Broome-time

It was crazy driving from Karratha to Broome in one day (750 kms) but a lot of people were doing it as the road seemed pretty busy. After only an hour or so in Broome town we felt at home – relaxed, tropical and humid as we celebrated our long day with a drink at Divers Bar next to the RAC caravan park where we were staying. It was like a 1980’s beer barn, loud, crowded and boozy. We stayed in a one bed studio which had plenty of space and a useful kitchen for self catering. The Café attached to the Caravan Park was excellent with cheap, tasty meals and barramundi steaks twice the size you would find in Perth.  

We started off the next day with no real plans but by midday we had booked ourselves into a number of tourist excursions plus another night and had re-planned our itinerary. There is certainly plenty to do in Broome and the Tourist Bureau was very adept with bookings and advice. Our original plans were to drive on into the East Kimberley and the Northern Territory, but covid quarantine restrictions put a dampener on the NT. Now, we discovered many East Kimberley businesses are not at full capacity without their usual customers flowing in from the eastern states. Hiring a 4-wheel drive in Broome was going to be difficult because of the amount of people arriving by plane from Perth wanting a vehicle. So, we decided to stick around the West Kimberley for 10 days and then wend our way south.

Broome’s Chinatown is now full of tourist shops and restaurants and its colourful history is visible in the lovely old wooden buildings with large window shutters and the little laneways. Mother of Pearl shell was a major industry in the early days with Broome supplying 90% or more of the world market once Europeans settled here in the 1880’s and realised the area’s potential. With the advent of diving apparatus, Indigenous divers were mostly replaced by Malays, Filipinos and Japanese and the town’s population became very multi-cultural. The cultured pearl farms superceded the mother of pearl market and there are about six pearl farms operating nearby on the Dampier peninsula and selling their wares in town.

We were staying at Cable Beach, about 3 kilometres away from the main part of Broome. The beach is a swimming paradise with a flat wide expanse of sand and a few small breakers, so we made the effort and swam and walked on the beach daily. The climate favours tropical fruit so to find a mango farm seemed exactly right, a mango flavoured pizza was something else. Delicious and with a cold mango lassi to wash it down. Salt-water crocodiles are native to the coastal regions of northern Australia so Broome was a natural fit for a farm and refuge for these huge, fearsome creatures. Operating for over 40 years, Malcolm Douglas Crocodile Park has hundreds, all ages and sizes. They take in injured and dangerous crocs, breed them and they care for them.

Greg Quicke is quite a well-known TV astronomer and his Astrotours are usually booked out, but we managed to get the last 2 tickets. Out in the bush away from town lights, with about a dozen powerful telescopes and a few binoculars for a couple of hours, he waxes lyrical about the solar system. Saturn and Jupiter are very bright at the moment and with the moon only a week away from it’s full glow there was plenty to see. Because Broome is 18 degrees south of the equator and skies are usually clear in the dry season the environment is perfect for star gazing and it was interesting to learn the difference in the sky between Perth (32 degrees) and here.

The next day we were whisked out to the airport for a really special trip in a small 4-seater Cessna with Air Kimberley. Touring up over the Buccaneer Archipelago, we viewed the Horizontal Falls and then up across Koolan and Cockatoo Islands where iron ore has been gouged out for over 50 years. The airport on Koolan stretches down the island’s spine and on both sides the earth falls away into the mine. On Cockatoo the mine has been resumed by the pounding waves a number of times only to be pumped out as the ore body is so valuable. From there we flew down across the tidal flats to the Dampier Peninsula and landed at Cape Leveque. A walk on the ancient beach framed by red rocks and a swim, then lunch of, you guessed it, barra at the Kooljaman Resort.   About 200 km from Broome on dirt roads, the cape is a pretty laidback holiday spot with a few pearl farms and indigenous communities. We didn’t want to risk our car on the dirt road out to the Cape and missed out on visiting the Brown Family’s Cygnet Bay Pearl Farm but flying over it was a great alternative. Perhaps next time we are in Broome?

