Broome and Beyond

Odd. According to Microsoft’s thesaurus, to be odd can be weird, funny, eccentric or offbeat. Unorthodox or individual can be acceptable, but definitely not abnormal or peculiar! I delve into some semantics because sometimes friends and family consider me to be a bit odd at times, whereas I consider myself to be fairly normal, possibly boringly so. However I recently discovered one possible justification for my friends’ description when I discovered that I seemed to have been wearing odd shoes for at least a couple of years. I quite happily wear odd sox but never thought I would stoop to odd shoes. It is thoroughly understandable, as I always buy the same product – New Balance Model 857 size 10 extra wide. I had not noticed that while the model stays the same and is consistently comfortable, the company makes subtle changes to design and colour. I guess I have an identical odd pair back at home.

I am not sure why I am telling you this except perhaps to add a little colour to my monochrome life.

Anyway, back to our travels. We decamped from Derby for the 215 kilometre drive to Broome where we will set ourselves up for a few days. Derby to Broome is gently undulating country, clearly subject to seasonal flood, as evidenced by the constant floodways, rivers, creeks and unnamed tributaries and billabongs. We begin to understand the immensity of water that comes to the Kimberley in the wet season.
Broome is quite a different sort of town to most of the others of our journey. It has a very significant touristy feel about it with normal sorts of shops such as cafes, movie theatres, shopping malls and the like. The pavements are full of obvious tourists, and I suppose we filled that bill a bit as well. The girls certainly relished the opportunity for some retail therapy, and they bustled off with a spring in their steps and a glint in their eyes to do some damage to the finances.

We treated ourselves to a night at the movies. The Sun Theatre boasts as being the world’s oldest continuously operating garden movie theatre. I know I was keen to go as in my youth we had frequented the Roxy Gardens – an outdoor movie theatre in Leeton where I absorbed Tarzan movies, the Phantom and Abbot and Costello movies. It is a wonderful sensation on a warm evening to see a good show and to look up and see the stars. I mean stars in the sky.

We saw June Again which we all enjoyed and had a good laugh. At one point in the movie there was a roar of engines and an aeroplane seemed to surge out of the screen. It seemed very realistic. In fact it was realistic. The Broome airport is barely 500 metres away and aircraft taking off come straight over the Sun Theatre. I would have thought that having the runway approaches so close and directly in line with the town centres may have been considered a risk of some sort. We ducked our heads and it missed us.

One of the attractions of Broome is that it has a Bunnings hardware, and I think that this is the first Bunnings we have encountered in any town thus far. Rob went there just to wander through the aisles and have his “Bunnings-Fix”, and I went as I needed to replace a tool I broke. I also wanted to buy a small UHF radio we could use in the car when we are in convoy.

We spent the day catching up on some necessary restocking, washing, and prepping for a weekend side excursion up the Dampier Peninsular to Cape Leveque.

Saturday saw us driving the long straight road to the cape. It is a bit over 200 kilometres. John and Anne travelled with Rob and Pauline in their Landcruiser, and we took our little Suzuki, which, although smallish, is a gutsy little car with excellent 4WD capability. The 4WD is necessary as the roads into the settlements are narrow with deeply formed sandy tracks making navigation a bit tricky at times. The sand has been pulverised to a very fine bulldust through the pounding of countless tyres of cars, utes and trucks – and not a lot of maintenance. The Suzy did quite well, except that the stability control system got a bit confused, and lights and alarms started going off, making us feel a bit alarmed ourselves, but we could not stop, as starting again in the deep and fine sand would have been problematic. We fixed it by turning off the electronic stability system, after which we were fine.

We were booked in to stay at the Cygnet Bay Pearl Farm, where the accommodation was some nicely set up tents. These were a kilometre or so away from the main settlement through some more rugged and sandy roads. Our tents afforded some very pleasant outlooks over the clear waters of the bay. The safari tents were well equipped with large beds, a small fridge, bathrooms and green frogs who had taken up residence in the toilet bowls. I can’t imagine a more frightening environment to set up a froggy home, but they seemed undeterred.

We had a pleasant weekend at Cygnet Bay and Kooljaman, another wilderness camp on the western side of the peninsula. The restaurant at Cygnet Bay was first class, and we had our breakfasts and dinners there while we tended to lunch at Kooljaman. The Aboriginal communities are well protected up here, so while there was much we could not see, we were very happy to respect their sovereignty. We did a tour of the pearl farm which was really quite fascinating, though we were drawn into the temptation to buy some pearl product – some keshi pearls in an earring setting.

The Dampier Peninsula gives the opportunity to see the sunrise on one side and the sunsets on the other. The sunsets can be quite spectacular – I have a very unusual image below in the image gallery.

On Monday we drove back to Broome, but called into the Lombardina Aboriginal settlement, which is partly open to visitors, and actually operates some tourism activities there. Our purpose was to see the old Catholic Mission Church which is over a hundred years old, and still (we think) in use. It is a beautiful little building – quite rustic, and using local timbers, colourful banners and crosses and a lovely font using a large shell.

We are back in Broome. We have picked up four more travellers – friends of Rob and Pauline from Nambour. We will have another night at the movies on Tuesday, this time to see Dream Horse. We are well-prepared for the airplane scene!

We are at the halfway point of our travels. We have seen some amazing country and we have so much more in store. We are particularly looking forward to the Karijini National park.

More to come – thanks for joining us in our travels.