We waved goodbye to Derby last weekend and headed for the extremely sunny shores of the Dampier Peninsula. This is the area north of Broome that is home to pearl farms, turtles, red sand cliffs that kiss white sea shell beaches and many, many cowrie shells. Oscar has developed an all consuming passion for cowries. Over the three days at Cape Leveque, Oscar spent at least two hours every day wandering the vast sweep of sand hunting for the perfect Cowrie. Then he spent another hour counting all the ones he had found. Last count put him at around 105! On occasion throughout the day, we would look up from our books to check on the kids and spy Occy, a bare chested, big hatted, tiny figure, walking with grim determination along the high tide line, picking up and discarding shells as he went.

It was extremely hot during the day with little to no relief at night wih the moisture laden seabreeze ramping up the humidity. Showers 3-4 times a day proved necessary to prevent going bonkers! We travelled very light up the 200k of red sand road bringing only a two man tent, a blow up mattress and a mozzie net as we knew that such a trip was out of the caravan's league, and soon worked out that a cool shower before bed and covering the outdoor bedsheets with the tarp until the last possible moment, would enable us to go to sleep cool and on relatively dry sheets.

We spent a fascinating afternoon in One Arm Point right at the top of the peninsula. This neat and prosperous looking community had a wonderfully low tech turtle and trocas shell hatchery/ barramundi breeding centre, around which one could wander quite freely. Trocas shells are big pyramid shaped cones shells which are a staple food stuff and quite prized internationally. The boys got to see the awesome strike power of the Barramundi as they fed them. The fish, massive in the tank but only babies by Barra standards, lurked under the food, slowly stalking it until BAM! super fast, grabbed the food from the boys fingers! I could see it and i still leapt a foot in the air!! Thats sadly the closest any of us got to catching one of these iconic fish on the trip.

Oscar learnt the hard way that a baby turtle no bigger than the palm of his hand can nip with the force of a door closing on your finger. We warned him not to try to catch it, but some lessons have to be learnt the hard way, i guess.

We visited the Cygnet Bay Pearl Farm on the way home and fell in love with the beautifully crafted wood show room that exhibited equally beautifully crafted pearl jewellry. I have a regret that I did not buy some of the polished pearl shell wall hangings as they were fabulous, but it was fascinating to read of the establishment of the early community there, including the schooling of the children of the original owner who grew up to take over the farm and move it forward. They had old magazines that the kids wrote and produced, reporting such goings on as the growing of veg, sightings of turtles and on one occasion, the gruesome end to a King Brown lurking in the laundry. It was quite wonderful and I applaud the person who archived the history and presented it so well.

We rounded off our Cape Lev experience with a stay at Quandong point, 40 km from Broome. Quandong is a bush camp, reached via sandy tracks, that borders a sweep of pearly beach divided in to bays by deadly sharp reefs. Hermit crabs abound but sadly this time, so did our old nemesis, the red jelly fish. We did not get to swim very much due to these critters and spent a lot of time throwing water over ourselves and exploring the very remote beaches. The sunsets were something else though and there is something very satisfying about surviving in such a place. The boys made spears from local wood and spent time trying to catch fish trapped in the pools by the receding tides with a lot of enthusiasm, but not much success! We headed back down to Broome to pick up the van after two nights feeling very happy with our adventure.