Author: Catherine Anderson

Catherine loves painting and photography as well as the great outdoors. Cycling, kayaking, pack-rafting and hiking are favourite activities as well as scuba diving when the location permits. A self confessed geek, she’s the reason details are included in our stories!
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Day 43: 11 July – Joining the clique in Cape Leveque

Author: Mrs A

From: Middle Lagoon, Dampier Pennisular

To: Cygnet Bay, Cape Leveque

We awoke with the sun and packed up our tent, taking our car up to the picnic benches with the best view in Australia to cook up bacon and egg sandwiches for breakfast. Middle Lagoon was like a turquoise millpond, hardly a ripple and a fabulous sight. We definitely could have spent a lot longer here. 

We set off after breakfast, pausing to change a fuse which had blown our car fridge (putting our cold beers in jeopardy – but thankfully easily fixed) and then continuing on. We headed north up the Dampier Pennisular, aiming for the Aboriginal community of Lombardina. This quiet community is extremely neat and tidy, famous for its 1930s church and the incredible beach. We paid our $10 visiting fee (basically pays to use their air compressor and brings in some much needed cash to the community) and set off to explore. The church is quite interesting in its architecture, built from mangroves, tin and local trees – and much of the 1930s furniture still in use:



But the highlight of the area is definitely its beach. We had to let down the tyres even more to get through the sand dunes, but it was all worthwhile when we reached the paradise on the other side – wow!


We set up the awning on the car, and leaped into the bay for a swim. – crystal clear waters, sand so soft it felt like velvet underfoot, and hardly another soul to be seen. 


We spent a good couple of hours here before packing up and heading on to our ultimate destination, Cygnet Bay. As we left the beach, Mr A was pleased to have the chance to use our recovery gear (the Max-Trax) to help rescue a family who had become bogged in the sand (in their Toyota Sahara – the ‘ultimate’ 4WD?!) – together with an Aboriginal local, they were pulled out of their pit and soon on their way.

Cygnet Bay is a working pearl farm – one of only about four still operating in this part of Australia, having been in the same family for over 70 years. The last 7 years have seen it opening its doors to tourism, which is more ‘farmstay’ than luxury. We found our campsite and set up the tent. For the first time in a long while we actually have space to ourselves, lots of room around us and no direct neighbours – much more like luxury bush camping than anything. 

We are footsteps from Cygnet Bay itself – with more luxuriously warm crystal clear waters just ripe for swimming in (of course we obliged!) and powerful hot showers provided another 50 metre walk away. Lots of sand around here though (Eveliene – you’d hate it – or have to wear boots constantly!).


We drove up to the homestead restaurant for their happy hour and sunset – a chance to try the local Broome brew – Matso’s – one with ginger beer and one with mango. Much more Mr A’s taste than mine – a bit too sweet for me. 


Dinner tonight has been a spicy chilli with rice, accompanied by an average WA red wine, another of Mr A’s Broome purchases!

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Day 41: 9 July – Back in the dust again

Author: Mrs A

We spent the morning getting ready to head off camping tomorrow with the tent, packing food and clothes for three days, trying to anticipate everything we will need to live only out of the car. I think we’ll be ok!

We then decided to explore a little more of the coast north of Broome to Quandong Point. After 15km of bitchumen road it all turned into sand and corrugations again so we decided to let the tyre pressures down, ready for tomorrow.


We continued our drive down orange sandy roads to the coast – just stunning. We had considered camping down here this weekend but decided against it, favouring a powered site at a caravan park so we could catch up on washing. I think we could have been quite comfortable down there though. Lovely deserted beaches, stunning views, lots of bird life and potential for yet more dinosaur fossil and footprint hunting. The new bikini got an airing too!


This whole coast is getting quite a reputation for its 130 million year old dinosaur prints, with more being found regularly (fishermen found some last  September, and some tourists hunting for shells found more in May this year!) – and up to 9 different types of dinosaur in this region alone. The only dinosaurs we found today were us and a British couple from Manly who were also hunting (and failing) for the same prints!

All in all a fabulous day out. Back to camp now for Aperol Spritzers before showers and a Sunday night chicken curry.

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Day 39: 7 July – immersed in nature 

Author: Mrs A

We hiked 7km before breakfast, deciding to enjoy the dawn birds. It was a fresh morning, about 15•C and blue, clear skies greeted us as always. 


