Goombaragin
All the land on the Dampier Peninsula north of Broome is
owned by Indigenous people who live in Communities.
Each community is a family, sometimes small, sometimes large.
The exception to this is the Cygnet Bay Pearl Farm, which is owned by a
white family who settled in the area in 1946 and started pearling.
Some communities have started sharing their piece of
paradise with tourists while others prefer to keep to themselves.
Our favourite sunset spot
One of the Goombaragin beaches
Goombaragin is a tiny community of only 3 people and
Kathleen is the only Indigenous person within this community.
Her partner John and his son Jack are from the Sunshine Coast where
Kathleen and John met. She is
intelligent and extremely well spoken having worked for a WA Minister of
Parliament, and is involved with various committees to help the communities on
the Dampier Peninsula.
As well as 3 luxury cabins, Goombaragin has 2 camping sites
and John had booked us into Site 1 overlooking the red escarpment and sweeping
beaches. We know from previous
trips up here that the roads into the local communities are quite narrow, but
John assured us we’d have enough clearance to get our caravan in.
Not quite John! Once we’d turned off the main dirt road, the next 10 kms into Goombaragin was spent pulling trees away from the side of the van, while the 2 bikes on the car collected an assortment of branches and leaves.
John greeted us and showed us around, walking to the best
sunset viewing spot and pointing out the culturally significant area Kathleen
wanted us to avoid. We respected
her concern, although it seemed a pity because the views from that outcrop would
have been sensational!
Access into our campsite was an obstacle course and if we
had been able to turn around, we probably would have left.
John frantically pulled down branches and ran to get his chainsaw and
ladder, chopping limbs down to clear a path for us.
It was 35°C and frustrating work dragging boulders and branches away, but
eventually Alan managed to reverse into our campsite, and the next morning we
heard the chainsaw again with John and Jack chopping more trees back so we could
get out when we left.
Our Campsite
Our say at Goombaragin was idyllic, and every day was spent
wandering up and down the beach, scrambling over rocks, and watching another
spectacular sunset. Jack kept us
supplied with Blue Bone and Spanish Mackerel from his spear fishing outings so
we left Goombaragin with more than we started with.
16 year old Jack with his 1.45 metre Spanish Mackerel
Enough fish for 2 of us for dinner
One cabin had a National Parks guy staying, who was up here
to remove a saltwater crocodile from the Cygnet Bay Pearl Farm.
When he returned in the afternoon we wandered over to his ute to discover
a live 3 metre crocodile in the back.
Its snout was strapped up with Gaffa tape and the body wrapped up in a
dolphin bag (used to rescue beached dolphins).
His whole tail was exposed so we took turns lifting it up and patting it.
Alan and I wondered about the return journey to Broome for the poor croc,
being thrown around on the awful corrugations of the Cape Leveque Road,
eventually being dropped off at his new home at the Malcolm Douglas Wildlife
Park.
Middle Lagoon
We planned to spend a week at Middle Lagoon, only 25 kms
away and had booked “The Lookout”.
It’s the best location overlooking the lagoon with our own shade shelter made
from palm fronds. We could watch
the Spring tides coming and going (8 metres) and any beach activity.
It’s the only site with power and water and isn’t exposed to the wind and
dust like the campsites on the escarpment, or buried amongst the trees with no
water views.
"The Lookout" at Middle Lagoon (Our bikes are wrapped in a brown tarp to protect them from the weather)
This guy was a slow learner. The night before he came back at low tide in the dark, trying to pick his way around the reef.
The tide comes in so fast his car was almost washed away then, and he's having another crack it now.
Behind our van is one of the community houses which has an
assortment of kids, Mum & Dad and Grandma.
The kids have an idyllic lifestyle and if they’re not at school they’re
playing marbles, swimming and spear fishing, either with traditional spears or
spear guns.
A couple of the local kids waiting to take a photo of a goanna under our van.
One of the beautiful Middle Lagoon girls.
The Middle Lagoon kids go to the Catholic school in Beagle
Bay. The attendance rate is only
85% and English as a 2nd language is a struggle because although the
kids can speak English, they can’t write or spell.
For whatever reason nobody went to school on Friday and the kids spent
their day swimming at their beach and playing with the dogs.
The kids get picked up by the school bus at 7:00 am, and
don’t get home until after 4:00 pm, so it’s a really long day.
All roads into and out of each community is corrugated red dirt, so it’s
a hard run in the school bus every day.
The dogs wait for the bus in the afternoon and as soon as the kids get
changed, they run down to the beach for a swim.
It’s lovely to see the dogs here are well cared for and
healthy, as it's unusual for Aborigines to pay any attention to their dogs.
John from Goombaragin recently rescued a neglected dying puppy from One Arm
Point and have given her a new, happy life with them.
We were out in the boat each day, some days battling
rolling waves and other times cruising through a millpond.
We didn’t catch anything to eat, but neither did anybody else which is
always encouraging. It’s whale
season up here and we came way too close to a humpback whale and her calf when
they popped up out of the water just near the boat and the mother breached right
in front of us. Amazing!
We decided to go for an excursion to Cygnet Bay Pearl Farm
for lunch, but first had to drive 35 kms of red dirt corrugations from Middle
Lagoon, then another 70 kms of tar up the Cape Leveque Road.
Lunch was lovely and very civilised sitting in the shade on the deck.
We drove further into One Arm Point which is a fully serviced community with supermarket, school, petrol station and the most spectacular beach.
Schooling is a constant battle, and on the noticeboard
outside the supermarket was a list for parents to try and encourage their kids
to go to school:
1.
Make home as boring as possible so the kids don’t
want to be there. Take away the
XBox, iPads, DVD’s etc.
2.
Set the alarm clock for 1 hour before the kids
have to go to school. Put the clock
on the other side of the room so you (the parent) has to get out of bed to turn
it off.
3. Reward the kids for going to school (!?!?!) Take them fishing, play a game with them etc.
Some communities up here are dry while others allow
alcohol, although the closest grog shop is Broome, 220 kms down the road.
Like most places in the world, Friday is a celebration of the end of the
working week so the families got together and had a few beers and wines.
The difference is that nobody really works much, and Grandma was out
first thing in the morning raking up the empty beer bottles and other debris
lying around from the night before.
Unfortunately our time up on the Dampier Peninsula finished all too soon and we agreed that next time we’d spend longer. It’s the most interesting, spectacular and fascinating place, and our favourite destination in the whole wide world.
Our 25 km drive from Goombaragin to Middle Lagoon
Where we went in our little boat.
We decided to fly Bailey from Sydney to Broome to join us for our trip home and he's due to arrive on Monday. We're sure he'll love the travelling lifestyle and can't wait to take him for his first sunset on Cable Beach, and fish and chips at Bluey's. Of course we'd love to have little Tequi along, but he's 15 now, and deaf and blind. Although he's happy at home, it would be distressing for him in unfamiliar surroundings.
Once we get back to Broome our only option is to head towards home. It’s going to take us a quite a few weeks, but we can’t go any further north. We're as far away from home as we can possibly be, so it's all south from here.