Cleaverville Beach

Drones eye view of camp

After leaving Bruboodjoo Point we headed further north – originally planning to stay a few nights at 40 Mile Camp and then head onto Cleaverville Beach after that. While filling up all the water tanks and jerry cans at the Devils Creek Refinery (great RO water – all you want for a gold coin donation to RFDS) we decided to head on direct to Cleaverville.

a "muddie" and me

It’s an easy 10-12 km dirt road run into Cleaverville Beach with numerous options from camping along the beach from individual sites to camping at the large shared area near the Caretaker where there are clean toilets, dump points and bins. Another reason for camping at the shared area was that there was a group of “Collie-ians” staying there who we knew from the RSL.














While we were there I had to conduct some minor repairs to “new” van – one of the high pressure pipes had chafed against the chassis and was leaking, and the inside door handle on our door broke off (while we were inside the van – had to yell to the guy in the next van to let us out). Must buy a lotto ticket as when I was trying to fix the pipe two guys from other vans came over and had spare pipe and compression fittings I needed, and when I was trying to work out how to do temporary repairs to the door – a mate from Collie walked past and had a complete spare door assembly in his van!

The Queen of Cossack

The Collie gang was going out to dinner at the Rio Tinto mess at Wickham so Linda and I tagged along – but we left early to do a bit of sight-seeing at Cossack and Point Sampson. Beaut old stone buildings at Cossack (need to spend more time there on the return trip in August) and we were so impressed  with the tiny caravan park (near the Tavern??) at Point Sampson that we booked a site for a week on the return trip south. Roast pork, crackling, pasta ragout, ice cream, ice cream, and ice cream at the Rio Mess rounded the day out nicely.

What's that bit of broomstick on the end of my line?

Now to the important part of the blog – fishing! After some pretty unsuccessful forays to my son’s secret spots (one small Mangrove Jack) we finally found a spot in the estuary that was going off every rising tide – whiting, huge bream, lots of little grunter, a couple of trevally, a small stingray and one large brown sweet lip. Linda and I scored 7 big whiting one afternoon and a sunrise session the next morning put another 60 whiting fillets in the freezer.

On the second last afternoon and evening something unusual  (for the Pilbara) happened – it rained – in-fact it bucketed down with close on 60mm – certainly settled the dust and filled up our water tanks with 60 liters of pure rain water – long showers that night.

The secret ledge Jack

Planning to be back to Cleaverville Camp for a week in August – cant let that Estuary secret spot alone for too long.

Short video HERE