by Carolin
G'Day, Broome!
If you are looking for a beautiful, sunny and laid back place along the west coast of Australia, this is the place the be. In case you’d like to fit in: Get some fish n chips from the local pub and take your vehicle for a drive on the beach to a place of your choice to watch the west coast sunset. With an ice cold beer in one hand and a load of greasy fries in the other, say ‚how ya goin‘ to your dining companions (with a friendly nod) who might still be looking for their spot and if you feel like it, also to the group of tourists riding along the beach on camels. Or are we the tourists... ?
Click pictures to enlarge and read captions
We decided to let Casimir rest for a couple of days (well deserved), got bikes and cycled the town. Soon after we found out how spoiled we were, when our butts hurt after only a day of swapping Casimirs comfortable seats to hard bicycle ones. Lesson learned.
After a couple of days of chilled out beach dinner dates and watching whales playing in the ocean close to the beach (right in front of us!!), we felt the urge to keep going and discover more and thus chose to head north along the rugged tracks and roads of the coast to Cape Leveque.
The roads and tracks on the Dampier Peninsula north of Broome are red, dusty and rough and we hope it stays that way to preserve the almost unspoiled nature and scenery a bit longer. First we went to Barred Creek, an estuarine inlet with the morst turquoise water we've ever seen. We stayed a day to fish and sleep in the dunes. While fishing we recognized the incoming tide, quickly packed and pulled the awning in, but didn't properly secure it, because "nahh... it's just 50 m up to the camp".
Fabian drove up the dunes, the car was on an angle, the awning opened and dug itself into the dunes... I'm not supposed to talk about it...
The next day we went up to Price Point and a nice beach drive further up to Coulomb point for a bit of fishing. We spent the night up on the deep red cliffs on a spot in between and both fell asleep in our camping chairs next to the fire soon after sunset. Both being classic 4x4 destinations in the West Kimberley, did we tell you that we were all on our own at both camps? We decided to go all the way to Kooljaman camp for the next couple of days which is a nice sort of camping resort all the way up at Cape Leveque. It has more traffic and tourists but is still run in accordance to the laws and traditions of the local Indigenous People.
The sunset along the deep red cliffs of Kooljaman must have been of the most amazing ones we've ever had (we had lots of them) and the back beach one of the most magnificent ones.
After arguing for quite some time about the quality of beaches we've both seen in our lives, we agreed that Eastern Beach at Cape Leveque definitely made into our Top 5. We also got pretty good (or lucky?) at catching fish. We might not have looked like professional fishing with all the madness and jumping around every time we got one, but we sure felt professional. Cape Leveque gave us a nice Bluebone for dinner (Fabians at least).
Back in Broome we opted for an oil change and finally got our logo made to stick it to the car and off we went for the next adventure.
Thanks Broome and , you've been magnificent!