The Tale of Two Broomes – Part 1 The Nice Broome and Stunning Cape Leveque

Whew what a lovely breath of cooler air literally and figuratively.  After weeks of hot weather, hotter walks and recently some very hot nights, then a drive through hot and very smoky conditions, it was lovely to enter Broome and find clean air and the most beautiful sea breeze.  Accompanied with beaches that were a most amazing turquoise colour we truly felt like we were in a tropical paradise.

After a drive around Broome we quickly migrated to a lovely afternoon at Cable Beach shared with a family we first met in Mt Isa (and then a number of places since).  We all amazed at being able to swim so far north in such clear warm water.  We spent the rest of the afternoon and evening playing beach cricket and finished with fish and chips with the final glow of an amazing cable beach sunset.

The next couple of days we didn’t actually do all that much.  Shopping in a proper mall, haircuts, hanging out at Broome markets, lots of swimming in the caravan park pool and all the boys went off to the Speedway for some high speed action.  We very much appreciated a few days of gentle meandering around town, cooler nights to sleep in and a good bit of relaxing.  Our Kimberly adventure so far had been totally amazing but a bit draining.  But after a few days we again left our caravan in place and went north to Cape Leveque.

Kooljaman Resort at Cape Leveque

 

WOW WOW WOW the colours of the water, beaches, rocks and sunsets are totally insane here.  We camped for 2 nights here and it finally feels like we are really getting our camping mojo together as we seem to have worked out what gear we really need and how to set up our campsite for better comfort (although the ease of camping could also have come from the fact that it wasn’t over 40 degrees as we set and packed up).

Kooljaman is an Aboriginal owned resort and really is camping in great style.  The resort has a fantastic restaurant and on our first night there had a buffet feast with live music – actually the resort was quite full as it was both school holidays and a long weekend.  We had a lovely night sitting out under the stars and the food was just really YUMMY.  All the kids played together and David and I thoroughly enjoyed the night.

We spent the next day exploring Cape Leveque but mostly the beaches near the resort as these really were beautiful and again we were assured there were no stingers and no crocs, but there was good snorkeling off the eastern beach.  We were treated to an amazing sunset on one of the most spectacular beaches we have found on our trip and returned to our campsite to have dinner under the light of a near full moon.  Again I have to say as much as I love the pictures we were able to capture here, they don’t do full justice to the colours of this place and if you ever get to Broome go that extra step and make your way to Cape Leveque, you will be well rewarded.

The Eastern or swimming beach

 

 

Eastern beach had lots of really cool rock formations down its far end

The Western or sunset beach

At high tide the blue water runs across the yellow sandy beach right up to the red Kimberly rocks

But only hours later it is a different story, yep these are the same rocks as in the above picture just later in the day.  Cape Leveque has the second biggest tides in the world.

  

 

 

Stairway to the Moon

 

We returned to Broome for its famous Stairway to the Moon.  This is a phenomenon where a full moon results in really low tides (and up here they are super low) leaving swathes of wet sand to be lit up as the moon rises above the horizon.  It is an amazing sight to behold and we missed the best part of the moonrise as we didn’t know where it would rise.  As it first came up the moon was as large as we have ever seen it in our lives and then it hit the wet sands and well lit them up.  In Broome they run night markets as well so the boys ate fish and chips, David and I had Thai.  We had met up with the family we met at El Questro making it a balmy tropical night of fine food, great scenery and good friends – we couldn’t ask for much more on our last night here (well we thought it was our last night……..)