Many birds were to be found including singing honeyeaters, yellow white eyes, red winged parrots, magpie larks, whistling kites, restless flycatchers, great bowerbird…and more. After breakfast we went down to the bay to see high tide. 


Roebuck Bay looked completely different without the mudflats, its turquoise waters, ochre sands and flocks of birds on the shore.  


We chilled out late afternoon, revising our plans for the next couple of days, trying to stay around Broome for the weekend. The moon is almost full and the region is famous for the view across the mudflats which creates a stairway. Sunday is our opportunity. 

We watched the great bower bird behind our caravan creating his bower – it’s a work of art. He creates a fabulous sculpture out of sticks and decorates it with colours which compliment his silvery feathers – in this bird’s case, shells and pieces of glass from the beach, the occasional piece of bleached wood and silver foil – quite different from the blues collected by the satin bower bird in NSW and Qld. Just lovely. I hope he attracts a nice Mrs bower bird!


Homemade chicken curry tonight with a Shaky Ground Shiraz, one of Mr A’s Broome purchases. Shaky Ground by name and by nature…had worse, but…hmmm…roll on the wine broker!

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Day 37: Wednesday 5 July – A day of rebooting

Author: Mrs A

The day commenced at the Broome Doctors Surgery, following up on my allergy-event. The GP prescribed me a steroid inhaler, more steroids for the next 8 days, an epi-pen to use in an emergency, plus a referral letter to see a specialist when I get to Perth. This is turning into a medical tour of Australia! 

Next on our list was supermarket shopping followed by the all important wine cellar restock. We are disappointed to report that as sophisticated as Broome likes to think it is, its wine selections are pretty limited. But not really that surprised. We are definitely thinking our wine broker will get a call to make a delivery down the track – we are glamping after all!

I then abandoned Mr A for a couple of hours, and went for some pampering – a haircut and pedicure – feel slightly less feral now, and ready to head back into the wooly wilds tomorrow. Meanwhile, Mr A hung out with the already beautiful people down at Cable Beach, lunched and chilled out awaiting my call!


Cocktails and nibbles were next on our agenda as we took our car down on the beach to watch the sunset – freshly cooked prawns, crusty olive bread, sweet cherry tomatoes and Aperol spritzers  were the order of the day.

We watched the camels tour up and down the beach…


And admired the view as the sun set – both over the sea…


And behind us as the moon rose over the sand dunes….


 A pretty special farewell to Cable Beach. Tomorrow we move on – not going too far, just to the other side of Broome to the bird observatory – new adventures and sights await us ahead! 

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Day 35: 3 July – we make it to the Indian Ocean!

From: Derby, WA

To: Broome, WA

Distance: 227 km

Drive time: 2.5 hours

Author: Mrs A

Let me start by thanking everyone for their concern and thoughts, I’m definitely on the mend now, the drugs are working well.  Still a mystery as to what triggered my allergic reaction but I’m planning to keep taking antihistamines for a while to keep anything else at bay. 

Today we packed up camp, hitched up and continued our journey westwards. We pulled into a car wash on our way into Broome and cleaned off the last of the red dust from the car and van. After unhitching in our next caravan park, we jumped on our bikes and rode into central Broome. 

We had high expectations for Broome. The marketing for the city waxes lyrical about the fabulous facilities, pearl outlets and incredible eateries. Alas, what we found was not quite up to standard (less Coogee/Bronte and more Wollongong). 

I called into the hospital to ask about an epi-pen and was given a list of doctors to call, all of which are fully booked! I shall try  calling again tomorrow. Next on our task list was lunch… the top 3 venues were very busy with 30+ minute wait times, the next down the list were ordinary fast food joints. A visit to Telstra increased our data allowance so we can continue to blog!


Slightly disappointed, we cycled back to camp, picked up a bottle of bubbles and headed over to Gantheaume Point to watch the sun set. Broome slightly redeemed itself with gorgeous views and interesting geological formations. We hope to return at low tide tomorrow to see the fossilised dinosaur footprints in the rocks there. 



We followed this with a chilled out evening watching our latest Netflix addiction, Suits. 

And finally, facts learned via podcasts today:

  • Dogs see three colours in the rainbow
  • Border Collies understand 1000 words
  • Clouds weigh 600 tons+
  • At 70,000ft the sky is black
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Day 33: 1 July – Boat, plane, bus then bike…back to Derby

Author: Mrs A

After a delicious breakfast of bacon and eggs we again mounted our seats in the jet boat to visit the tides, this time turning the other way, rushing through the small gaps between the bays, shortly after sunrise. Such a stunning location, and one everyone visiting was sad to say farewell to. 

