Broome and places nearby!

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Hello again!
At the end of the last blog, I described to you our time at the beautiful Karijini National Park. When we left there, we spent a night in a free camp followed by a night in the industrial mining town of Pt Hedland which we left as quickly as possible!
The next day we drove again through a dry semi-desert landscape then pulled off the main road and drove 6km on a dusty red unsealed road. We crossed over a sand dune and lo and behold there we found 200 caravans and grey nomads everywhere!! We had reached Eighty Mile Beach, and the Middle of Nowhere suddenly became The Place to Be!! We set up camp then wandered over one more dune to discover a most amazing beach. It was low tide and to reach the edge of the water from the end of the track required a walk of about 400 or 500 metres over beautiful clean white sand!! Usually a walk at the beach requires one to walk parallel to the water but here a long walk was required just to get to the water's edge!! Welcome to the world of north western Australia where the tidal range can reach up to 8 metres (Derby) and was a massive 6 metres here. The next day we went to the beach at the in-coming tide and saw crashing waves where the day before we had seen sand! We also realised why the campsite had seemed suddenly quiet. Every 10 metres along the shoreline for as far as the eye could see, a fisher-person could be seen with his or her rod pointing to the sky! What a sight! Sue joined the throng while my plan to swim was thwarted when the neighbouring fisher-persons informed us that a 2 metre tiger shark had been caught the day before and another was swimming up and down as we spoke! Oh well, I got plenty of exercise moving my chair back every few minutes as the tide was rushing in at such a great rate of knots!
That evening we enjoyed a magnificent sunset over the Indian Ocean, something we have done now many times from Margaret River to Broome. (In the Eastern States it is a phenomenon which does not occur because as I'm sure you all know(!!), the sun rises in the east and sets in the west. Hence, the sun rises over the water in the eastern states and sets over the water here in the west, making for spectacular sun-sets here!). Just after the setting of the sun (which looked like a soft ball of orange marshmallow), after the grey nomads had all rushed back to their vans to cook their freshly caught fish (in their dreams!), Sue and I found ourselves alone on this huge expansive stretch of beach under twinkling stars. We stood in awe at the solitude we enjoyed, something so many others in so many crowded cities across the globe will never experience.
Next day we drove 60km's and reached the Sandfire Roadhouse and where we met an unfortunate family who were travelling for a year with two gorgeous young girls. Their car had broken down and had been towed back to Pt Hedland. They were stuck there in that hot dry dusty place with a hire-car (provided by the insurance company for two days) and their van. There was nothing for the girls to do but look at a camel and a big cow with horns and to try to pat the peacocks that kept running away from them! They had been told it could be up to four weeks before their car would be repaired in Hedland as so much of the time is spent there by mechanics maintaining mine vehicles. The family were trying to work out the cheapest way to have their van towed to Eighty Mile Beach while they waited, but were quoted $1800 as the tow-truck would have to come from Hedland!! So we suggested the best option was for us to unhitch our van and tow their van back there, which we did and for which they were eternally grateful. Our reward was knowing the girls could spend their wait playing on the beach rather than chasing elusive peacocks and looking at a camel and a big cow with horns!!
The next day, about 200 km's before Broome we discovered that oil was leaking from the left wheel of the van. Sue suspected the wheel-bearing may have been 'going' and thought it possible the wheel might fall off altogether! We had no phone reception so we hailed down a grey nomad couple with a dusty car, a boat and a driver who looked like he might know stuff. He suggested that Sue could be right and that we should hobble along to the nearest station (farm). So we hobbled 80km's to Shamrock Station and were met by a pale-skinned, red-headed Irish lad who looked like he'd just got off the boat. He took us to the station manager's home and introduced us to a gorgeous 30-something year old bloke called Angus. We had simply asked to use his satellite phone to call the RAC but in the end two of the workers (Mr Dreadlocks and Father Christmas as we called them later), assisted Angus in assisting us. They were so kind. They took the wheel off, checked the wheel-bearing, declared it problem-free, re-greased it, diagnosed that some cap had been loose and put the wheel back on. They refused any offers, shook our hands and sent us on our way. So, one day, we were the rescuers and the next we were rescued. Isn't it nice when life works out like that. (By the way, we saw no evidence of a partner or kids at the farm-house, so we reckon that Angus might just pop up on future episodes of "The Farmer wants a Wife". Look out for him!!).
