We spent 3 nights at Eighty Mile beach arriving there at 7:30pm after a long day of driving. We stopped in at Karratha and Port Headland along the way for supplies, but spent the rest of the day driving.
Eighty Mile is half way between Port Headland and Broome and the Caravan park is situated on the beachfront, and you can drive down onto the beach and drive for miles on the uninterrupted coastline which is beautiful. Eighty Mile is famous for it fishing, particularly threadfin Salmon and Russ was lucky enough to catch a big 10kg Giant threadfin Salmon, along with a heap of sharks (small bull and reef sharks), some small blue nose threadfin Salmon and a couple of stingrays.
Fishing at 80 Mile
Russ with a giant threadfin Salmon
Russ with a little reef shark
Sunset at 80 mile
The beach is nice and hard and is so wide due to the huge tides there so it’s nice to run on, which is what I did each morning.
Our next stop was Broome for 2 nights. We stayed at the Cable Beach Caravan park which is one of the best caravan parks we have stayed at with big shady trees and a beautiful tropical pool, just a short walk to Cable Beach. We spent an afternoon having drinks and nibbles along Cable Beach, watching the sunset; saw a movie; went to the pub for a meal and I did some retail therapy which was nice.
The weather was beautiful, 30 degrees and blue skies.
Relaxing on Cable Beach
Traditional fishing at Cable Beach
Sunset Camel ride, Cable Beach
Russ going crazy with love hearts, Cable Beach
Cape Leveque was our next stop. We stayed out at Kooljaman which is an eco retreat owned and run by a few Aboriginal families without any government support. We had a camp site up on the hill overlooking the beautiful blue ocean. Cape Leveque is at the Northern tip of the Dampier peninsular.
Cape Leveque is such a beautiful spot with red cliffs, white sand and turquoise water. The tides are really big here too (up to 10meters) and it looks like a totally different place at high tide to low tide.
Cape Leveque at low tide
The road up to Cape Leveque is half bitumen, half dirt, and it’s pretty rough at some spots, making it a fun drive.
On the way out to Cape Leveque we stopped at Beagle Bay and checked out the church with the mother of pearl alter which was built by the Pallottine Brothers who ran the Beagle Bay mission. We also called into Middle Lagoon which is another beautiful spot to camp. We were going to stay there for a couple of nights on the way back from Cape Leveque but decided to head onto the Gibb river road instead.
Beagle Bay church alter
Beagle Bay church
We also went out to Lombidina where we were told that they bake the best bread, so we bought a loaf which was as good as they say, that we ate in one day!!
We also went out to One arm point and saw the most amazing thing at the boat ramp where 2 dogs where swimming with a group of sharks (we think they may have been lemon sharks). The dogs were rounding the sharks up into the shallow waters, and then one of the dogs swam down and bit onto one of the sharks tails and went for a ride. It was really incredible. We also saw a dugong that a group of Aboriginal men had speared and brought in, and also turtle shells on the camp fire that must have been eaten by the locals.
Check out the video Russ took of the dogs swimming with the sharks:
Dugong speared by the locals
Turtle shell on the fire
We went out to the Trochus Hatchery which was really interesting. The locals farm the trochus until they are a certain size and then they put them out onto the local reefs where they continue to grow until a certain size and then they are collected and sold onto mainly Europe to make mother of pearl buttons. They also farm clown fish and other types of fish for the commercial market.
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