10 Hours to Broome

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The drive to Broome was 1049km and was going to take 10 hours. Now normally I would not attempt to drive such a great distance. Unfortunately I had no choice as there was nowhere to stop along the way.
There are two towns between Kununarra and Broome; Halls Creek and Fitzroy Crossing. They are both aboriginal towns and several different people all gave me exactly the same advice of don’t stop. Now I have to stop for petrol but was told to lock the car as soon as I got out of it and be as quick as possible.
Halls Creek has been re-named by locals as Hells Crack. This is the only town in Australia that when the Greyhound bus pulls in it is met by an armed guard.
With all this is mind I was very cautious but I didn’t encounter any problems although there was evidence of trouble. Broken glass on the roads, every property has iron bars on the windows and the police carry guns!!

After a very long 10 hours I made it into Broome. It’s a small town and seems to have a nice atmosphere to it. It was as early night for me after all that driving. The next morning I was up to explore the town. This took all of an hour as the town is tiny. The town itself has a little beach which has the bluest water I have ever seen. It almost doesn’t look real. Like the enhanced photos in magazines. The main expanse of beach is Cable Beach about a 10 minute drive from Broome. It is meant to be one of the nicest beaches in Australia. I’m not sure how they define this as although it is a very large white sand beach with perfect blue waters it is spoilt by the thousands of tourists and hundreds of 4x4’s driving and parking up on the beach. Although it was very busy when I got there late afternoon the busiest time was yet to come. As I treated myself to a very large cow with some chips which filled me up nicely the car park began to fill up and the palm fringed grass above the beach began to fill with thousands more people. People who had come to watch the sun set over the ocean. I went and got my spot before having to fight for an inch and then joined everyone else in taking far too many sun set pictures. If this happens every night then there is one hell of a lot of Cable Beach sun set photos out there. I got back to the hostel and stayed up to watch the England game. Although it kicked off at 7pm in Germany it was 11pm here and 1am in Sydney (poor buggers over there). There was no point in not watching it as over 100 people from the hostel were all crammed round the TV there would have been no chance of getting any sleep. Unfortunately they won which means I have to have another late night watching the next game. Unlike England where bars stay open for the world cup over here very few do, so you can’t even have a drink and watch the game! Maybe it’s different in the larger cities.

This is my last day in Broome and being such a relaxed town it is hard to find anything energetic do to, so I didn’t. If I had the time I could spend a lot longer in this lovely little town doing absolutely nothing.

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