Day 60 Dampier Peninsula

Today we drove to Cape Leveque which sits at the far northern tip of the Dampier Peninsula, about 200 kilometers north of Broome. Driving through three Aboriginal communities such as Beagle Bay, Lombadina, and Ardyaloon (One Arm Point) and also stopping for lunch at Cygnet Bay Pearl Farm,

The Sacred Heart Church in Beagle Bay with its famous mother of pearl shell altar. This is one of the most uniquely beautiful churches in Australia. The church that took 2 years to build and then a further year to finish and decorate with mother of pearl, cowrie, volute and olive snail shells is gorgeous.

The area is home to the Nyul Nyul people who’ve existed in this harsh but pristine coastal environment for thousands of years. The traditional owners have known it as Ngariun Burr which means "surrounded by springs".

When WW1 broke out, it was decided a more permanent church needed to be built as previous ones had been destroyed by bushfires, cyclones, and white ants. Aboriginals collected timber and shells, made tens of thousands of bricks, and burned down the shells to produce lime used in the mortar and plaster.
A French Trappist mission in 1890, Beagle Bay was taken on by the German Pallottines in 1901, six years later, Sisters of St John of God arrived from Ireland to assist and began running a mission school, and in 1918 the Beagle Bay Sacred Heart Church was built by hand by the Pallottine monks and local Aboriginal people.

Beagle Bay Church gained celebrity status after featuring in the ground-breaking Indigenous musical Bran Nue Dae which later became a movie.















The road to Cape Leveque goes through another two communities after Beagle Bay. Cape Leveque is at the northernmost tip of the Dampier Peninsula. The water was moving here at such a rate with the change of the tide it was amazing to see over such a vast distance of water.








We then drove to Cygnet Bay Pearl Farm where they produce Australian pearl from it’s Indigenous beginnings through to the four generations of the Brown family who have been pearling and living here since 1946. We had lunch in the restaurant and walked to the lookout over Cygnet Bay.







As we came back into Broome we found a couple of street art paintings.