Derby, Broome & Dampier Peninsula

Derby

Derby is located a few hours NW of Fitzroy Crossing and a couple of hours NE of Broome. We saw the Derby prison tree (an ancient Boab) along with the longest cattle water trough! They breed things big up here ;) We watched some Aboriginal men carve Boab nuts outside the visitors centre. Miss E being the extravert she is, started chatting to them and ended up buying one of the Boab nuts that a guy named Michael had been carving. He also showed Mr J how to make a sore throat remedy out of the nut kernel by mixing it with water & a little sugar. Surprisingly it wasn’t too bad – tasted a little lemony & has one of the highest sources of vitamin C!

Derby is a small point of land amongst massive mud flats on King Sound. Its claim to fame is the massive tides that range from 1-11m. We saw it on pretty much a full tide which was fantastic but there’s not much else to do in Derby. So we ate fish & chips, had mango smoothies at the CWA markets and then headed for Broome! We had to go through a crazy bush fire on both sides of the highway with birds of prey swooping left right & centre. That was just a bit hair-raising!!

Broome

We stayed 30km out of Broome as the caravan parks charge an arm and a leg for children and electricity! We enjoyed lots of day trips in to see & swim at Cable Beach, visit the library, wander around Chinatown & pearl shops (window shopping ;) ), visit markets (Darwin was better!), and patch up our caravan & car after the destruction from the Tanami Track!

Last Thursday we said goodbye to our caravan and drove up to Beagle Bay with our tenting equipment all ready for a good camping trip up at Cape Leveque! We visited Sacred Heart Church at Beagle Bay – the most stunning little white washed chapel with beautiful mother-of-pearl altars. Miss A sang for us acapella – it had stunning acoustics. Sacred Heart students back home – we’re sending a postcard of this church so you can see it too!

After another hour of very sandy 4WD tracks we arrived at our bush retreat – right on a little cove of Beagle Bay. The stunning turquoise water was beautiful along with all the shells on the beach! We got our tent set up quickly then enjoyed a lovely walk (Jesse swam even though it was cool & windy) to collect shells.

That night Kieren and the kids went crab hunting. They came back to the camp fire with a large container of hermit crabs!! They were so noisy that we had to move them away from our campsite so we could sleep!

The next morning we met a family of 4 and enjoyed a perfect, still & sunny day swimming & walking along rock pools & reefs. The boy Mr J’s age spotted a claw of a crab in a rock pool on our walk and we quickly discovered it was a feisty huge Blue Swimmer Crab. After an unsuccessful attempt to extract him from his hiding spot with sticks, Kieren borrowed a crab hook and our washing up container to wrestle this crab out of his cave. It was a fight to the death – the crab attacked the container with his claw and ripped his whole arm off (the crab’s own not Kieren’s!) rather than release his hold! The kids thought that was very valiant of him. So that afternoon we enjoyed comparing boiled crab to grilled crab. Miss T doesn’t like either but the rest of us preferred grilled! What an amazing experience of hunting and putting food on the table! Later that afternoon we tried some kayaking and then had a lovely camp fire complete with marshmallows.

The next morning we packed up in sandy mud after very heavy sea dew.

 We then spent the rest of the day at Cygnet Bay Pearl farm learning about how pearls are made and also enjoying a lazy afternoon tea on the deck of the café. We really didn’t want to leave but had a not-so-fun 3 hour corrugated 4WD journey ahead of us. We would love to go back and see Cape Leveque a little better but fear it won’t be as much of a retreat next time as they are tarring the road in next year. I think I prefer it as an off-the-beaten-track destination. The Aboriginal people we met who own the campgrounds were so lovely and hospitable – but I wonder how they’ll cope with the sheer number of tourists next year.