Back in Broome on Monday 2 August, we had a bit of a sorting and cleaning day, before heading into Broome for a drink at Matso's Brewery (very nice) and some food at Arli (great spare ribs, not so sure about the pizza). The next day we even gave Priscilla a wash at the caravan park before leaving!
Then we set off on red sandy tracks to Cape Leveque, one of the key attractions for me of the whole trip. Its publicised to be a beautiful beach, with fantastic sunsets, all in a remote location at the tip of the peninsula above Broome. Unfortunately, the publicity has worked, and its no longer that remote, and feels fairly touristy. We couldn't even get a camp-site at Cape Leveque itself, so we spent two nights at Middle Lagoon, half way up the Cape Leveque peninsula instead, with a third night at Gambanan closer to the tip of the peninsula.
The drive into Middle Lagoon was lovely, Priscilla just loves that red sand
and our camp site was lovely too, overlooking the sea.
There's a lovely swimming beach at the campground and a very relaxed atmosphere. Jen terrorised blue sand crabs on the beach
until she found some hermit crabs, then she terrorised them instead...
We also had a lovely sunset at Middle Lagoon. We hoped we'd see whales here, but it wasn't to be. Lovely sunset though.
Anyway, after gentle swimming and relaxing at Middle Lagoon, we headed up to Cape Leveque and paid their $10 fee to enter the resort and take a look at their beaches. I helped a couple drag their tender ashore at the northern most beach, admittedly in the hope they'd offer us a little trip on their yacht. Of course my ploy didn't work. Cape Leveque beach really needs to be seen at sunset to be appreciated, and Jen frankly wasn't amused with the walk down there in the scorching heat of midday. I got my photos, but none of them look too great. Expectations can be too high... On the other hand, life can't be all bad when you think this isn't all that impressive.
After visiting Cape Leveque, we headed to Gambanan to camp the night. We found ourselves a nice enough little spot on the side of the headland then headed to the “swimming” beach (as described by the nice lady on reception). I waded out in the shallow waters next to mangroves and had a quick dip, but feeling uncomfortable with the environment quickly came back in. A couple asked me how the water was, and I replied it was lovely, but it felt like croc country. They said the owners had shot a salt-water croc only days ago on the headland! No more swimming near mangroves for me!
We headed back to the camp-site for dinner and managed to get full mobile signal so Jen could call home. And we had another lovely sunset.
The next day we bumped and rattled our way back down the corrugated red road to Broome. Of great excitement this day was the fact we'd had a new toy delivered to the Post Office for us to collect, the Flip Video camera we should have bought in the UK! Videos to follow on the blog at some point soon... We decided to spend a night at the expensive Cable Beach end of town so we could go and watch other people ride camels on the beach... I know that doesn't sound very exciting, but we wanted the photo!
You see, more lovely sunsets! Priscilla was very pleased with it all as well.
On Saturday we went to the Broome markets, and I actually bought Jen a little memento of the trip (you guessed it, a frog on a log!). Then we did a big food shop, stocking up for our off-road trip across the Gibb River Road. We decided to stay at the Broome Bird Observatory, just on the outskirts of town, partly on the basis they had a camp kitchen with a freezer so we could vacuum pack our meat and freeze it for the trip.
The bird observatory was lovely, and would have been much more enjoyable had I not split the valve on one of Priscilla's rear tyres while using the compressor to pump the tyres back up. A neighbour at the campground helped us change the tyre, and our plans for setting off on the Gibb River Road the next day were delayed as, it being late Saturday afternoon, no-one was open for tyre repairs and nor would they be until Monday. So we headed back into Broome on Sunday, staying again at Roebuck Bay (nice campground, but they didn't seem to be great fans of ours by all accounts!) We had another look around Broome, visiting the gallery at Matso's, and falling a little in love with some of Helen Norton's work on display there. If only we were in the market for art...
http://www.helennorton.com.au/
So, all poised and ready for the Gibb River Road, we had to hold on for another night in Broome. Lets face it, worse things could happen. Broome's a pretty good place to get held up.
More soon,
Claire, of Jen and Claire Fame
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