Smidt Aussie Adventure: Exploring the Dampier Peninsula

extracting a pearl

We had a wonderful week enjoying the Dampier Peninsula north of Broome. On our way up we did the second part of our Pearl tour at the Willie Creek Pearl farm. Here we learnt the process of how pearls are made. We learnt about the anatomy of a pearl, which was very interesting and then the girls were lucky enough to be able to extract a pearl from the shell. The ‘Mother of Pearl’ is the shell and it has so many uses: buttons, shimmer in makeup, the shiny square on the back of your credit card, jewellery, cutlery and more. The muscle, meat, out of the middle is sold at a very high price as a delicacy and an aphrodisiac .

Boat cruise to the Pearl farm

While we were on the boat cruise on Willie Creek we found out the secret for the gorgeous turquoise colour water. It is the limestone content in the water. The sun reflects off the limestone to give it this unique colour.

Beagle Bay mission church

Our next day we travelled further up the Peninsula calling into Beagle Bay to visit the famous church decorated with Mother of Pearl.

We spent the morning walking the beaches of Cape Leveque, very pretty with the red sandstone cliffs and white sandy beach. Enjoying the beautiful weather and scenery.

Cape Leveque

shark feeding

Our afternoon was spent at One Arm Point, which is an aboriginal community. We arrived at the boat ramp to find sharks swimming in the shallows waiting for the tide to come in so they could eat the turtle guts that the aboriginals had left there. Apparently this is common for them to catch the turtle and clean and gut it at the boat ramp to feed the sharks. We were quite impressed to watch the sharks grab the food and take it to the rocks to eat, and of course there were a few fights amongst them for the food. Then we were entertained by some whales just off shore playing around and jumping out of the water. The calf was magnificent when it came right out of the water. We could hear the loud thump on the water as their tails hit the water. It was just magic to experience.

whale watching

Crystal Clear waters of One Arm Point

Sunset from our camp

We spent four wonderful days camping at Middle Lagoon. Our site had beach and sunset views and the weather was gorgeous. We caught up with Jason, Val, Sam, Nathan and Ryan again, another travelling family who we first met at Airlie Beach. The kids had a wonderful time together riding boogie boards, fishing, playing in the rocks, making sandcastles and even doing some schoolwork together. We did the first of our ‘sea’ fishing in the boat for the trip. The girls did great with the fishing. Kate caught 2 x Mackerel 65cm and 101cm and 1 x Barracuda 85cm. Emma caught and absolute monster, after about 15 minutes of holding and winding this fish in Emma gave the rod to me and of course I lost the fish right next to the boat, it was a Mackerel and would have been 150cm at a guess but very round. It was disappointing to fight so hard for the fish and not land it in the boat given the size and strength of this fish, but at least we got a close up look of it. Well done to the girls for their wonderful effort with the fishing. Mum and Dad were just there for moral support because we did not catch a thing. I think the highlight though for the girls out in the boat was following a pod of dolphins. They were playing and swimming with the boat, a magnificant experience for us to have, especially when the girls were leaning over the front of the boat and there were the Dolphins swimming under their noses.