Broome

 

We’ve had a reasonably quiet few days in Broome. This was brought about in part by the fact that there wasn’t a great deal to do in Broome and partly by the worst bout of gastro that I’d experienced for a very long time. Just saying that I was extremely grateful for the ensuite in our van.

Our caravan park in Cable Beach was grey nomad heaven. It was quite nice and we talked to some very helpful travelers, but there was absolutely nothing for kids to do. Not even a cruddy old playground.

Broome itself seemed a bit of an enigma. I’m sure it is very nice if you hang out on Cable Beach for sunsets and stay in an expensive resort for the rest of your time. But we found Broome very oversold.

There’s not too much open on weekends and not all of the “top ten things to see” were even accessible.

We were lucky to be in Broome for the Staircase to the Moon, where we lined up with a couple of thousand other people to watch the sun’s reflection on the mudflats.

We visited Streeter’s Jetty which was the original jetty for the pearling luggers based in Broome. While we were there we chanced upon Sand Sculpture WA creating a marine sculpture out of very red Broome sand.

Luckily for us we wandered over at time when there was a break in the pedestrian traffic, and Shani and Tim were fantastic, showing our kids how to make sculptures and even giving them tools to make their own works of art. The boys spent about an hour and a half in the red sand and only finished up as the midges moved in.

Chase proved that he is as attractive to midges as he is to mosquitoes and was soon covered in bites.

We spent a bit of time driving around looking for the heart of Broome, but we couldn’t find what we were looking for (whatever that was).

Cable Beach was of course lovely. The boys all had a dip and we went for a drive along the sand. The boys were shocked (and possibly delighted) to discover the many nudists along the beach. Interestingly it seemed that going starkers was more popular for men than women (who would have thought)!

And to finish it off we took a sunset camel ride along Cable Beach. This was a completely touristy thing to do, but it was one of my few requests for this trip. Chase and I got the lead camel. Oliver and Drew were on the camel behind us. They said our camel had a very bad case of wind! Chase and I thought that this was almost as funny as all of the nude men on the beach.

We have some very remote travel approaching that we are very excited about. Tomorrow we are off to Cape Leveque for a few days and after that the Gibb River Road.