After a free camp that night, we were travelling along the hot road in the middle of absolutely no-where when we saw a strange shape ahead. We couldn't believe our eyes when we realised that a cyclist was heading towards us, so we pulled over to offer him a cold drink and a juicy orange!!! He cheerfully pulled over to meet us (even though we realised later we had stopped him mid-hill and he would have lost all momentum! Sorry about that!). What a cheery fellow he was! Mid-50's, lean, muscled, fit as a mallee-bull and a great adventurer. He was an Aussie who had lived in the Netherlands for 30 years and had a half Aussie, half Dutch accent! He has just spent 2 and a half years cycling from Holland to Indonesia! He told us of a few mishaps including 20 punctures so far, but the worst was being hit by a car in Uzbekistan which was driven by a 16 year old who had purchased his licence on the black market and who had never had a single driving lesson! He flew from Indo to Darwin and is planning to cycle around Australia for a year! He cycles about 100km's per day and carries all his camping supplies including dried food (the just-add-water variety). On occasions when he has needed drinking water he has simply held out his water bottle to passing cars and has always been looked after! Just like Siddhartha!
Later that day, we arrived in Broome. For me there was a feeling of elation at having finally reached this place I had so long wished to visit. In fact I realise now that in my mind the trip has always been a two-part thing: Melbourne to Broome and Broome to home! So, now we are on the homeward part of the journey (just as well as we have only 2 of 8 months to go!!).
Broome was not quite what I expected. Dry and dusty with a thrown-together type feeling. Next to a posh pearl gallery could be a falling down tin shed and while the tropical plants (planted by people) and the vast Cable Beach give it a tropical feel, the natural bush around it is semi-desert like. It has more of an outback-town feel than I expected but I suppose it should, as it is, after all, an outback town! It is totally laid-back where even the guide at the Pearl Farm and Gallery was adorned with the usual dusty red feet and thongs!
We were highly amused by the signs on the high walls of the local prison which read, "Keep Out"!!! I can only suppose that one night some blokes tried to climb into the prison to take their friends a few beers!!
That night we went to the famous 'Sun Pictures', the cinema built in 1919 with outdoor deck-chairs and which featured in the great Aussie film 'Bran Nue Dae'. We saw 'Red Dog' which is based on a true story about a Kimberley dog, so it was a most fitting place to see it!
Broome is a town with a fascinating history.
It is little known that during WW2, not only Darwin but Broome was attacked by Japanese planes and 70 lost their lives.
It is, of course, best known for its pearling which in the 1800's used Aboriginal slaves as divers, many who disturbingly were chained by the neck and forced to walk long distances out of their own lands only to die as a result of drowning or of 'The Bends". Later Japanese divers made up most of the work-force but suffered initially as a result of the White Australia policy then later during WW2 were driven out altogether. The Chinese have a long history here too. After the introduction of the White Australia Policy, the white Pearling Masters fought for an exemption to allow the Chinese divers to continue working as the Asian divers were proven to be far less likely to drown or die from The Bends than European divers (not sure why). They were exempted but allowed to continue working only so long as they lived off-shore. They failed to adhere to that but lived in a cluster close to the water's edge - an area with lots of character, known even now as China Town.
We enjoyed the annual "Japanese Festival of the Pearl" and were interested to see multiculturalism at its best with Sammy the Chinese Dragon as the primary attraction and Thai, Indonesian and Filipino food stalls everywhere. In fact, the only Japanese element to the festival that I cold see was its name (Shinju Matsuri) and the Japanese official and his wife who stood out from the very casually dressed crowd in their very formal attire which must have been very hot in 35 degrees! I imagined how surprised they must have been to see an outback Australian town in all its informal glory!
Before leaving Broome we enjoyed the vast and beautiful Cable Beach - famous for it's sunset camel trains which saunter along the beach. A sunset picnic there was a high-light as was our visit to the Town Beach where we viewed the "Staircase to the Moon". That is where, on a full moon, when the low-tide is low enough, the full moon rises and casts light upon the mud-flats and wet sand creating an image of a staircase. It was lovely and we decided to avoid the crowds on the cliff top by walking beyond the rocks far out onto the beach, though we sunk up to our ankles more than once in the muddy sand! Of course our cameras without tripods were totally inadequate to photograph a soft red moon which required a very slow shutter speed, so our photos of a blurry little red dot are not what we actually saw!! Later at the myriad of food and craft stalls we ran into an old work colleague (Maria Breier) and we chatted for ages!