For the cost of $25,000 for 5 nights, you and 11 of your friends could stay out here and have a skipper at your beck and call – 5kg of luggage allowed and 30kg of alcohol….anybody keen for an interesting holiday next year…?


The still early morning waters made for some incredible reflections, which were soon ruffled as our skipper sped the jet boat through the race!7.30am we boarded our little sea plane and took off, taking a scenic route back to Derby airport, and returning to camp.


A truly spectacular area, and so interesting to see. Incredibly remote and not another soul to be seen. Up here it is mostly sharks, dugongs, crocodiles and fish – the islands are very rocky and sparse, holding little to no natural water sources of their own. We flew over a barramundi farm, and back into Derby.

We spent the afternoon making plans for the next leg of our trip, before heading down on our bikes to Derby Wharf for dinner and one of the top end’s famous sunsets over the water. 

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Day 31: 29 June – Derby – the day of a million washes

Author: Mrs A

Well, sadly not every day can be adorned with beautiful birdlife and stunning scenery, one must clean up at some point. Today was that day…and we’re not quite there yet!

The first wash in our 2kg washing machine went on at 7am, and we pretty much chain washed (each wash is 36 minutes) until 4pm this afternoon….someone with more energy than I can do the maths on how many washes that worked out to be, but it was a lot, I can tell you! 

Mr A also spent the day turning our Landcruiser and two mountain bikes from red dusty dirty things to modes of transport we can safely use without turning ourselves red.

Yesterday afternoon we were very excited to see another ZoneRV pull into the caravan park – the first one we’ve seen on the road. So we spent the morning comparing notes with the lovely Vonda and Greg from country Victoria – who proceeded to help us fix up a couple of little issues we’d had after those hundreds of kilometres of corrugations. There’s bound to be something work loose – and we escaped lightly compared to many we’ve met. Again we are loving meeting people on the road who otherwise we would never cross paths with. Just lovely people. We are seeing a very different side of Australians – and they aren’t all grey either!

I note there has been a request or two to know where on the planet we are right now, so I have produced a map showing our route to date – we have gone from east to west, and now we see sunsets over the water instead of sun rises! 

Now preparing for roast potatoes and fresh barramundi on the BBQ with a pea purée…back to home cooking tonight. Mr A is selecting a wine from our ever depleting cellar….

We’ll be off line tomorrow as we are spending the night on a boat out at the horizontal falls – more adventures ahead! 

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Day 27: Mornington Wilderness Camp – Sir John Gorge

Distance: 28km return

Total drive time: 2 hours

Author: Mrs A

Apparently today was Sunday, though we have totally lost track of days of the week, and to be honest, it doesn’t really matter! We had a slower start to the day and headed off around 10am to Sir John Gorge, one of the major attractions on the Fitzroy River. Each of the drives throughout the Mornington Wilderness is accompanied by an information book, full of facts and details of the environment we are travelling through. 


Today we learned about the importance of the termites, and how they are responsible for aerating the soils and the breaking down of plant matter, and the damage that feral animals do – particularly donkeys and cattle which trample the soil solid, meaning the delicate ecosystem can no longer maintain roots and plant life, thereby impacting all animals and birds as a result. It’s certainly a harsh environment here – 7 months of ‘dry’ when there is no rainfall, followed by 5 months of extremely hot temperatures and heavy rains (accompanied by high humidity and lots of mosquitoes) and the flora and fauna are well adapted to cope with it, assuming things are not interfered with.

Sir John Gorge was certainly peaceful and very picturesque. We rock hopped along the shore, spotting bird life and admiring the views, but the water didn’t look that inviting to swim in, despite the hot day. There is a plastic canoe you can  paddle here for the princely sum of $185! It is not a big gorge – this seems a bit of a poor deal, and definitely not worth the money, no matter the good cause it goes to! We pretty much had the place to ourselves the whole time, rare for The Kimberley!


We stayed a couple of hours before driving back towards camp, detouring at a waterhole called Bluebush. This was much prettier (as opposed to majestic), sandy beaches surrounded by paper bark trees and pandanus palms and teeming in bird life. It is about 6km down the Fitzroy River from the previous gorge. We lay in the shade beside the water watching the rainbow bee-eaters swooping and diving and trying the photograph the crimson finches which nested in the palms, and I scared a crocodile into jumping into the water on one of my explorations.


