Karijini to Cape Leveque and Broome

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Karijini to Cape Leveque and Broome

The weather over the last few days has been predicted to be a bit wet and overcast, making some of the gorge walks in Karijini susceptible to flash flooding. We decided to check out the highlights of Port Hedland (which was not much), before continuing on to Broome.
On the drive in to Port Hedland we passed many mine sites run by Rio Tinto, one in particular was by the side of the road – a large Salt evaporation pond (and a massive pile of salt!).
Nearby, we found another Rio Tinto mine with machinery so large that the blades appeared about the same length as our ute!
It was a very quick stop in Port Hedland, fuelling up at Shell – 91.46L @ 162.9c/L, noticing some of the locals around the region fitting in as many as 8 passengers in the back seat of a ford falcon (and that was only the back seat!). Looks like a pretty rough area, very glad we decided NOT to take a locum position here.
Further up the road towards Broome, there were more iron ore mines along the way as well as numerous road trains with an average of four trailers – these measure around 50 metres in length, and take a fair distance of road to overtake; especially when you’re towing.
We stopped for the night at Stanley Rest Area – 108km’s NE of Sandfire roadhouse, discovering upon light that our car and camper had been covered in the iron ore dust from travelling in the wet.
Finally we made it to Broome, but this was just the beginning of our weekend travels – we stayed at Roebuck Bay Caravan Park ($30/powered site per night), got some fuel at Caltex - 74.5L @ 170.9c/L, and had a quick look around Broome. Lachie headed out towards the mangroves to discover some mudskippers, several crabs as well as a sea eagle that appeared keen for a feed as the tide was heading out.
Cape Leveque was next on our agenda for the weekend, requiring us to lower our tyre pressure to 25psi as we were heading off-road and there were plenty of corrugations to cross. We were warned the road conditions were extremely poor, but found the drive not a problem (maybe in comparison to other 4WD tracks, or maybe people who warned us were city slickers!).
We camped at Gambanan which was just a short way from One Arm Point. This is all Aboriginal land, and we were lucky enough to visit the local’s church at Beagle Bay – built in 1917 and decorated using local mother of pearl shells and cowries – this was spectacular art design!
Over the following couple of days, we enjoyed the region – fishing local waters, spearing mudcrabs and octopi as well as catching a reasonable size trevally which Lach shared over the camp fire with a couple of local Aboriginal boys, (meanwhile, Sheree enjoyed her camp oven scones with jam and cream!).
One Arm Point had a great little Aquaculture Centre where they were breeding barramundi, clownfish and green turtles. The tour we had was interesting, and we found out that clownfish – similar to barra, are all born as males but on maturity the larger dominant fish becomes female. They also breed Trochus shells that they later boil to remove the live animal, and sand to shell to reveal its’ pearly interior. Lach hand fed a large female barramundi called ‘croc’ – weighing around 40kg and measuring 1.15m, who managed to wet the tour group when surfacing for her feed.
Kooljaman (also known as Cape Leveque) had magnificent red cliff walls contrasted by white sandy beach and turquoise waters. Although this LOOKED beautiful, we were warned by staff at the resort not to swim at the beach with cliffs, but it was apparently safe less than 1km away at the sandy beach. Sheree was not buying this talk, as we’ve heard from other travellers that the beach at Cape Leveque is quite often closed due to crocodile sightings! We ended our day at Willie Creek, nearby a pearl farm – free camping. This was a beautiful, quiet and remote location we thought was just fantastic until sunset. The mosquitos were HORRENDOUS! We slept almost bathed in a combination of aeorgard and rid inside our camper, underneath a mosquito netting (thanks Col & Rhonda) – and despite having our two lines of mozzie defence or barriers (plus repellent), still managed to get plenty of bites all night – Lach around 10, Sheree at least 50! While lying in bed, the humming sound of mozzies outside made us extremely uncomfortable.
Finally, we headed south to Cable Beach where we stayed the night at Tarangau Caravan Park ($36/night powered site). We headed out to see the famous ‘Ships of the Desert’ at sunset, thinking the sky looked fairly overcast and ordinary.
To our surprise, the sun actually made an appearance for the first time today – and what timing it was... sunset! We came home to have a happy hour and view our photos which far exceeded our expectations.
Tonight is our final night in Broome, so we’ve enjoyed the palm-lined beaches and will stock-up on fuel, groceries and make the most of having a nice hot shower before heading EAST tomorrow!!

1620Km’s this leg of our journey
Total Km’s so far this trip 11,297

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Comments

[Gloria and Jack]

Great
We are following your safari with great interest. Nikon working well !

[Mum]

Wow!
Still trying to catch up with your photos & news. You're both doing a fantastic job recording your trip.Reading your notes and looking at photos almost makes me feel like I'm there with you. So many top photos.