Cape Leveque & the notorious road out the Dampier Peninsular.

18th July 2010
Cape Leveque,
Dampier Peninsula WA


After some shopping and filling the fridge’s and drawers in the car park, it was time to fuel up and then get together again to head out in Convoy.Cape Leveque is 210 kilometers to the north of Broome along a stretch of road that has become notorious because of its roughness and some crazy driving from the locals. It has slowly been bituminized over the past 5 years with the black ribbon stretching almost down to the Beagle Bay turn off there days. The dirt stretches don’t disappoint though with corrugations, rock, wash-aways and sand. The track is also littered with numerous pieces of metal and the vehicle parts that have managed to vibrate off the vehicles using the road. We had would down the tough dogs to accommodate the corrugations but it was still a rough trip. It was Vik’s first introduction to a serious outback road and it left her in little doubt of what she might expect in the weeks to come.


We lost John and Suze at one point waiting by the roadside for them to catch-up. Scotties tyres were giving him an issue due to slow leaks around some plugs so we took care of those while waiting opting to get the work done at Leveque rather than by the roadside. It might take a stop here and there for a bit of air but it’d be easier to take care of things at a campsite.


There have been some changes wrought at Leveque. The cliff top camp area has been reduced in size with the building of the new reception and restaurant complex. It looks fantastic. Nothing much else has changed other than the little bayside restaurant on the western side of the lighthouse having closed. We have set up in the central campsite area simply because they were the only sites we could get. Thankfully they were the bigger sites which gave us a bit of room to set up awnings. I had parked the quad and trailer over near the managers residence to enable me to fully utilise use the space on the site for the awning.


There was a bit of tyre repair work being undertaken at Camp Darling with some of the more trickier patching situations being taken care of with the new mushroom patches. It was not as successful as we would have liked so the tyres came off the rims more than once. Frustrating but thankfully it was the butter walled tyres and not the bloody Toyos. That would have certainly added a yet another degree of difficulty to the activity. It all ended well although we were all fairly dirty by the time we’d completed the necessary repairs.


As custom dictates, we spent sunset overlooking the Indian Ocean from the cliffs. A few beverages were consumed in tribute as the golden orb disappeared on the horizon and then it was back to camp for a feed of chook and salad by candle light. Very romantic.