Dampier Peninsula - Britz

Four nights and 440 kilometres in a loop from Broome in a 4WD camper, up the Dampier Peninsula, with pearling as the thread.

Broome was built on pearl shell and the industry has not gone. Beagle Bay comes first, where the Sacred Heart church built in 1918 has an altar inlaid with mother of pearl, and Mercedes Cove follows on a bay of its own.

Cape Leveque and Kooljaman sit at the northern tip, where red pindan cliffs drop into the sea and the camp is Aboriginal owned. Cygnet Bay comes next, a working pearl farm in the same family since the 1940s that grows South Sea pearls, runs tours of the operation, and takes boats out into the tides of King Sound, which are among the largest in the world. Lombadina closes the loop, a Bardi community running its own camping, tours and arts.

Britz supply the camper and the day-by-day plan, and the hire is priced live per vehicle rather than per person; campsites, fuel, ferries, park fees and activities are all extra, with a nil-excess insurance pack available at booking. The main road is only partly sealed and the side tracks are pindan, which goes greasy after rain and is why a 4WD is specified. The camps and communities all need booking in advance rather than turning up, and some areas require a permit. Five days is a comfortable allowance and leaves time for the tides, which are the real spectacle up here. A boat trip at Cygnet Bay on a big tide shows what an eleven-metre range actually does to a stretch of water, and it is not what most visitors expect.