Today we set off for the tip of the Dampier Peninsula, visiting Cape Leveque, Cygnet Bay and One Arm Point.

The road up is quite rough, but its sandy rather than rocky so it is a 'fun' road to travel on with lots of whoops and dips that can catch you unawares if you're not concentrating. Apparently there are frequent roll overs on this road so care has to be taken!
We first arrived at Kooljaman at Cape Leveque. Immediately faced with a cost per vehicle to be there! It was coffee time, $6.00 per cup thank you very much!! It seems as if it is an oasis in the middle of the outback, however the view of the pristine Indian Ocean puts it all into perspective, absolutely stunning!

We had booked Safari Tent accommodation at Australia's oldest pearl farm, Cygnet Bay Pearls. It's a fascinating place! The drive down the sand covered track displays old boats, discarded pearl shells, boat parts, old rusted Toyota Landcruisers and fuel drums. It is a working pearl farm after all. The office and cafe including a beautiful gallery is all housed in a quaint little old cottage style building. Our Safari Tent accommodation was a further 1.5km along the sandy track towards the coast. Wow, what a special place! The comfortable Safari Tents enjoy a view looking over the Indian Ocean, the evening sunsets are spectacular! It was very hot here, at least 10 degrees hotter than Broome, so stinking hot! We strolled down to the ocean for a cool off before trying to catch a fish, with no success. When we arrived back to camp we found a 4wd coach with 14 teens and 4 adults had arrived, so much for serenity! Unfortunately for us it was shared facilities and the camp kitchen was over run! Sandwiches for dinner that night instead of a cooked chook. The next morning we had a bit of a whinge to the cleaner, and as it turned out she actually cared! She moved a table and chairs and a BBQ over to our Safari tent for our personal use which made it so much nicer than sharing everything with a big group of teenagers.
We visited One Arm point, paid our 'to be there fee' and took a tour of the One Arm Point Hatchery. No effort whatsoever has been made to beautify this place, it's a real shame. The tour was really good, we fed Barramundi, wow they're quick, we fed and touched turtles, so much personality and saw the beautiful Trochus Shells being polished and made into jewelry. The Hatchery used to breed Trochus shells supplying Italy with tonnes of shell each year, but with the economic down turn in Italy the contract has been lost so they are no longer breeding the Trochus Shell. The Aboriginal Community want the takings from the Hatchery but they don't want to work so the manager (a white fella) is doing it all on his own, unfortunately the place did look run down!

The next day on our way back to Broome we stopped in at Lombadina Mission and yep, you guessed it another fee to be there so we left. On our way out we looked around Chile Creek Camp area, which had several large Safari Tents there, it was really quite nice. On our way out we were following Jeff and Gail in their Nissan Patrol Ute, Jeff took a wrong turn taking us on a very deep sandy track, I was still in two wheel drive and not quick enough to engage four wheel drive so we bellied in the bottomless sand! It took us an hour to get out. We tried snatching but the Nissan couldn't get any speed up, as he also started to bury himself into the soft bottomless sand. We didn't want two bogged four wheel drives so we dug and dug, using the plastic Max Trax, after three attempts we were finally free and feeling faint from working in the mid 40 degree heat! After our ordeal we went to go into Middle Lagoon for refreshments and again another entry fee!! It was getting beyond a joke, it's ridiculous! We drove out and travelled further south to Beagle Bay. Beagle Bay is a beautiful Aboriginal Community, very tidy town, friendly people, everywhere we went we saw happy faces and NO entry fee! We stayed there for about an hour recovering from our earlier excursion with refreshments from the Community Store. In Beagle Bay is the most beautiful Church with a pearl shell alter. In fact pearl shell was inlaid around the windows and on the floor, so unique and all in great condition. The Beagle Bay community is the best community we visited, they take pride and ownership of their community and it really showed. Lovely people!
We topped up with fuel here and headed back to Broome. The skies were getting dark and then it rained and we witnessed a spectacular lightening storm along the way. The rain made the dirt road even more interesting and one of the whoops caught me out, I'm sure we got some air and we landed with a crunch, our poor little Zuki!! Anyway, thankfully no damage done.
We had a lovely time with Jeff and Gail up at Cape Leveque and it was sad it all came to an end but we've still got about 20,000km of adventure to go! Bring it on!