Our GO-MAD Oz Adventure: Day 151

27 June 2013

Last night we had more rain which was pelting in on one of the walls of the tent and inevitably we started to feel drips on our heads and pillows... so in the middle of the rains we had to get out of the tent and drag it further under the car awning. This solved the problem and we were able to get some rest! My question is...is there such a thing as a waterproof tent?

Bacon and eggs for brekky and we headed off to One Arm Point which is about 13km from Cape Leveque on an all bitumen road. Something I didn't realise is that every community you want to go into you have to pay a day fee to enter. One Arm Point has an office where you can purchase the permits from and they are $10 per person. They give you a little map of where you can go and what's around....One Arm Point is most famous for their aquaculture hatchery, they do tours of the centre but we would have had to wait 40 mins, so we just had a look around ourselves. It is pretty much a shed with lots of tanks housing fish species as well as trochus, there was barramundi, clown fish, mangrove jack etc. the tour would have been good to learn a bit more but wasn't the right time. We checked out the other sites of the community - round rock which has a nice outlook of the water, the water is very clear and looks like a reef under the water. We then had a look at the swimming beach and beach shelters you can hang out in, interesting. And that pretty much sums up One Arm Point!

Off to Cygnet Bay Pearl Farm which is on the way back to Cape Leveque, they have a cafe there so decided even though we had been to the pearl farm in Broome we could get something to eat and have a look around. Glad we did, while driving in it looks like a bit of a dive but the actual cafe and showroom etc was really nice bush style setting and nice tables to sit at to eat. They of course tried to encourage us to go on a tour but as we had already been on the one in Broome it would be a bit of a pearl overkill. However if you are trying to choose whether to tour this one or Broome's, this one is half the price! Just saying!

Sat down for a nice piece of strawberry shortcake and mango frappe! The glass was ridiculously huge!!

Checked out the showroom, nice pearl rings in there! No prices and too afraid to ask! Haha back on the road to a sign that said Hunters Creek, we decided to have a look down this dirt road. We thought we may be able to access the creek and do some fishing, however if you want to get access to the creek you need to pay a local so we turned around and headed back out. Next stop is Lombadina, which is another community just before Cape Leveque. This is another touristy type community, they have an art and craft shop, bakery and workshops with artefacts etc that you can have a look at. They also have a church that was built from local timbers and a paperbark roof which is till in use today. From here you can also access their beach, they also do tours from here and they have accommodation. It's $10 a vehicle for a day pass so reasonable for what you get access to.

We then headed back to Cape Leveque for some food and rest. Pizza from the cafe for lunch! really good! Back to camp and we had just pulled up stumps for an afternoon of beers and views and a staff member from Kooljaman advised us that the local rangers were having a talk about the area in the next hour and it was a dollar coin donation if you wanted to go along. We decided that we may as well go and check it out so headed to the rangers little hut and inside was set up with chairs and projector. They handed around some books with photos of their program's and what they do on a daily basis. They ran through things about the local area, their culture including what they call their family members, aboriginal words, who they can marry etc. They then ran through equipment they used back in the day and the current ranger program they are involved in which tags and monitors dugongs and turtles. It was really interesting and well worth the effort for us to head there! At the end of the talk which actually went for 2.5 hours! they gave us these beautiful books with stories of the tribes in the kimberleys and a ranger patch!! All for a dollar coin donation, I felt bad! But they were such nice blokes and we learnt a lot about aboriginal ways, they also revealed at the end that we were their first session for this talk, they were just trialling it to see how it went so we all encouraged them to keep doing it as I'm sure everyone would find it interesting!