Cape Leveque

Monday 22nd June
A 6am rise ensured that the whole family was ready by 7am for pickup by the 4WD tour bus which took us north onto the Dampier peninsula. Cape Leveque is at the top of the Dampier peninsula and the road leading to it is normally flooded during the wet season cutting off many aboriginal communities.
The first part of the road, a stretch of some 90km, is unsealed and ranges from 4 lanes wide to single lane width and from freshly graded to extremely corrugated. Sections of the road were driven at walking pace and everyone got a really good shakeup for an hour and a half.
After that part it was back onto sealed road and into Beagle Bay aboriginal community where we stopped for smoko and to inspect the famous church with lots of Mother or Pearl.
From Beagle Bay we moved onto One Arm Point community where we visited a hatchery of all sorts of sea creatures but mainly shells which are polished up after harvesting.
After a bit more driving we arrived at Cape Leveque for lunch and time on the beach (picture).
On the way home we called into Lombadina aboriginal community which was the only place where a local member showed us around and explained a few things about the community.
Aboriginal communities on the Dampier peninsula are "Dry", that is there is no alcohol for sale.
The government provides around 200M$ per year for the communities on the peninsula so they are very well provided for with diesel generators, health clinics, community stores and schools. However, work is a bit scarce up here and there isn't much to do for people once they have finished their schooling or trade.
Virtually all communities are based around a catholic or Anglican church, some of them over 100 years old, as they were missionaries until earlier last century. When the missionaries arrived and brought their particular religion along with them, they had a very convincing way of converting the population to their religion: The people that didn't want to convert were taken a couple of kilometers away and shot. It didn't take long to convert the whole community.
It was certainly an interesting trip and we finished the day very tired when we were dropped back to the caravan park at 7:30pm.