Middle Lagoon

 This is Cape Leveque Road, it takes you all the way up to Kooljamon Resort at Cape Leveque, One Arm Point Community and Pearl Farm to name but a few places. Its 100kms of dirt then the bitumen begins again just before Beagle Bay.

It can get quite narrow at places, that not being the cause of a lot of frustration, but the angle you have to get up onto on the side with your caravan in tow is - lol  All good!

As I mentioned before the dirt is first then once you get close to Beagle Bay the road goes to bitumen, its a great road.  The next stop brings us to Middle Lagoon, where we were advised we must stop with a caravan because the rest of the stops on the bitumen won't take us.  We are still to find out why this would be the case as the following pics show the road into Middle Lagoon is hardly the easiest 32kms of 'road' you'll come across and all of the other places you get to after this are on better roads. Must make people stay in the onsite accommodation at Cape Leveque, as I can't imagine why you would otherwise.

After our exciting drive into Middle Lagoon we realised why people do it - what a spot.  Yet another place we could have stayed for a couple of more weeks at.

Broome

We arrived in Broome to get do all the necessities before heading off up the Dampier Peninsula.

Staying at the Cable Beach Caravan Park was great.  Chosen as they have a lovely big pool that we thought the boys would enjoy.  It was a very shady park and the staff were very friendly.

We washed the car and van, we shopped for food, we got a tyre looked at, we bought bits and pieces we needed and generally just fluffed around getting back on top of things.

Oli and I went for a ride on the Blue camels on Cable Beach, we had plenty of swims at the beach and pool, we watched our first State of Origin at the Divers Tavern with Suzanne, Owen, Kel & Kim, we even had a ride home in a PediCab, oh and we did the required Pearl Lugger tour – the boys have a new appreciation for pearls.

We even got to catch up with 'fiftytoes walkabout' for a chat as our paths crossed briefly.

Barn Hill

BARN HILL STATION – WOW!

When in Coral Bay Les and Sandra told us they spend 1 month up at Barn Hill so we thought we’d have a quick look.   

It was 12kms of dirt off the Highway, very dusty track but not too bad in the scheme of things.

In retrospect we should have stayed in the unpowered section as they are up on the cliffs overlooking the water, a much nicer outlook than we had in the powered section But we were in the shade which was lovely as it was quite warm.

Barn Hill name their sites rather than number them.  We felt most privileged to get the ‘Bush Pig’ site. Hmmm

We had visitors when here - Paul and Gary were able to pop in and visit us for the night on their way down from Broome.  It was amazing to hear about their Buccaneer Achipelago trip in the boat, what an awesome experience they had.

All in all, Barn Hill was extremely beautiful.  The station stay there was basic and I know many don’t like the shower/toilet arrangements but they did the job, the open aired ones were very cool.  The beach was absolutely spectacular to say the least.  The Pinnacles right on the sand were incredible and the boys loved the rock pools.  Stephen went out with Owen in his boat one day and caught a Monkey Fish (well they're ugly) and many other fish.  Definitely not a place to miss.  We could have stayed for ages.

80 mile Beach

Once again we had in our minds that we would pop in at 80 mile beach for a couple of nights and then move on, six nights later we took off.  Seems to be a bit of a pattern with us.

80 mile beach was very long, go figure, it was also the best shell collecting spot we’ve come across yet – shells of every colour were collected.

The tide change here was substantial as it was very flat.  800 metres in and out, unfortunately we decided to go for a walk out to the water at low tide one day and my shrieks were heard way past 80 miles when we sunk into the mud up to our knees, I found it quite horrifying and there was no escaping it, you just had to keep trudging through until the mud got harder, some 50 metres away.  I’m still having nightmares (shudder).

We all had a great time fishing here but nothing was caught, apparently the cold waters had arrived and the fish had gone elsewhere.  I wish they told that to the people who seemed to catch metre long Salmon only 100m away from us each day.

De Grey River

After nearly a week at Karratha we headed onwards and upwards.  Stopping in at the historic town of Cossack allowed the boys to judge Dad in the old courthouse, but although they found him guilty they're the ones that ended up in jail. Cheeky monkey's!

We had been told to stay at De Grey river road stop on the way up and it was definitely well worth it.  A great spot to spy Blue Kookaburra's and dare I say it, a lovely spot to soak up the serenity!  Stephen took a few shots of some cars left behind some time ago (he's still looking for the all important abandoned Monaro - I'm not sure what he's going to do with one in the condition these cars are in - maybe the Monaro won't rust the same way ;-))

On our way to De Grey the day before we also stopped at Whim Creek Hotel for some lunch, amazing feed for modest price in a wonderful setting.  The boys checked out all of the old mining gear and had a chat with the resident cockatoo, the boys remember his name as Harry.  Definitely worth a stop when you're driving through.