Brain Haemorrhage Inducing Jellyfish.....

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We wake to the news that the number of new COVID cases back home has gone down over night. This sounds promising... well it did until we found out that it had gone down by a whole one, from 80 to 79. After days of indecision we decide that today is the day we need to work out what we’re going to do and when we’re going to do it. After much further debate we opt for staying here in Broome for another five days and then going home. The only risk now is a case suddenly turning up in Western Australia in the next five days and us getting locked up up here. But hey, they haven't had a case for months now so we’d need to be pretty unlucky.

We head off again to Cable Beach and set up shop on some sun lounges under an umbrella. As we go for a dip I can’t help but notice one of the lifeguards dressed from head to toe in black rubber with “Stinger Drag” emblazoned on the sleeves. He’s dragging a net backwards and forwards through the water across the supposedly safe swimming area between the flags. He says he’s trawling for stingers, something he tells me they have to do at least twice a day. I ask him nervously if they ever catch any. He says they do, but only the less harmful ones. I wonder what his definition of "less harmful" might be. I know that the really dangerous ones can leave you dying in agony, so something only slightly less harmful might presumably still be quite bad. And anyway, why is he dressed like that if there’s nothing to worry about. I watch on as he empties the contents of his net into a plastic bucket on the beach. He then examines the bucket carefully to see what he’s caught. There's clearly nothing big in there, but he’s sifting the water through his fingers as if he’s looking for something almost microscopic. I've heard about the Irakundji Jellyfish. It's one of the smallest and yet most dangerous species on the planet, and its stings are apparently so severe that they can cause fatal brain haemorrhages. What else can he be looking for if not that? I decide that now‘s probably not the time to find out and retreat to the safety of my sun lounge.

We watch on as the lifesavers set up two flags in front of us with “Dash for Cash” written on them, and it looks like they might form the finish line for a race. They then bury some wires in a loop under the sand around the flags, and connect the two ends to a small black box with an aerial sticking out of it. We assume they’re not planning on blowing up any undesirable participants as they cross the finish line, so conclude that this must be some sort of device to record the runners' times. It must be a serious race; the timing setup looks like it belongs in the Olympics.

We head off for our now obligatory walk along the beach to watch the sunset. We've been used to seeing crabs, shells, seaweed and driftwood on past walks, so we’re perhaps slightly surprised to come across a red capsicum lying all by itself down near the waves. It looks cute and stands out against the vast expanse of white sand, but the beach is virtually deserted so we’re starting to wonder where it might have come from. A few metres later we come across another one. There’s no obvious sign of an overturned vegetable delivery truck anywhere in the immediate vicinity. Issy decides that one of the capsicums looks photogenic so spends a few minutes setting up her shot. What she possibly hasn’t noticed is that it's lying right in the middle of the "Dash for Cash" racetrack, and she’s about to get trampled by the lead pack of runners. That was close. Deserted beaches are clearly more dangerous than we might have previously thought.

We get back to our room to the news that there have been two COVID cases in Western Australia today. Aarrggghhh. Well I suppose there’d be worse places to get locked up. That said our hotel is very pricey, and there won’t be too much left in our bank account if we have to pay to stay here for a couple of weeks of quarantine. I wonder what happens if you can't afford to pay for your "mandatory" quarantine. Hopefully we won’t get to find out.

We head into Chinatown and dine at the same Indian restaurant that we ate at a few days ago. The food is excellent. As we’re about to leave we’re approached by a middle aged indigenous man who’s clearly been hitting the bottle a bit too hard. He asks us for money for cigarettes and when we say no to that he asks us if he can have some of our leftover food. This is incredibly sad. A large chunk of the indigenous population here seems to be completely outcast from the rest of the society. We heard a large rowdy and clearly very intoxicated group screaming insults at each other at the Town Beach a few days ago, and there always seem to be similarly affected groups hanging around Chinatown at night. If there was an easy answer to this problem I’m sure someone would have found it by now, which just makes it all the sadder.

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