We have a few things planned in Broome next week but the thought of hanging around in one place for over a week was more than Nina could tolerate so we decided to take a little excursion to Cape Leveque about 200km north of Broome. The peninsula that is tipped by Cape Leveque is all aboriginal land and hence is very lightly inhabited but non the less is a very popular tourist destination.

Our first stop was the village of Beagle Bay whose only tourist attraction is a small chruch where the alter and other internal decorations are composed of Mother of Pearl. This turned out to set the stage for the remainder of the day as our next stop was Cygnet Bay Pearl Farm, a working pearl farm that is also a tourist business offering tours of the farm as well as other excursion.

We did not know it when we arrived but we would spend the remainder of the day at the pearl farm. Nina took a 1 hour tour of the farm and came back with a long story about how the family that owns the farm learned how to produce cultured pearls and she also witnessed the opening of an oyster that yielded a $2761 pearl.

Following the farm tour we took a boat excursion to Waterfall Reef. This part of the Kimberley Coast is subject to very high tides (up to 9 meters or over 35 feet) and in places the moving water is restricted by islands and reefs which results in spectacular whirl pools and water falls as water trapped behind an obstacle tries to exit to or enter from the ocean.

An interesting aspect of the boat tour was a vessel the staff called Sea Legs, as you can see in photo 6, it is an inflatable that has retractable legs with wheels that are powered by hydraulics so that the vessel can travel on land and sea.

We camped the night at a beach side bush camp called Gumbanan and arrived there just as the sun was setting.