The Ward Murray Family Adventure 2014

Middle Lagoon (3 nights)

Heading north from Broome to the Dampier Peninsula involves a driving on an unsealed road for the first 90km or so. When I say ‘unsealed’, it is not what we know as ‘unsealed’ in NZ, it is actually just sand on top of compacted soil, corrugated, rutted and dusty as. In some parts it looked like a dry drainage channel and when another vehicle approaches you both have to deal with some challenging super-elevation. This was the most demanding road we had encountered so far and we headed north with trepidation as we watched other travellers changing tyres and one chap waiting with his boat trailer that appeared to have broken in two. The road was littered with shreds of tyre rubber, hub caps, engine hoses, plastic mouldings, tie downs, water containers and the occasional deserted vehicle. We felt relieved we had purchased another spare tyre in Broome and checked the Patrol over including an oil change. Anyway we made it to where the seal started and then not far up the road we turned into the Middle Lagoon access road and faced another 30km of similar ‘unsealed’ road. But it was truly worth the effort!

John on the 'unsealed' road

The Middle Lagoon camping ground was a bit hard case but there was a cute little beach about 100m from our camp site and truly beautiful. We faced west so had a stunning sunset every night. The sea water was much warmer than at Broome and luckily we had got that snorkel gear as there were some nice spots to see some colourful fish, John and Leon saw a massive string ray! Leon tried out his fishing rod for the first time, no beginners luck.

It was good to be able to have campfires again (more stew!) and we had one night around our fire with Troy and Jacky, a young couple from Melbourne who entertained the boys and vice versa. In a neighbouring bay there was a café called Whalesong, someone had told us about earlier on the trip so we checked it out to find some of the best smoothies we have ever had.