2 July – 3 August 2023

After our quiet night at Whim Creek, we arrived at Cleaverville, a nature based camping area located 20 minutes north east of Karratha. Our site has been booked for quite a while as this is where we were always going to be catching up with Lyn & Rowan (Pete’s mum & Dad). As it turns out, our site has spectacular uninterrupted ocean views. We watch the water come and go along with the setting sun each day, something I still have not tired of. The weather was phenomenal. Most days reach high 20’s to low 30’s. The winds are, for the most part, mild and cooling. This is usually a really busy camp spot with many people returning year after year escaping the cold winter weather of the south west. This year however, we are told it is rather quiet. We estimate only half of the 142 sites are occupied on any given day. There are plenty of squawking seagulls and the cutest little quail type birds running between camp sites. They don’t seem to fly, but run one at a time out of a bush to the safety of the next bush. It might sound boring, but is actually very funny to watch. The country side is quite pretty, with green rugged cliffs and iron ore laden hills meeting the rocky ocean below. Wildflowers are everywhere at this time of year with Sturt Dessert Peas, Mulla Mulla and the sweetest little blue flowers (not sure what they are) all in abundance.

We did a lot of fishing at a few different spots over the area. Cleaverville Creek provides one of 2 spot for people to launch their boats, where they can fish and crab in the creek or out the mouth to the ocean. Some people were traveling up to70km a day in in their little boats in pursuit of big fish (not that they needed to) around the islands off the coast of Karratha, the Burrup Peninsula and Point Samson. Lyn & Rowan mainly fished the creek, catching mangrove jack, cod, blue swimmer crabs, mud crabs and blue line emperor. We stuck to the shore catching garfish (our new favourite fish), whiting and squid. Pete was super excited to be able to get back in the water to dive, check out the coral and spear some fish. He managed to get out a couple of times and brought home nice size bluebone and queenfish along with tales of missed painted crayfish. We took a few trips into Karratha to restock on water, food, fuel, firewood and even managed to have a nice pub meal. Other than that, we just enjoyed the time to sit, fish, catch up and relax.

We spent a total of 3 weeks at Cleaverville and were able to spend some quality time with family which is very precious these days. As we head closer to home and to the cold weather we next head inland along the Great Northern Highway and into Karijini National Park for a week to explore some more uncharted spots (uncharted by us I mean). Hopefully the weather is warm enough to swim but not too hot to hike.