Cape Leveque
The road to Cape Leveque is sandy but rough for the first 100km then sealed and good for the rest.
At Kooljaman Retreat reception, we were allocated the nearest beach shack to the main buildings. I was a bit disappointed with this as it looked the least secluded on paper. We drove over the headland and down to the shacks. It looked pretty ordinary at first sight.
A wooden pole structure with a grass thatched flat 'roof' and walls though most of the wall thatch was missing. In the deep sand and tight space, I took ages getting the camper trailer maneuvered into a good spot. It was too hot to set up so we headed for the beach. Once we got set up however, the beauty of the spot became apparent.
The shack is on top of a low rock cliff beside the beach. Out from the headland you can snorkel over the rocks and coral reef looking at the beautiful fish. No fishing is allowed from the beach where we camped, but we could walk around the rocks to the western beach. The tides go in and out out a long way so the fishing spots changed rapidly. We landed and threw back a lot of beautiful but undersize reef fish – blue bone, baldchin gropers, rock cod. We set out striped sea perch as live bait and kept getting busted off on heavier and heavier line by what we thought were mackeral, until John finally landed a 90cm black tipped reef shark. We gave up on live bait fishing soon after that. There was NextG coverage at Kooljaman but just not in the Beach shack. Not until I raised the antenna 5 meters in the air on a tent pole. (visible in the top photo) I was able to catch up on some work and the shack was cool enough for the kids to do school work in the middle of the day.
After extending our stay to 4 nights, we left Kooljaman feeling more holidayed than anywhere else. We drove out to the aboriginal community of Long Arm Point where there is a Trocus Shell hatchery.
This is the story we were told of the hatchery:- The aboriginal community at Long Arm Point apparently move there recently from missions on nearby islands. They collect trocus shells off the reef and sell them, mostly going to italy to make buttons but also to china to be crushed as an ingredient of metallic car paint. In many areas of the world there are no Trocus shells left, and with an export volume of 15 tonnes per year, this community would have extincted the trocus on the surrounding reefs. However, a white man, Barry, worked out how to breed trocus shells and set up the hatchery. When the shells are a certain size, they are placed out on the reef to grow large, thereby sustaining the industry. For this reason, the community has poured money into the hatchery. The hatchery is also breeding clown fish and sea anemones which could be sold to the aquarium industry but these activities are reportedly viewed with suspicion by the community. It also has a few turtles rescued form the reef and other fish for interest and possible commercial breeding. We enjoyed the very informative tour and got to feed the barramundi.
New birds- Sooty oyster catcher, Sanderling
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