Port Smith

Port Smith Lagoon Caravan Park is 140ks south of Broome on the Great Northern Highway, then a further 23ks of unsealed red sand into the park. The park itself is on Aboriginal land and surrounded by three communities-Bidyadanga being the largest of them and the largest community in WA. Other than that, there is nothing here.

Port Smith is actually a tidal estury with a number of creeks and inlets and is subject to some pretty amazing tides-9 metres when we first arrived but it's reduced drastically now.

The variance in tides means we have to be always rethinking where we launch and retrieve the boat and where we park the car and trailer. In the first week, we had a lovely clear swimming spot, now it's a 4wd track we cross to launch the boat and the tide won't come in high enough to re-cover it before we leave.


This is the second time we've been here and it's lost none of it's appeal; in fact with less people in the park, we're enjoying it more and it seems like there is more fish around. Russ also managed to catch us a mud crab, the first we've ever caught here. He certainly made for a yummy entree!


The downside to Port Smith is the limited TV, phone and internet. We can only get very snowy ABC 1 and the internet and phone were dropping in and out until we went to town on Tuesday and bought an antenna. I've got it mounted on a surf rod and it works a treat. I don't care about the TV now I'm back in internet land!

It's a pity the sandfly problem can't be solved as easily! We spend all day doing battle with them-making sure we have enough insect repellant on, then dabbing all the bites in all the places we missed with Sting Goes. A shower after fishing aggrevates the bites, but an anti-histamine before bed makes for a good scratchless sleep. Bushman's repellant it good but I find it melts my vinyl boat seat and the grips of fishing rods!

We'll be leaving here on Monday and making our way down to Yardie Creek outside Exmouth but before we go, we're taking one more trip into Broome on Saturday to go to the first race meeting of the year with friends Jimmy and Beth. Beth promises me it's a big meeting-nearly as big as the Broome cup. They are members and we can go along with them, so it'll be a nice chance to get out of fishing clothes and get a bit tidied up!