …ironic!
The only opportunity to fish is about 2 hours over the high tide, and
considering we only stayed there 1 night due to the cost, we didn’t catch a big one. There certainly were some big fish being dragged out of the water though … maybe next time we’re in town!
Onward we drove toward Broome, where the population explodes from about 15 000 in the wet season (summer) to about 45 000 in the dry (winter). We stopped for fuel at the ONLY fuel stop available and they had run out of diesel! There were 4wd’s and caravans all over the place waiting for the truck that may or may not arrive anytime soon. Certainly not something you experience everyday!
All the van parks in Broome were chocka’s so the PCYC and some churches operate as ‘overflow’ facilities during this time. Even still, the overflow prices were still fairly high so we headed out to a free camp on the way to Cape Leveque called Willie Creek. By the time we found the place it was pretty much dark, we almost got bogged, and then set up camp on a hill and felt like we were going to roll out of bed all night. I think the decision to move back
into town and ‘suck it up’ for the fees came the next morning when we saw the croc warning signs - Dakota had been stressing about hitting croc country since we’d left home, and now all his nightmares were coming to fruition! I’m sure he had visions of them sneaking up to his bed at night and chomping on his leg or something!!
Anyway, we headed for the PCYC where our friends were staying and managed to score a (partly) powered site. The plan was to only stay a few days, but when I rocked up to the office the guy seemed a bit overworked, and when I offered to help out he jumped at it … I was looking after the office the very next day! From there we came to an agreement that I do one day in the office and about 3 hours of cleaning, and that covered my site fee with power. WOWEE, how fantastic to have toilets, showers and electricity … What a luxury!!! Not only was my site free, but I set up my massage table and managed to pull in a fair bit of business, which provided a bit of pocket money
also.
The camp had both indoor and outdoor basketball courts. The kids had such a ball playing with other kids, and riding their scooters and ripsticks around all day long. Friends we already knew were there, as well as many more we met, both travelers and locals. It was such a treat to have a sense of community around us, and we’ll stay in touch with many of the great people we met in Broome.
Dakota's Broome experience is particularly noteworthy - he had such an amazing time working with Matt, a fellow traveller and now friend who is a diesel fitter and let Dakota be his off-sider. He was in heaven!!! Another friend saw how passionate he is about mechanics and pulled some strings to get him in with Broome airport as an airport mechanic. Another friend took him fishing and taught him how to weld. Like I said, it was an amazing experience being in a community of people!!!
Broome is very much aimed at the tourists, particularly (it seems), the cashed up grey nomads. All the tours (and there was a tour for everything) were overpriced. We did a camel ride on the famed
Dakota was in heaven!
Helping Matt do all sorts of things to cars. cable beach (apparently they are the best hump in town), and I did an astronomy tour. We also visited the World’s Oldest Operating Picture Gardens (Sun Cinema), and watched ‘Bran Nue Day’ - not only was it hilarious, but it was filmed in and around Broome, and in the picture theatre. Pretty cool!
It didn’t matter that the tours were overpriced anyway, because we met some wonderful local people who took the time to show us some of their favourite spots around the place. One of the spots was the reef at the far Northern end of Cable beach. At low tide (which happened to be at 7am this morning), the rock pools are teeming with creatures that have been trapped by the outgoing tide. The morning we were there we saw a shark, a few octopus, heaps of big cowries and 4 turtles! One of the turtles had fishing line wrapped around it’s flipper, and it felt incredibly good to be a part of ‘rescuing’ it by cutting off the fishing line … watch out Greenpeace, here I come!!
All the travelers I’d spoken too had all raved about Cape Leveque, which is a good 200 or
Sandfire Road house
Peacocks were everywhere! so kms from Broome, mainly along a really bad dirt track. I had to see it, so together with our friends ‘The Willies’, we planned a 3 day trip up there on our days off. Far from the experience we were hoping for, we found it to be very much overpriced and with rude and unfriendly people. It was a bit of a shame, and quite obviously we missed what everyone else loved about it, but the experience was great, and we had some fun 4WDing the back tracks anyway. Right at the end of the cape, past one arm point is a place called ‘The Hatchery’ - now that was cool! The kids got to hand feed Barramundi which was an experience in itself because they swim up really, really slowly, then jump and grab the fish out of your hand before you know what’s hit you ... Frightening!
While in Broome, our poor little old campervan had a mini nervous breakdown. The winding mechanism for the lid kicked the bucket, which means that the lid wouldn't go up ie, the van cant be used. After a few nights in tents, the boys helped me manually lift the
Kal & Nick being penguins in the rain
The rain didnt dampen any fun, that's for sure! lid and place it on timber struts while we worked out a plan. I was so thankful that it was here and not on the side of the road that this happened, because we had Matt, Keith, Simon and others to help us along. Between us (mostly Matt), we came up with a plan to get her working again, which included a boat winching system and quite a few hours worth of work.
Apparently, if you've been in Broome longer than 3 weeks you're considered a local, and we couldnt have that happening, so it finally became time to move along. It was sad to leave the friends that we'd grown so close to in such a short amount of time, but I think we'll see them again sometime. Off we went in the general direction of Darwin ...
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Ian Hogan
non-member comment
Ian - still keeping track.
This is all sounding so good I'm thinking I should pack up and travel!