Broome

Broome is such a great place that we extended our original stay here twice! In the end, we’ll spend about a month here which is longer than anywhere else we’ve stayed on this trip so far.

One of the things that makes this area famous is the turquoise water, the white sandy beaches and the red rock cliffs. The contrasts are beautiful.

The town itself reminds me a lot of Florida since it’s fairly flat, on a peninsula and surrounded by bays and beaches. But Broome has a very rich history. Not only have Aboriginal people lived on this land for about 30,000 years, but the town was established in the 1800s as a pearling town and to a certain extent this remains one of the primary industries (other than tourism). In the beginning, Chinese, Japanese and other Asians were brought here to work in pearling. As a result, there is a pretty cool “Chinatown” which is now full of boutique shops.

Rodeo

A few days after we arrived was the annual rodeo event. I’ve never been to a rodeo and have always wanted to go. It was a two-day event and the first day was ‘Kids Day’. The rodeo and horse events were the kid events and they had free activities for kids (and kids had free entry), so we decided to go that do instead of the next day when they had the more exciting adult events. We watched the under 10s rodeo competition where the little kids ride calves. I can’t believe how young some of the competitors were!

The kids also both tried the mechanical bull and were surprisingly good at it!

Crocodile Park

We also went to a crocodile park the first weekend we arrived. They had tons of crocs (salt & fresh), alligators and caimans at the park and nearly all of them were rescued animals. We went on a very informative tour where he fed some of the crocs.

At the end of the tour, we got to hold some baby saltwater crocs.

Gantheaume Point

At the southern end of Cable Beach, is a beautiful red rock point.

The beaches around Broome and Gantheaume Point hold a couple of secrets at low tide. One of those secrets is dinosaur footprints.

The first day we went out to the point at low tide, we couldn’t find the footprints (there are so many rocks!). But a friend of ours told us how to find them and so the next time we went, we found some!

These are Therapod footprints. Some of our friends told us that they saw Sauropod footprints in the same place, but it seems that Sauropod footprints are just circles so I have no idea how you would tell them apart from normal circular rock pools!?

Roebuck Bay

Roebuck Bay is a beautiful bay near the old town centre. The bay has several mangroves and mudflats and is the place to watch the famous “Staircase to the Moon” (which unfortunately we missed because it was on when we first arrived and we were busy socialising 🙂 ) There’s a great little museum in this area in the old Customs house and a fabulous playground for the kids.

But Roebuck Bay has a secret – it hides a bunch of bombed Catalina planes from WWII. Apparently, there were several planes sent to the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia) to evacuate Dutch people caught there in the war. Some of those evacuees were brought to Broome (since it’s so close). In 1942 while the seaplanes (Catalinas) were sitting in the bay waiting for refuelling and for the tides to come in so they could take off again, the Japanese flew over and bombed them. All 19 planes were sunk. (Here’s the link to Wikipedia if you want to read more about it.) Now, at very low tides (less than 0.5m) you can see some of them. C and I got up early one morning and trudged through the mud out to see them.

This area of Australia (Western Kimberleys) has huge tidal shifts – up to a 10-metre swing – twice per day! By the time we got back to shore, these planes were already swallowed up again by the sea.

Dampier Penninsula & Cape Leveque

One of the big tourist trips to take around these parts is the 2-hour drive up to Cape Leveque and to spend a few days camping and fishing along the coastline. Just last December they finished paving the main road up the middle of the peninsula, but to get to the coastline you still need a 4 wheel drive.

We decided to pack up the car with the tent and spend 2 nights up there – the first night in Middle Lagoon about halfway up on the west side and then the second night at the top at an old pearling farm (Cygnet Bay) on the east side.

The peninsula is owned by a variety of Aboriginal communities and you need to get permission to go into the various areas. I was hoping to see the church at Beagle Bay which apparently has an alter made out of pearl shells, but when we got to the road turnoff, there were big “No Entry” signs so we couldn’t do it. But, for those of you who are interested, here’s what it apparently looks like:

Once we turned off the road towards Middle Lagoon, we had to let our air down from the tires (we’re getting good at this now!). The road was very pretty, but deep, soft, red sand.

Unfortunately, the wind picked up the night before and it was really blowing by the time we got to Middle Lagoon. We had lunch at some picnic tables on top of a cliff on the beach and the food nearly blew away. Even the seagulls were struggling. We decided that it wasn’t going to deter us and we went for a walk on both of the beaches there and over the headland.

After our walk, it was 3pm and we were going to try to set up the tent. We figured this was going to be a nightmare in this wind. However, both kids had tons of sand in their eyes from the wind and were now crying, and our skin was literally being rubbed off from the sand whipping into us. R and I looked at each other and thought “What are we doing??”. So, we decided to call it a day and return to Broome.

Willie Creek

Because we decided to come back home, it meant that we didn’t get to do the pearl tour in Cygnet Bay. But, one of the things I really wanted to do in Broome was to go on a pearl farm tour and learn more about pearls. So, once we arrived back home that night, I booked in to do a tour at Willie Creek pearls for the next day. Unfortunately, C awoke with his eye swollen shut from all the sand in there from the day before, so we had to make a stop first at the pharmacy…

The drive to Willie Creek started on the same road up the Dampier Penninsula and a similar 4WD red sand track, but then suddenly the road changed to a white sand flat. After driving on the white sand flat, we eventually arrived at Willie Creek – a beautiful turquoise creek with white sand surrounding it.

The tour started at their hatchery where they told us how the oyster brood stock is made and how they insert a small piece of mussel pearl to start the oyster building the nacre to make the pearl. They told us about how they put the oysters into various size netting pockets and flip them over every two days in the first few weeks to make the nacre spread evenly. After a few weeks, they are able to move the oyster out to sea and let the tides do the flipping work. They can ‘harvest’ a pearl every 2 years and an oyster can grow 2-4 pearls in its lifetime.

Next, they took us on a boat tour of the creek and showed us some of the oyster nets.

After the boat tour, they provided us with afternoon tea and then we did another talk about oyster anatomy. They then brought in an oyster for us to extract the pearl. The tour guide chose K to extract the pearl. She took the tweezers and pulled out an enormous pearl! The tour guide was shocked. Normally I think they give you dud oysters to ‘harvest’. We took the pearl up to the shop to have it valued and shocked all the staff there as well! It was valued at $10,000!!! The second best pearl of the season. They brought the owner down so K could present him with her pearl. She was thrilled.

Cable Beach

Probably the most famous thing to do in Broome is to go to Cable Beach to watch the sunset. And, maybe go for a camel ride on the beach. We went down to see the sunset on a few occasions and it was spectacular. I’ll finish this blog with some sunset photos.