We returned to camp to make a hot chilli accompanied by a baked garlic damper on the BBQ, before an earlyish night.

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Day 29: And it’s the final day on the Gibb!

Location: Silent Grove to Windjama Gorge

Distance: 136km

Time: 3 hrs 15 mins

Author: Mrs A

We left our crowded camp at 7am, eager to put the crowds behind us and get back on the road. It had been a sticky hot night and we hadn’t slept that well, despite retiring early.

Soon we were back on the Gibb, heading west towards our final destination, Windjama Gorge. There we found a great camp spot and unhitched. After some brunch, we jumped back in the car and drove to Tunnel Creek, about another 33km further along the road.

Tunnel Creek sees a 1km stretch of limestone hollowed out by the creek over thousands of years, making for an interesting underground walk, through water and surrounded by bats by torch light. It was certainly a novelty and an interesting hike, but rather busy with tour groups and families enjoying the ‘adventure’. 


We headed back to Windjama and headed off on a walk from camp. Much more spectacular. The gorge surrounding our campsite is spectacular – huge black pillars, quite unlike the red sandstone we have seen along the Gibb, and bringing forth thoughts of Mordor and Game of Thrones.


We hiked for about 6km in total, enjoying a real walk along real paths, rather than rock hopping. The Lennard River which flows through the gorge only during the wet season, is now a series of waterholes, teeming with fish and many freshwater crocodiles. It was not hard to see these crocs, they were everywhere!


The sun dropped low in the sky as we completed our walk, making for some great views and photographic opportunities, and then we headed back to the mobile apartment for hot showers and cocktails as the sun set. A lovely evening, fitting for the end of this leg of our trip – tomorrow we head back into civilisation and mobile reception – finally we can Google our burning questions and do some research for the next stage! We are also looking forward to getting things fixed (a few things that have rattled loose along the way) and removing the red dust from our possessions!

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Day 25: Manning Gorge to Mornington Wilderness Camp

Distance: 149km

Time: 3.5 hours

Author: Mrs A

We departed from Manning Gorge early and filled up the Landcruiser with $2.05 a litre diesel at the Mount Barnett Roadhouse as soon as they opened at 8am, plus topped up with water. Our intention for the day was to try to get into Mornington Wilderness Camp, but failing that, head to Silent Grove, near Bell Gorge. 

We had low hopes for Mornington, given we had originally booked for three nights and then changed our minds – the new dates being already fully booked. Everyone we spoke to along the Gibb told us it was constantly full and they had given up hope of getting in. Ironically, our punctured tyre and flight over Mitchell Falls rather than driving up had gained us a few days, and we called in to Mornington on the radio at the top of the road just one day past our original arrival. They looked up our records and it seems an error in communications on their part meant they still had our booking – we were in, and they were willing to shift our dates by one day to allow us the three nights we origianally paid for – great! 

We drove the 80km down to the camp elated, and enjoying the fabulous scenery, quite different from our standard Gibb-Kimberley views. Two hours and three or so river crossings later and we were checking in. The Mornington Wilderness Camp is owned and operated by the Australian Wildlife Conservancy. They only allow 25 vehicles/50 people to stay here in total, meaning it is a pretty exclusive location.


We immediately signed up to a birdwatching walk tomorrow morning (meet at the office at 5.45am!) as they have several threatened species here, including the Gouldian Finch (which we failed to see at El Questro) and the Purple-Crowned Fairy Wren. The research they do here is groundbreaking – a few years ago they discovered a frog completely new to science.

A short walk along the creek close to our camp allowed us to see our first Buff Robin (also endangered), Crimson Finches and a Pheasant Coucal. We truly feel we are in the Kimberley now. After birdwatching in the morning, we plan to take our pack rafts onto the Fitzroy River down into Diamond Gorge, one of the key stunning attractions here. We’re really looking forward to that.


A couple of mobile apartment casualties today – we opened up the van to find one of our speakers had fallen off the wall – the screws which held it up having rattled undone – fortunately no damage and easily fixed. Less easily fixed is one of the rear caravan legs which seems to have cracked and will not come down – possibly a rock flying out of the rear wheels (other caravanners tell us it’s a fairly common occurrence) – makes for a squeaky caravan when moving around now.

Cooking roast chicken and sweet potatoes on the Weber BabyQ tonight accompanied by peas and broccoli. Should set us up for a good sleep and prepare us for the alarm clock in the morning!

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