Isabel at Scavengers Camp, WA

“A bit of a track runs out to this place called Steep Point,” I told Tony. I was peering at the map as we headed for Western Australia.

“It’s just past Monkey Mia and it’s the westernmost point on the Australian mainland.”

We hadn’t thought much about Australia’s other extremities. Coming from Queensland, all focus tends to be on the northern tip. We were fresh from Cape York and agreed we should skip along to the western edge.

We had crossed the continent a few times but missed Monkey Mia so this time it was on my must-do list. It looked easy enough to slip a little further west – about 140km – on a track and get our picture with the sign that would surely be there to proclaim we were at the west’s extremity.

Steep Point is on the headland poking into the Indian Ocean on the south side of Shark Bay – the best sea meadows in Australia and 28 species of sharks  – just below Dirk Hartog Island. We phoned ahead to book a campsite for a Sunday night.

“All the sites on top are booked out,” Ranger John said in a Pommy accent when we phoned. “I won’t be there until late but I will put your campsite up on the board.” We had no idea what that meant.

The closer we got to Steep Point the graver the warnings became.

In Denham Barry shook his head when we told him where we were headed. The road was really rough with loose sand on hill after hill, he warned, and the king waves out there ….. well, two locals had been a fair way back from the edge of the cliff last year when a wave reared out of nowhere and grabbed them, throwing them to the ground and breaking bones.

He shook his head again when we told him we were going in a motorhome. “A hell of a lot of 4WDs get bogged out there,” he said before mentioning he had never actually been over the road and had always gone to the area by fishing boat.

Lia the Kiwi dolphin handler at Monkey Mia said the Steep Point road was the worst she had ever travelled. She told us another horror story about the winds and king waves at Steep Point.

A year ago six blokes were fishing on the cliff with two spotters. A king wave unseen by the spotters swept them off the cliff. One died; the others were in the water about four hours until rescued by helicopter.

We headed for Steep Point still unsure what to find, although Tony’s interest was heightened by references to fishing. I secretly hoped to see a king wave. From a distance.

An easy run took us past the restricted Useless Loop Road leading to the solar salt mine run by the Shark Bay Salt company. The mosaic of drying salt fields is reckoned to produce the finest table salt in the world.

Its intriguing name comes from French explorer Henri-Louis de Saulces de Freycinet, who dubbed the area Havre  Inutile or Useless Harbour, because he believed the inviting harbour to be entirely blocked by a sandbar. It wasn’t, but the Useless name endures.

Shadowing the buffalo bream

Now the mining company at Useless Loop wins awards for helping save endangered animals, especially the burrowing bettong.

Isabel sailed over the corrugations people had warned about and easily climbed over the sand dunes that have a reputation for sucking in 4WDs of all descriptions. We cheated a little on lowering the tyre pressures: 20psi was stipulated but Tony stopped at 30.

We found the ranger camp and peered at the blackboard. It said Ranger John had gone to Useless Loop. We figured we were the Batts at Scavengers. We wondered at the significance of the camp name but it turned out to be a super site inside the bay with fine white sand and cornflower water at the door.

We had intended staying only one night so we could go to the sign, take the picture and maybe catch a fish but we  ended up staying three. We left with some notable sized whiting in the freezer and a notable catch of fine sand blown into all of Isabel’s crevices. And ours.

Steep Point itself, further on than Scavengers, is a barren piece of rock with some of the best shore fishing in Australia. Gusting winds and sneaky swells are part of the deal. Spray-lade swirls can sweep around crevices and dash you into the ground or hurl you into the ocean.

Despite the stiff wind, the ocean was disappointingly well behaved when we arrived at the point. We did the photo thing, had a celebratory beer and retreated a few kays to our sheltered little campsite in the bay. A few of the boys at the “sites on top” turned up there too, taking a break from the buffeting.

We threw our lines in and watched in astonishment as fish about 80cm long, easily visible in the clear water, swam past about 10m from shore in a packed school the size of a truck. Another school swam to the right; one patrolled back to the  left – but catch one of those fish we could not. Tony tempted them all ways he could think of but they were not interested. Fortunately, the whiting were and we pulled in some of the best specimens we have ever landed.

Tony with his haul of whiting

We ploughed back over a couple of sand dunes to tell John we wanted to stay another two nights, despite the rising wind. We asked him about the schools of fish. “They’ll be boofooloo bream,” he advised. “You can’t catch them because they eat weed and if you do get one you can’t eat it. They taste terrible.”

We happily caught whiting, watched the buffalo bream (which probably gave Scavengers its name) saunter past and less happily battled the breezes that blew above 60 knots. We gave thanks that we were in Isabel and could retreat in comfort from the sandblasting, unlike the bunch of young Kiwi people two sites away. They were chilling out in little tents, sleeping bags and the backs of utes with a Kawasaki pergola that periodically disappeared.

A kite-surfing Aussie among them was unable to get his rig up, which was a good thing as we were quite sure he would disappear towards Hartog Island and maybe further afield. Like Madagascar.

Yet another sand dune to crest

A 4WD with a camper topper appeared beside us on the second night.

The topper was gone the next morning.

Despite the wind we would love to trundle over the sand dunes to Steep Point again. Apparently the winds abate in glorious weather between Christmas and April but campsites then are booked out 10 months and two days in advance.

And it’s tough to figure out where you will be 10 months and two days from now when Australia’s mainland has a couple more extremities to check out, not to mention all those interesting compass points in its heart.

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Written: Sat 01 Mar 2014
Printed: March, 2014
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