Thursday 20th June 2013 – Middle Lagoon

On the road reasonably early this morning to drive to the tip of Cape Leveque.  Our first stop was One Arm Point where we had an appointment to visit the trochus hatchery and aquaculture centre.  Apparently they used to export a lot of the trochus shells to Italy but the bottom has fallen out of that market because of the European Financial Crisis.  Things are pretty quiet until they find a new market.  At the moment they have the tanks full of many of the fish species found in the area.  We were shown round by a young German guy who was working at the hatchery.  It was all very low key but fascinating just the same.  Our guide certainly enjoyed what he was doing which made all the difference.  The speed of the tide here was amazing.  You could certainly see how the horizontal waterfalls might be just looking at this tide.  The hatchery is run by the Bardi people and they had a stall of polished trochus shell and jewellery.  We bought a shell and a t shirt.

Just back down the road is the Cygnet Bay Pearl farm.  The oldest cultured pearl farm in Australia (they advertise) but I’m not sure how long it has been open to the public.  Certainly the café all looks quite new.  The food was delicious (but a little light on – I would expect more than 2 prawns in a calamari and prawn salad).  Jill had a g/f bruschetta which included some pearl meat followed by a very nice pinacoleda type drink.

We made a quick call to the Kooljaman Wilderness Camp on the cape.  Much more up market (and commercial) than middle lagoon but also quite crowded in the camping area. It was then on to the community of Lombadina where we paid our $10 for our permit (something one needs to do when visiting any of the communities) and had a wander.  Visited the church built by an offshoot of the Beagle Bay mission – built of corrugated iron, with a roof built from mangrove timbers lined with paperbark.

Back to Middle Lagoon where we invited our neighbours Jeff and Sue from Perth over for nibbles and drinks.  While we were enjoying that Al turned up with two fish, a quite large Silver Perch and a smaller Spanish Flag.  It was all hands on deck for a while – chasing some wood for the fire, cleaning the fish, putting on sweet potato, preparing salad but it wasn’t too long before we had enough coals in which to cook the fish – delicious.  Thanks Al!