Broome Broome Broome & Working on a Pearling Boat!!!!!!!

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So after finally getting away from the oh so fun cattle station in the middle of no where after a long long night travelling from Fitzroy Crossing to Broome on the delayed Greyhound-was supposed to arrive at 2am and get to Broome at 8am but was late and instead turned up just after 5am and arrived in Broome around midday, arrived in lovely pearling town Broome which was still pretty hot and sunny but nicer than Fitzroy Crossing.

Arrived in Broome off the greyhound and checked into the Kimberly Klub a YHA hostel in Broome one of only about 2 hostels in Broome really nice hostel though YHA, busy, nice vibe and cool people etc pretty clean and cool hostel. Checked in and sorted my stuff out a bit, went for a quick look around the town, a quick dip in the pool and a quick sleep then got up for a couple of quick Halloween drinks as it was now 31st Oct!!!!!!

Spent the weekend of 1st & 2nd Nov in Broome, looked all around the town which is a really nice little pearling town reminds me of an English seaside town such as Whitstable or Hastings but nicer, all old corrugated iron roofed black wooden buildings, an old feel but modernised up, also lots of Asian feel to it with lots of Chinese and Japanese who had come over to Broome for the pearling industry. The town is pretty small but got the shops you need. It is a colourful town with red dust down the side of the roads, blue blue skies, green green grass and white white sand. Also spent the weekend working on my tan at the hostel pool and spent Sunday afternoon at Cable Beach which is the stunning Beach in Broome where I watched the sunset with a good crowd from the hostel-Mel and Chris etc.

When I came to Australia I knew you could obtain your 3 months agricultural work by doing fruit picking, working on a station, working on pearling boats and a few other ways, having done 2 out of the main 3 I did think it would be nice to try and experience the pearling as well. But I’d heard the season was pretty much over and that there wouldn’t be much work on the pearling boats in Darwin or Broome. But by asking around I met a few people at the hostel that had already or were working on the pearling boats and quite a few people that had just got jobs to go out with one of the companies. So I got the names and phone numbers for a few of the main pearling companies in Broome and over the weekend called them all and left messages on the answer phones. The main companies being Paspaley Pearls, Willie Creek Pearls, Blue Sea, Kailis and Clipper Pearls.

Monday 3rd November I got up early to have breakfast and call the companies again as the offices would now be open but while eating my brekkie one of the companies called me before I even had a chance to call them at about 8.30am Clipper one of the companies called me to say they had had two people cancel on them and that their boats were leaving the port of Broome at midday so if I could get to their office and give them all my details etc and pack and be at the boat by 12 I could go out and work on the pearling boat for 10 days.

So without even having time to think I was running round like a blue arse fly getting myself sorted to get on a boat for 10 days to work me arse off again. It was like a whirlwind I hardly even felt like I was in Broome and the next min I was leaving Broome sailing 5 hours north up the coast to where Clippers open water pearling farm is.

Bit of a mix on the boat-aussies that had worked for the company for years that weren’t so keen on backpackers, clicky irish who had nearly done their whole 3 months on the boats so were more experienced than the beginners and the beginners being me and 5 other boys-the 3 cool London lads, Simon the French idiot and Pascel the hard working Nazi german lol!!!!!! 23 on our boat in total the Yardie Creek and 19 on the companies other boat the Winward, 18 men and 5 girls on our boat-2 of who worked inside cooking and cleaning so only 3 girls who got the joy of working outside with all the boys one of them being me obviously!!!!!

