Cape Leveque is at the northernmost tip of the

Dampier Peninsula The Dampier Peninsula is a peninsula located north of Broome and Roebuck Bay in Western Australia. It is surrounded by the Indian Ocean to the west and north, and King Sound to the east. It is named after the mariner and explorer William Damp ...

in the Kimberley region of

Western Australia Western Australia (commonly abbreviated as WA) is a state of Australia occupying the western percent of the land area of Australia excluding external territories. It is bounded by the Indian Ocean to the north and west, the Southern Ocean to th ...

. Cape Leveque is (via the Cape Leveque Road) north of Broome, and is remote with few facilities. Nevertheless, the Cape's sandy beaches are attracting an increasing number of visitors. cape-leveque-west

The lighthouse was commissioned at Cape Leveque on 9 August 1911. Its

light characteristic A light characteristic is all of the properties that make a particular navigational light identifiable. Graphical and textual descriptions of navigational light sequences and colours are displayed on nautical charts and in Light Lists with the cha ...

is a group of three flashes that occurs every twenty seconds whereby the light source emits from a focal plane of . The lighthouse marks the western entrance of

King Sound King Sound is a large gulf in northern Western Australia. It expands from the mouth of the Fitzroy River, one of Australia's largest watercourses, and opens to the Indian Ocean. It is about long, and averages about in width. The port town ...

. Cape Leveque was a camping ground for ancient nomadic people of northern Australia and is probably still being used today. Their huge

midden A midden (also kitchen midden or shell heap) is an old dump for domestic waste which may consist of animal bone, human excrement, botanical material, mollusc shells, potsherds, lithics (especially debitage), and other artifacts and ecofact ...

s overshadow the small caravan park resting on the shores of the Indian Ocean. Wild turtles and a multitude of sea birds nest on the shores and collect seafood off the exposed rocks at low tide along the shore down the coast to Broome in the southern part of the peninsula.

Humpback whale The humpback whale (''Megaptera novaeangliae'') is a species of baleen whale. It is a rorqual (a member of the family Balaenopteridae) and is the only species in the genus ''Megaptera''. Adults range in length from and weigh up to . The hump ...

s come to give birth in the area, and rest and play among the sheltered islands off the

. The

traditional owner Native title is the designation given to the common law doctrine of Aboriginal title in Australia, which is the recognition by Australian law that Indigenous Australians (both Aboriginal Australian and Torres Strait Islander people) have rights ...

s of the area are the

Bardi people The Bardi people, also spelt Baada or Baardi and other variations, are an Aboriginal Australian people, living north of Broome and inhabiting parts of the Dampier Peninsula in the Kimberley region of Western Australia. They are ethnically cl ...

William Dampier William Dampier (baptised 5 September 1651; died March 1715) was an English explorer, pirate, privateer, navigator, and naturalist who became the first Englishman to explore parts of what is today Australia, and the first person to circumnav ...

's description from off Cape Leveque on 5 January 1688 reads: "This part is all a low, even land with sandy banks against the sea ... the points rocky and so are some of the islands in the bay... The soil is dry and sandy, destitute of water, except you make wells, yet producing divers sorts of trees."Lee, I., 1925. Early Explorers in Australia From the Log-Books and Journals In January 2015, the locality recorded rainfall in excess of .

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Meteorological information

{{Authority control , additional=Q1034447 Leveque Lighthouses completed in 1911 Lighthouses in Western Australia Kimberley coastline of Western Australia 1911 establishments in Australia

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