This is the story of a Great Car.
Our goal for the day was to go to Cape Leveque, at the northern end of the Dampier Peninsula. You can drive from Derby along the Derby Highway, and then, close to Broome, you turn off to the north and get there via Beagle Bay township, some dirt and some bitumen at the end. But we’re travelling with John, and that means you’re likely to take one of John’s short cuts, and this one is a long tale about a long cut. I should state now that John maintains it was a shorter distance, which is true. It was just a LONG drive with plenty of action. So here’s the tale.
About 110km from Derby, we took a track that heads north. It starts out as your average dirt road, with a smattering of corrugations, lots of dips, and a bit rocky in places. Then we went through some biggish, mushy puddles, that turned out to be rather boggy, but the Cruiser punched on through. It was slow going, and we were using two maps that had the track placed rather differently. John’s theory was that it would end up near Beagle Bay eventually.

The trees were close to the road, and the red dirt was a long ribbon through the bush. Then it got rather wet, then very wet. Then we came to a large patch of water. We got out to check the car and trailer after going through several muddy patches and decided to remove the netting that bridges between the car and trailer to stop stones flicking up and breaking your rear window.
The netting was collecting mud, so it was a good move. We also dropped the tyre pressure a bit. That helps in the mush. The water on the road must have been the width of a footy field, and extended either side of the car even further. It didn’t look too deep.
But we put the Cruiser in low range, just to be sure, and in we went. It got deeper and deeper, and more uneven. The bow wave got bigger. The mush kept on coming. Mr.Cool (aka John) showed a spec of stress. Just a spec. But if you know John – that’s saying something. We kept grinding through the mud, the trailer following obediently.
As for the boys; Harry was loving it, Ferg just wanted to see the other side. I filmed the whole thing. Everyone went quiet when we realised just how long and deep this bog was. We reached what you could loosely describe as dry land – phew! – only to see another huge patch of more water. Another football field.
No turning back now. Into the next bog, the Cruiser was grunting and groaning. It seemed to go forever. The water smelt of stagnant mud, and the wake of our waves went far and wide. The reeds were as high as the door handle, the water came up over the headlights and if we didn’t have a snorkel – we’d be toast. John and I were both scanning the “track” for trees to winch off, should we get bogged. Although we would only have winched ourselves into more water, so I wasn’t feeling too confident about using the winch.
We were almost at the end when we hit a huge hole. The car dipped down, the trailer went bang as it followed us into the hole. We lurched on out of it, then hit another hole, water splashing everywhere. The end finally arrived – and this time it was seriously dry ground. We all cheered – even John.
We stopped to catch our breath, and survey the state of the car.

We spent a good 20 minutes pulling reeds out of the suspension, the axles, the bull bar, the trailer tow bar, the trailer……etc.
But John’s shortcut had even more to offer us. The track carried on through the bush. The bush got thicker, and thicker. The trees started to overhang the road until we were driving in a tunnel. Now that’s okay if you don’t have three bikes on the roof. So we had to take it really slowly, trying not to rip the break levers off the bikes as they collected the foliage on the way. The boys got sore necks doing continual checks through the back window to make sure we hadn’t ripped a bike clean off the car. Hooray for the Thule racks. They were worth the huge price tag!

Once the thick trees started to clear, we hit sand. Serious sand. Not your Kimberley red sand, just the white stuff. But plenty of it. It slowed us down, till it stopped us completely. No big deal really. We let the tyre pressure down even more. Back into low range for a while, and we kept grinding on.

Some short cut hey?
The entire track was 120km (or 97km – depending on which of the maps you used), and it seemed like it would never end.
We did finally make the main road to Cape Leveque. It was another 65km along here, then 5km on a side track of sand to the camp ground called Kooljaman. We were excited to finally be able to set up camp and make a cuppa. It was nearly 3pm, and we hadn’t had lunch. But it wasn’t to be. We read that booking are essential as it’s a very popular place. They were right. It was full. No room at the inn.
In the end, we drove another 15 minutes up the road to a small, quiet camp called Gambanan. It looks right over the ocean. There’s not a puff of wind, and the water is like glass. The tide is rushing past, and it’s cool in the shade.
See! All good stories have a happy ending.