So working on the pearling boat involved going to bed at about 9pm getting up at 5am, starting work dead on 6am, sweating and being covered in seaweed, sea water, sea shit and sea lice by 6.30am and for the next 10.5 hours after this, brekkie about 9am for half an hour, lunch at 12 for half an hour and finally finishing a long, hot, dirty, horrible day of work at about 5pm, racing for the shower as only 2 on the boat, eating a nice cooked for you free meal and then chilling out watching a dvd every night-prob watched more dvd’s in 10 days than I have most of my life!!!!!! So for doing all this you got FREE accommodation (a tiny bed in a tiny cabin on a rocking boat so well worth it!!!!!) and FREE food as the nearest supermarket would be a long swim away and you got paid $150 for your 10 hours of work so not working out much per hour!!!! But hey anyway despite all the downside to this it earnt me the rest of my 3 months agricultural work to gain me a second year working holiday visa for oz which is very very good to know I’ve got under my belt so when I leave the country after one year I know I can come back here again for another year if I want to!!!!!!! it is free food and accommodation at the end of the day which is always appealing to any backpacker regardless of if the bed is naff and you don’t really want to eat loads of food but feel you should to get your moneys worth and there aren’t many jobs where you get 10 hours a day work for 10 days in a row so you can’t complain, also once you are on the boat you are there and at work and it fills 10 days very quickly. Each day went very slowly when you were working but as a whole the 10 days working on the pearling boat went very quickly. Was good to meet some more people, see another farming industry in oz, I’ve realised most jobs in oz are farming or boating jobs………I guess as a massive island surrounded by water this makes sense!!!!!

I’m also pleased to now know a lot more about how a pearl is farmed and produced etc lol!!!!!! So the pearl comes from a type of oyster-the pearl shell, companies have great big massive farms of them growing them etc, Clipper is one of the only open water farms most being enclosed, Clipper farm is about 15km long just off the coast a few hours north of Broome, the pearl shells are put into panels normally holding about 8 or 10 shells, the panels are then tied to lines each line holds 100 panels so in the farm there are basically millions of lines each with 100 panels tied to them each with 8 or 10 shells in them so if you do the maths that’s a lot of pearls!!!!!! What happens is the lines get pulled in and the panels taken off them and the lines cleaned, the panels come onto the boat where we worked and go through what I’d say is a make shift factory on a boat or the salon for the pearls as I called it as they basically come in for a wash, cut or trim, blowdry and a waxing!!!!!! Ha ha but literally the panels come in get fed through a washer machine to get the main shit off them, then they get chipped with a meat cleaver to get any shell or stuff growing on them off, then they get x-rayed to make sure the pearl is still alive, and then put back in the clean panels all nice and cleaned and waxed to protect them and then taken back out and hung back out on the lines!!!!! So there you have the farming of a pearl!!!!! Not just a pretty face me!!!!! But really this process is long, it takes 2-3 years for the pearly to develop to be a gooden, the factory process we carried out is dirty, grimy, wet and tedious and not particularly fun. There are also divers who work on the pearling boats 9 months of the year they just carry out like maintenance work turning panels that are on the bottom of the ocean etc but then once a year March-May they spend 3 months diving looking for loose pearl shells which is where they can make their money as they get paid per shell. Anyhow this experience hasn’t led me to want to spend the rest of my life in lovely Broome working as a pearler as all I see is it is a long, hard, dirty job that doesn’t appeal to me but hey what ever floats your boat……it might be the water that is surrounded by pearl shells lol!!!!!!

So Wednesday 12th November came round pretty quickly was bit of a whirlwind that whole job, I was on the boat before I knew it, my alarm went off at 5am everyday quicker than I knew it and again before I knew it we were sailing back into Broome Port!!!!!!

Got back to the Kimberley Klub hostel about 6pm Wednesday night and some much needed alcoholic beverages were consumed that night!!!!!! Christ I hardly drank on the station and then 10 days on a boat the time had come to needed to get bladdered. So I did this mildly on Wednesday then had a better shot at it on Thursday…..shot being the key word here think they were mainly black sambuca shots but def shots ha ha so after two alcohol filled nights and two very lazy hung over days by the pool I was feeling marvellous!!!!!!

Anyway so the day I got off the pearling boat I had exactly one week in Broome to get drunk, have fun, chill out, relax, work on the tan and gleam about the next 9 weeks of no work and pure travelling I have in front of me wahooooooo. Finally all the hard work and naf jobs I’ve done have paid off!!!!! So yer from 12th November when I got off the boat it was exactly 2 months to the date I fly home to England which is crazy and 9 weeks to the day until I’ll be home!!!!!

So my brilliant week in Broome entailed-alcohol, sunbathing at the pool, bit of shopping in town, a few trips to Cable Beach and not a lot else just basically chillaxin, sleeping, eating, hanging out at the hostel with people and working on the tan. Was a good well needed holiday week in Broome.

I start a 10 day tour from Broome on Thursday 20th November down the West Coast of Oz to Perth where I meet my big sis!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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