Day 44: A Look around Lombadina and Cygnet Bay Pearl Farm

Whilst in it Sunday, some parts of the Lombadina community are functioning. The campground office is open, as is the craft centre, although half an hour later than advertised. The shop was not open when we went to have a look, despite advertising it is open on Sunday from 9 am.

We are probably too early, but are heading off to Cygnet Bay later this morning to tour the Pearl Farm.

The store should be open tomorrow

The medical clinic

Christ The King Church

There are a few colourful murals in the vicinity of the school

The school looks very new, modern buildings, a large canteen that appears to serve breakfast and lunch  for students and an undercover basketball court.

Some of the school buildings

 

Undercover Basketball Court

The community also has it's own bakery which has a wood fired oven and has been operating for 25 years. Tomorrow is a baking day, so we hope to get some fresh bread.

On the way back to our van we noticed the craft shop had opened, so went in for a quick look around. Not surprisingly, a lot of the handcrafts are based on using the pearl oyster shell and trochus shells. They also had some Lombadina branded merchandise.

I bought a fishing shirt and we moved on. We have booked a tour at the Cygnet Bay Pearl Farm for 11.30 am, so need to get on our way.

Just past the Cygnet Bay turnoff is the end of the bitumen road at the Ardyaloon Community. As it is only a couple of km out of our way we decide to go and have a look. It is quite a large community with basic needs catered for. Like all the communities here if you want to look around you need to go to the community store and buy a day pass. We just drove in and out, heading back to Cygnet Bay.

A few km of red dirt off the main road, we arrive at Cygnet Bay Pearl Farm, Caravan Park and Restaurant complex. It is busy, as a number of tours are run from here and the caravan park is quite large. The road in is a bit lumpy with large water diversion mounds across the road at regular intervals along the way.

Tourists waiting for their tours 

A boat tour is leaving before our pearl farm tour and participants are loaded onto a Sea Legs inflatable which then drives off down the road and into the bay'

We go upstairs to the restaurant to get a cup of coffee as we still have around 30 mins before our tour starts.

The view from the restaurant is great, with a pool next to it for caravan park guests

There is also a nice on shore breeze making the restaurant veranda the perfect place to be in what is another hot day.

Finally, at 11.30 am our group is assembled, given a quick briefing and we are off to receive the first part of the tour presentation in the old school house.

It is a fascinating story about true Australian "have a go" mentality. It is Australia's oldest pearl farm, established by Dean Brown, at the onset built on the mother of pearl industry, which evolved into pioneering the Nation's cultured pearl industry in the late 1950's. It was the first farm in the World to succeed producing cultured pearls without Japanese involvement. The farm has produced the finest and largest South Sea Pearl in the World at a diameter of 22.24 mm. They are now technology leaders in the field of cultured pearls, still a family company run by the 3rd generation of the family.

The tour is excellent, from the initial presentation on why this is the best location to the history of pioneering of the cultured pearl industry in Australia. As far as the location goes, this part of the WA coast is home to the World's largest pearl oyster.

Our Tour Guide

An illustration of the difference of the WA Oyster and the NSW Pearl Oyster from the Hawkesbury

This is the pearl oyster from the Hawkesbury

A bit of a diversion after the historical presentation on the way to the hatchery to see how they now hatch oysters, with the best characteristics to try to produce the best pearls. Along the way we saw a pair of Tawny Frogmouths in a tree along the path.

Heading to the hatchery

 At the hatchery we were shown the oysters they procure from near 80 mile beach and bring to this farm to seed for the growth of cultured pearls. These oysters are roughly 3 years old when "seeded" to produce pearls which take 2 years to develop. 

The hatchery starts with spawn from oysters that are known high producers of quality pearls, but growing oysters from spawn, whilst potentially improves quality, extends the process of growing a pearl by 2-3 years.

Anyway, as part of the tour, an oyster is selected , and opened to see if it contains a pearl.

Sadly, the pearl was not of commercial quality, which means they are sold overseas to wholesalers who may have an enhancement process to suck in hopeful bargain hunters.

The finale was a pearl appreciation session which is obviously designed to make you immune to the prices these pearls command, but does a very good job of trying to justify why the price is what it is. After all it is an exhausting process to grow the pearls, success rate in getting gem quality is about 50%.

One of the larger pearls grown here this one is valued at $80,000

Our priority is lunch and we had booked a table at the restaurant. It was worth booking as we had a table on the veranda overlooking the bay. We ordered an entree platter of WA produce with mostly seafood, some crocodile and kangaroo and some calamari and green papaya salad as another share dish. The food quality was excellent, as was the venue.

It is now peak temperature, getting well into the 30's. We drive back to Lombadina having had a great experience of the past 4 hours, and ready to hide from the heat in our air conditioned van.