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Today 154kms / Total 13807kms
Only a short stage today, so we were in the caravan park in Broome just after lunch. What a pleasant park! Trees and shade everywhere (although it makes aiming the satellite TV dish just about impossible).
We spent the rest of the day replenishing the pantry and just going for a drive around Broome to get our bearings. Finished the afternoon with fish and chips at Cable Beach as the sun set. After we got back to the van, who should we find had camped about 5 sites up but Darryl and Sandra! A pleasant convivial cuppa finished the evening.
Day 86 Broome
Today 24kms / Total 13831kms
A bit of a mixed bag today. I did some shopping for car/van bits and pieces, including trying to find a replacement screw top for the water jerry can that some lowlife had swiped from the back of the van. :-(
Sue has been suffering from midge/sand-fly bites rather badly, so we went off to find a doctor in town. The doctor she saw had only been in town about 4 months and was also suffering from them! Obviously 'Physician, heal thyself' doesn't work here. Just as Sue finished with the doc, Darryl and Sandra rang from Matso's Brewery and invited us to join them for a light lunch and beer tasting. :-)
They have about 8 beers, of which I tried both Mango and Ginger. Very nice as they both tasted like their names, but also tasted like beer.
After lunch, we went to the Broome Historical Museum. It has a very interesting section on the Japanese raid on Broome Harbour. On 3rd Mar, 1942, nine Zeros attacked the flying boat anchorage in Roebuck Bay and the Broome airfield and destroyed 22 aircraft of the RAAF, Royal Netherlands East Indies Air Force, USN, and USAAF on the ground as well as shooting down a KLM DC-3 as it was approaching from Bandung in what is now Indonesia.
We agreed to meet for a farewell dinner after watching the camels on the sand at sunset on Cable Beach.
Day 87 Broome
Today 28kms / Total 13859kms
A little sightseeing, a little lunch, a little shopping, a little siesta - it's all go here!
Broome has some very large tides. Here is the Broome Wharf at nearly high tide...
...and at low-ish tide. Today's range was a high of 9.04m and a low of 1.65m, giving a tidal range of 7.39m (24' 3"), one of the bigger ranges of the month. The photos were taken about 45 mins after high tide (top) and about 30 mins before low tide.
At Gantheaume Pt, there's a lighthouse and some incredible weathered rock formations.
130 million years ago, a dinosaur wandered passed here and left its footprints.
As they can only be seen at extremely low tides, casts have been made and displayed at a more convenient site.
Also at Gantheaume Point is Anastasia´s Pool.
Carved out of the stone by a former lighthouse keeper to allow his arthritic wife the opportunity to bathe in the clear waters of the Indian Ocean. I suspect the jumper isn't very arthritic.
The point is another favourite place to watch the sunset.
Day 88 Broome (Bird Observatory)
Today 113kms / Total 13972kms
A 'birdo' day today. Firstly, we set off to see how bad the Cape Leveque road really was, having had comments from locals and travellers that ranged from 'terrific' to 'abysmal'. We guessed that the only way to find out was to check for ourselves.
Result: More towards the 'abysmal' end of the scale than the 'terrific'. Think we'll wait until the graders have had a go at it.
Back to the real purpose of the day which was a visit to the Birds Australia Broome Bird Observatory on the shores of Roebuck Bay. This is one of the top five shorebird observation places in the world. Roebuck Bay has the greatest diversity of shorebird species of any site on the planet and around 150,000 of these birds visit annually in their annual migration between the northern and southern hemispheres. While we weren't here at the right time for the migratory flocks, we booked for an afternoon tour, then took our lunch down to the beach for a little bird spotting.
It was just after high tide and the mud flats and mangroves were starting to be exposed as well as some very interesting rock formations.
Lots of Black-Winged Stilts and Gulls with the odd Crested Tern.
Black Kite.
Whistling Kite. There was also a beautiful Brahminy Kite in the area, but it managed to avoid the camera.
Fortunately I did get another kite that rarely appears in ornithological tomes,...
... Boeing's 737-800 Kite with its highly visible red tail and wing tips in QF breeding plumage.
Some of the local gulls on the local highly-eroded rocks.
We waited for the tour back at the Observatory in their dining room done out as a comfortable quasi-hide overlooking a bird bath. Two of the most prolific species having a drink and a splash were...
...Rainbow Bee-Eaters, and...
...Double-Barred Finches.
The tour lasted for about two and a half hours and was around the mud flats of the adjacent Roebuck Plains cattle station. After such a late wet season, there were lots of shore birds in the lakes that had not yet dried out in the cattle pastures. We spent a delightfully productive, if rather muddy, time wandering around with the Observatory's telescopes.
For the birdos and twitchers out there, there were Brolgas, Grey Heron, Egrets, Glossy Ibis, Banded Stilts, Caspian Terns, Masked Lapwings, Snipe, Dotterals and a couple of variations of Ducks as well as a Brahminy Kite and a Peregrine Falcon. My telephoto lens obviously needs more grunt as everything was far too far away to do it justice. (Santa, are you listening?)
At the end of the tour while making our way back to the Observatory in the gloom, we came across a Northern Nail-Tailed Wallaby.
They're normally nocturnal, hence the very bad lighting. You can see the distinctive dark ridge down its back that continues along its tail as well as the light stripe across its thigh. This is a full-grown male and is only about 60cm (2') tall.
Day 89 Broome
Today 0kms / Total 13972kms
Absolutely nothing happened. The car went nowhere. The camera didn't get removed from the backpack. We slept in and didn't get up until 10am!
Advance to the next day, please.
Day 90 Broome
Today 14kms / Total 13986kms
Another 'read a book' day. Very relaxing. We went and had a look at the Japanese and Chinese cemeteries this afternoon.
The Japanese Cemetery at Broome (the largest Japanese cemetery in Australia) dates back to the very early pearling days in the late 19th century. Hundreds of young Japanese divers died either from the bends or from drowning. The large stone obelisk above recalls those who were drowned at sea in the 1908 cyclone. The cyclones of 1887 and 1935 each caused the deaths of at least 140 men. To give some idea of the scale of deaths resulting from the bends it is worth noting that the cemetery has the graves of 33 men who died of the bends in 1914 alone.
Day 91 Broome
Today 24kms / Total 14010kms
Getting ready to hit the road again tomorrow, so today was shopping, refuelling and generally putting 'stuff' back in its right place so we can get going at a reasonable time tomorrow.
We celebrated a week in Broome by going out to a Chinese restaurant for dinner. Due to the vagaries of street numbering here, we never did find our planned dining destination (even a local couldn't help!), but settled on a Thai restaurant instead. We were not disappointed.
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