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On our return to Broome airport, we encountered a Qantas jet aborting their landing as the westerly wind had suddenly arrived; we then had to repeat their feat when we were violently thrust upwards and to the right, but Oliver, our very capable pilot, handled it well and got us down safely the second time around. Sally who had never been in a small plane was positively buzzing afterwards.    

The last tour we had booked was a whale watching trip out into Roebuck Bay guaranteed to see a humpback. Now, we have done this before, in Southern Sri Lanka when we felt a bit cheated because the blue whales were hidden amongst the colossal container ships plying some of the busiest shipping lanes in Asia and could barely be spotted.  This time we knew why they made the guarantee, 35,000 humpbacks migrate between the Kimberley and Antarctica and travel past Broome every six months. This is a whale freeway so in 90 minutes we spotted over a dozen individuals including a couple of very pale coloured babies. Because of the “rules of engagement” with these colossal creatures the captain had to maintain 100 metres between us and the whales, although as he said the humpbacks hadn’t got the memo, they swam under the boat a couple of times. The resurgence in numbers of humpbacks since the bans were brought in in the 1970’s is astounding as it’s estimated over 200,000 were slaughtered and they were nearly extinct. We had boarded the whale watching boat moored about 100 metres off-shore from a flat broad beach onto a 3-wheeled motorboat whose wheels retract once in deeper waters, a sight to behold.

A visit to the Sisters of St John of God Heritage Centre gave us an insight into how tough life would have been in the early 20^th century as it detailed what the Sisters did working with indigenous communities around the West Kimberley. Performing extraordinary pioneering health and educational work in the absence of any real government assistance until the 1970’s, they started up a leprosarium, an orphanage, schools and paediatric clinics. Unfortunately, there was no real in-depth discussion of the stolen generation, a lot of children were separated from their parents and their tribes which caused and is still causing irreparable harm to all indigenous clans.  

A weekend in Derby was a way to see some more of the Kimberley without going too far. We drove through cattle country amidst boab trees and across the mighty Fitzroy River floodplain which can flow 15 kilometres wide (second only to the Amazon River). Derby is another spaced-out country town, it is situated on a long peninsula leading into King Sound, where the tides are up to 11.6 metres (or 36 feet) a tidal difference which means there is an enormous amount of water rushing in and out every 6 hours.. A tidal power station was proposed here for years but has yet to get off the ground. The port and town are well past their heyday when shipping and an abattoir provided plenty of employment; nowadays some cattle, mineral sands and a link to Koolan Island keep the port operational. Its obvious that few government funds are flowing in nowadays. We checked out the jetty, walked the town’s heritage trail and visited the museum situated in the Wharfingers building but there was little else to do.

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Returning to Broome where the 50^th anniversary edition of the Shinju Matsuri festival was in full swing, we made sure to attend a few events around town. Everyone commented on how busy it was, there was certainly plenty of flights coming into the airport in the middle of town but we never experienced crowds, everyone was working on Broome-time. We continued to pace ourselves by doing a couple of things each day, like seeing an arts performance, visiting an exhibition and the museum, going to Matso’s brewery, swimming every day and reading lots of books. After checking out an art gallery warehouse in an old house we purchased a wonderful piece of indigenous art from Warakurna in the Eastern Goldfields. It is quite big so we’ll have to find room for it at home.

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Now we are working our way back home via Port Hedland and the inland route and we have a date for our return to Fremantle. Our trusted house sitters, Jess and Warren, have found a rental in the difficult housing environment in Perth so we plan to get back in a fortnight.   Lots more travelling and exploring this wide and wonderful state to do before then though!

Nearly all the places we have visited we have come across backpackers working in tourism and hospitality. Unfortunately, there aren’t enough of them here in WA this year so there are plenty of jobs available for those who want to try some travel, exploring their state and doing something different.

#WanderOutYonder #Broome #Derby #AirKimberley #AstroTours #WhaleWatching