Two Weeks of Australia, #2 — Cape Leveque, Western Oz

Two Weeks of Australia, #2

Cape Leveque

The first thing my guide (www.pinnacletours.com.au) says when she picks me up at, yep, 7am is, “looks like we might be trying to outrun some rain today.”

Great. But, at least I’m still in the dry part of my journey. You see there are two seasons in the Kimberly region of Western Australia: Wet and Dry. No shoulder season. Usually, or should I say, typically, you can’t travel anywhere during the Wet because the roads are underwater and the rivers rage with fierceness that would give you pause, and rain pours from the sky as if an aboriginal god tipped over a pitcher. Crocs, which are all over Western Australia, roam deep inland during the Wet. But, during the dry, which is when I’d traveled to the Kimberly, you’re lucky to see a cloud, and the closest you get to rain is perspiration dripping from your nose because of the heat. The blue of the sky is unlike that anywhere on Earth. That’s what I wanted. Light and sun generally work better for making travel images than rain.

So, with nary a drop of coffee in my blood, we thunder out of Broome in Land Rover to make the three hour, 220 km drive north to the tip of the Dampier Peninsula and see the red cliffs of Cape Leveque. Within a couple of miles, we left the sealed road and were kicking up a red, dusty rooster tail from the pindan. The pindan is the red dirt that’s everywhere in Western Australia. When you see these red dirt roads from the sky, they look like blood vessels winding through the outback. And, during the wet, the road we’re on becomes a river that, in fact, seems swollen with blood. But for now, it’s dry.

We pass great expanses of wattle trees and white barked ghost gums. It looks like a place you’d die in about 5 minutes from exposure and lack of sustenance, but the aboriginals see this land, and the flora and fauna that grow here, as a great bounty. There’s food somewhere in the red and green landscape, under the dust cloud, I just don’t know how to look. Every now and then, there’s an explosion of pink, as if the land has erupted in a sudden case of breast cancer awareness. Pink, frilly, bushy flowers, which the locals call bachelor buttons, ignite the open areas with their color.

After a couple of stops, we make it to Cape Leveque, wander down to the shore and the world changes from green and red to red, white and blue where the shore and sand meet. The water seems alive with blue, shimmery, clear, and where the horizon and the sea meet, there’s almost no discernable line: just blue on blue. The white sand leads up to sandstone cliffs that look like they’d burst into flames, they’re so red. The first of the cold front pushes clouds over the beach, and my guide tells me I only have 30-minutes, that I need  to catch a flight back to beat the cold front. Thirty-minutes!!! I can see shooting here for days, each change of the light luring me deeper into the landscape. So, I shoot like a crazed monkey. I run, literally, up and down the beach. Looking for any and every shot possible. Soon my guide drags me off the beach, enticed, but unfulfilled. There are no later flights. I’m already pushing my luck to get stuck, which I think would not be so bad as there’s a wilderness camp right on top of the cliffs (www.kooljaman.com.au/).

But, I just make the flight, dreams of the landscape washing through my head, filling it with red and blue visions.

Once in flight (www.kingleopoldair.com.au), I see the sense of urgency. As far down the horizon as I could see was a dark cloud, looking like a giant wave. So, to the east I see dark purple clouds, swelling with rain; to the west, the sky still shimmers with a mostly cloudless blue. But the buffeting and rodeo ride we’re having in the small plane tells me tomorrow will bring a change. 

Where I stayed: www.pinctadacablebeach.com.au — Great, modern rooms, close to famous Cable Beach where you can ride a camel at sunset and drive your car onto the sand to enjoy sunset from your fave 4WD.

About Cape Leveque: www.westernaustralia.com or www.tourism.wa.gov.au. — Lombadina, pearl farms, Beagle Bay Aboriginal Community (famous church decorated with pearl oysters), Buccaneer Archipelago (massive tidal flows).

Where I ate: www.kooljaman.com.au — I ate a massive lunch of fresh caught barramundi alfresco with a salad and rice at the Kooljaman Wilderness Resort, which, of course, piqued my desire to stay there for a few days and explore this landscape and Cape Leveque more with my camera.

About Australia: www.tourism.australia.com — Anything and everything important to know about what travelers call, “Oz.”