Gotcha Australia: 4. – 15. October

Broome and Dampier Peninsula

We arrived with a smile in Broome – you could see the ocean again and it looked really inviting and had a nice blue colour. We drove to Cable Beach and jumped into the ocean using our boggie-board. Cable Beach is around 22km long and got its name from the phone cable connecting Broome with Java. During the day it’s possible to drive on the beach but it’s closed from October during the night. The turtles are coming to lay their eggs – the nesting season has started. But we didn’t see any on the beach just swimming close to the jetty.

There are some more activities in Broome but not possible to exercise at all times. There are the dinosaur footprints, the airplane wrecks and the staircase to the moon which are only accessible/ visible at low tide (less than 1.5m). Unfortunately we didn’t see any – couldn’t time it right. But anyway we watched the cast of the dinosaur footprints and the sunset from there. We even saw some whales in the distance! Broome is also famous for pearls but we didn’t go on a tour. But we had a look at the church which is decorated with lots of pearls and the shells.

North of Broome lies the Dampier Peninsula where you can camp and find good snorkelling places. Our first stop was at Middle Lagoon probably halfway up. We got the site “Lino’s Camp” just 50m from the ocean (at least at high tide). We went swimming and got used to snorkelling again – luckily the water was calm although there was not much to see….

We drove to Cape Leveque as well and pitched our tent directly on top of the cliff. We could have watched the sunset from the tent but opted to go down to the beach to have the reflection of the stones included. We went swimming the other day on the eastern side of Cape Leveque. There is even a little reef so we went snorkelling. And this time we were able to see some fishes as well as a reef shark which triggered a quick escape to the beach…

At our next stop we went swimming as well. There was a little secluded bay. We were amazed how quickly the tide is coming in… After our swim we relaxed at the beach and within 30min half of the beach was under water. There was a reef as well but we didn’t dare to go snorkelling there. The current was really strong we could see it from the ground. We even discovered a little horizontal waterfall (we didn’t fly to the big one…). At low tide we walked along the reef and saw some green and blue corals as well as some mussels.

Broome’s northern beaches are a good spot as well especially as there is free camping and just 10m to the beach ;-) we had to go there. We went swimming, boggie-boarding, read a lot, saw some crabs and watched the eagles flying above our head. Of course we watched the sunset and the night sky for stargazing.