During our week in Broome we spent 3 nights north of Broome on the Dampier Peninsular. We left our van in storage and headed off with tent and lilos along a sandy, corrugated 4WD track to Middle Lagoon. The area is Aboriginal land and we stayed two nights in a beach shelter right on the beach. It had a platform inside for our lilos and the walls were green shade cloth covered with palm fronds. It was about as rustic as you could find but was right on the beach and we sat in the shade of our shelter and walked, swum and fished (Sue) the whole of the next day venturing off the beach into the camp-ground only to shower and to see a man about a dog!! We cooked each evening meal on an open-fire on the beach and only put on shoes when the sand got too hot! Unfortunately by the second night the wind had picked up considerably and that night we were woken with gusts of sand in our faces and wind that I would have taken to be cyclonic had it been cyclone season! The next morning, we and all our stuff including our respective bedding was covered in sand and I reckon I must have had about 2kg of it in my hair! It really was camping at its worst! It was such unfortunate timing, though at least the front wall of our shelter wasn't half blown in as was the other beach shelter! The next morning we were offered a cabin instead (the beach shelters were really not habitable in that wind) but we headed to the top of the peninsular to stay in our tent at the Kooljaman campsite at Cape Leveque. We passed through some extensive grass-fires on the way, after pulling over unsure about whether to proceed into smoke. We proceeded cautiously after seeing others come through and others proceed without coming back! Though we saw a lot of thick smoke and even flames by the road-side we were baffled to see that the fire remained low and was slowly consuming the undergrowth and the bottom third of the tree trunks but no more. I don't know why it didn't consume the leaves on the trees and become an inferno?? Anyway, the animals were of course smart enough to get out and we disturbed numerous small dragon lizards on the road with tails erect and even a few feral donkeys!
Cape Leveque was almost as unpleasantly windy as Middle Lagoon but the beach was quite spectacular with red rocky cliffs and where the red sand of the desert merged with the white sand of the beach. It was very expensive for an unpowered site but I said to Sue that I didn't mind if it provided employment for remote Aboriginal people and allowed them to remain in their own 'country'. Thus it was disappointing to see that the 20 or so staff there were all Anglo-Australians or Korean or English back-packers!
The next morning we visited the Aboriginal community of One Arm Point which was great, particularly as we didn't see anyone with only one arm! Education is really valued there and the school is a focus of the community. The kids learn their Aboriginal language, the Elders are respected and the cultural and spiritual beliefs and practices are thriving and being passed on to the children. How heartening that was to see.
We visited a fascinating Trochus shell hatchery. Trochus shells are like turtles where the shells grow with the animal inside. They are collected by some of the Aboriginal men and the shell is polished and made into jewellery or sold as is, or is sent to China to be made into buttons for Italian clothing! It's quite a business. There are strict government controls on the amount that is collected though their cultural practices ensure sustainability. The hatchery is also involved in conservation projects and we heard about the Anglo-Australian administrator who placed a sea cucumber into a huge tank with various fish. He climbed into the tank one day for some reason and accidentally stood on the sea cucumber. Within half an hour all the fish were dead. He couldn't work out why so he called the Elders to come and give their advice. Apparently the sea cucumber when squeezed (or stood on) emits a toxin which strips oxygen from the water causing fish to float to the surface and die (so when Aborigines wish to catch fish they sometimes take a sea cucumber and squeeze it resulting in floating fish ). The Elders thought the white mans naïvety hilarious, they all had a good laugh, the mystery was solved and sea cucumbers were never put into tanks with fish again!! We saw Barrumundi Cod which we were told mate for life and when one partner is killed or dies, the other usually pines and dies as well… (and we think fish have no feelings!). We saw Nemo clownfish which apparently are all born male. Later when they mature and pair up the dominant fish turns female (evolves?!!). Apparently Barrumundi are also all born male and turn female when they mature. So the older females can only mate with males which are always younger than them!! These facts gave us all a bit of a chuckle!
From here we visited the Cygnet Bay Pearl Farm - Australia's oldest pearl farm. This was fascinating where we learnt so much about cultured pearls. I now have a fresh appreciation for their five qualities: size, shape, colour, skin tone and lustre.
When we returned to Broome, we discovered that the van park was half empty as most grey nomads have moved on as the temperature is warming up and The Wet is on its way.
So we will be off too…
Derby, here we come…
Hope you are all well.
Love from Ros (and Sue)

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Comments

[Andy]

memories and homesick
hi ros and sue, Thank you for the most colourful descriptives of your travels. It really does feel like yesterday that we were there crossing a Very similar course. We are presently in Zurich Switzerland after spending Time inUK & France. Next stop Austria, Italy,Greece, back to Italy & along coast to French riviera before. We finish up in Dubai. Will be back in oz about same time you are due back ? End oct. Enjoy the homeward stretch. Take care Andy x