Exploring the Duke

Little Wharton

A school mate of mine who now lives in Port Hedland came to visit and in the week she was here we sure filled the time!

We drove out to Duke of Orleans Bay which is about an hour out of town. Duke of Orleans is a wide bay with the caravan park on one end and Table Top Island on the other. The island is still connected to the mainland and it is cool to stand in the middle with the ocean on either side of you.

While we were out there we checked out Wharton Beach where we swam. It has pretty dangerous surf, but there is one end that is a more protected. The day started overcast, but it cleared up by the time we went for a swim. We also explored Little Wharton where there is a small beach with rockpools down one end where we climbed over boulders to explore the pools. Round that the side the rock had an amazing tiger pattern!

A very cool rock at Little Wharton

As you do with a tourist, you drive the Tourist loop and check out all the beaches! The drive takes about an hour if you get out and have a quick swim at each spot and we finally swam at 11 Mile which is the last beach along the loop without going along the beach.

We had an early start to climb Frenchman’s Peak. It wasn’t busy when we went up, there were a few other people going up at the same time as us, but it was packed going down. There were cars lining the whole road up to the car park which was also full! The climb took us just over an hour at a leisurely pace with a few photo stops, but it is steep and not for the light-hearted. We were glad to do it first up!

Looking out towards Cape Le Grand from Frenchman's Peak

After our climb, we rewarded ourselves with a coffee at Lucky Bay which was a little windy and unfortunately we didn’t see any kangaroos. We decided to have a swim at Thistle Cove which is more protected and isn’t as popular because you have to climb over a big rock to get onto the beach. We checked out Hellfire too which was packed, it is also more sheltered by the wing and has nice toilets and a BBQ area.

One the last day we hung out at Blue Haven, where the stair climb was a bit treacherous on our sore legs! The water was gorgeous and it was nice to chill out.

In the time my mate was here we ate plenty of good food and drank lots of cocktails! I’ll eventually make it up her way!

Hellfire Bay