Broome

It has happened again. I am behind with the blog. We have been travelling and living life on the road. Phone reception and Wifi have been scarce.

I’ll do my best to catch up.

 We  arrived in Broome  - this was our first site in the Cable Beach Caravan Park. Right next to a lovely resort style pool (freezing cold), and a small play area, communal BBQ area and ablution block. 

Our first two nights in Broome were pretty awful to be fair. Cable Beach caravan park is an enormous (450+ sites), shady park erring on the middle-aged side, a brisk 10-15 minute walk to the famous Cable Beach.

Call it bad planning or whatever you like, we were there in the school holidays. The minimum booking they would take was for 7 nights. We had to be somewhere in the school holidays, and this was it.

Being tent based campers we often get short changed, despite paying the same rate as a 21 foot caravan. So we were shoved in site BBQ0 - that is a zero. Doesn’t sound like much of a site. It was described by the friendly check-in lady as ‘close to the playground, pool and amenities; we try and put families with kids there’. So close to all these things in fact that our site was essentially a pathway. Our personal belongings did not deter the kids from walking through our site, they would just step over, around or simply move them out of the way in order to get through. We told them it was our site, to no avail. A little later on our first night an adult came blundering through as we were sitting at our table - she noted that ‘ this was all a bit invasive’ and continued blundering on her way.

The racket of the kids playing on the playground after dark would have been bearable if they hadn’t been fighting (proper punching fights) and swearing.

I won’t go into all the boring details but the outcome was we felt pretty unsafe due to some unruly and unsupervised kids in the park. Andy talked to reception and, lucky us, they had a different spot for us to move into. It was an enormous upgrade with shade and we settled into a more comfortable stay. 

 Always heartening to see this sign. Not every park has the same policy and if you're not part of the whip-cracking crowd it can be pretty annoying.

 Night one in Broome - we had our Pardoo wagyu steaks

 Exploring Cable Beach at low tide

 Exposed rocks and pools at Cable Beach

 The famous camel train on Cable Beach at sunset

 Broome courthouse markets - delicious mango smoothies.

James was also able to catch up with one of his best mates, Dash, who was also in Broome with his family. 

The Broome markets had some great stalls where we spent loads of cash on shirts and souvenirs (which we really don't have space for!)

 Sunday night fish and chips at the Broome Fishing club. It was a beautiful evening. I love these northern Australian outdoor venues. The fish was delicious!

 Broome fishing club

 Quick dance on the grass

 Broome fishing club

 Our time in Broome coincided with the staircase to the moon - where the full moon rises and reflects over the mudflats at low tide. We snuck into The Mangrove after our dinner at the Fishing Club to watch this. A band played eerie music as the moon rose making it quite the experience.

 Jemma had been asking for paints for ages - she was so happy! No idea where they are going to go.

 Cute new overalls and another lost tooth!

 Pearl diver mural on the floor in Broome shopping centre

We caught up with some friends of Andy's who signed us into the Cable Beach Surf Club for sunset drinks before dinner. It was a lovely spot to meet up. We all then walked on to dinner at the Divers Tavern

 Sunset drinks at the surf club

 The kids waiting patiently for the adults to finish so we can go for dinner...

 ...and now waiting for dinner to arrive.

 Another afternoon at Cable Beach. As the tides are so massive you really need to be on the beach an hour or so either side of the high.

 Cable Beach

 Cable Beach

 Those camels

 The pool at the caravan park - I think I already said the water was cold...

 ...it did have a waterfall.

 Spinifex brewery - Cable Beach. This is an enormous operation within walking distance of our cazza park.We ate out all but one of our seven nights in Broome.

 Family selfie outside Spinifex Brewery

 Now this was hilarious! This is a 'sea legs' boat-car or car-boat. This one was the tender that took us out to our small-boat whale watching tour. 

The sea legs means you keep your feet dry and hop in the boat on the beach, the skipper then drives it into the water where it becomes a boat. I had never seen one before! It makes perfect sense in a place with 10m tides and saltwater crocodiles.

 On our way to the boat for our whale watching tour. We found out about this tour at the Broome markets - and it seemed to be whatever you wanted it to be. We had been sold a whale-watching tour with a maximum of 14 people. Some of our fellow passengers had been sold a booze cruise with the option to BYO for the afternoon. 

 Humpback whale

 Those tail flukes.

While we did see several whales, none were doing the flamboyant fluke slapping and breaching we hoped for. We did get an extreme close up of one of the giants as it surfaced right next to the boat, before it dived again. They are so beautiful and charismatic. 

I now have 'swimming with humpbacks on the Ningaloo' in my sights as a must-do experience.  

 Living our best lives on a beautiful day on the water. Poor Andy lost his almost-new hat on the way out to find the whales. 

 Bean bags on the bow kept these 2 happy between whale sightings.

 That water

 Sun setting in the west

 One of the best things we did while in Broome was a 'Dinosaur trackway guided tour' with Dianne. We picked up her flyer at the Info centre and contacted her directly. We met her at Reddell Beach first thing in the morning to coincide with the low, low tide that would expose the famous footprints.

 The dynamic intertidal environment where the trackways lie. Due to the constant movement of water and sand, exposed tracks are being eroded away and new ones revealed all the time.

 Once we knew what we were looking for there were enormous footprints everywhere. Giant sauropod (long neck types) footprints a metre in diameter are very impressive.

 A theropod (T-Rex type) print in the rock.

 The inverse of an imprint raised up out of the rock.

The trackways are found in the 130 million years old Broome sandstone, or Cretaceous period. According to our self educated guide, it is the most diverse track site in the world with hundreds of prints, possibly more. When the dinosaurs roamed this area was a large sand flat.

 We took a short drive north to Coconut Well - a spot where you can float along a lagoon behind some sand dunes at high tide. As we were there on the low tide, we were able to hoof it across the empty lagoon, over the sand dunes and down on to this amazing beach.

 It was just beautiful. 

It wouldn't be a trip to Broome without a trip to the Sun Pictures - the worlds oldest picture garden. We had tickets for Lilo & Stitch at 6:15pm on Thursday evening. Due to some technical difficulties the movie didn't start until close to 7pm. To add to their woes the popcorn machine packed it in prior to the movie starting and punters were being issued popcorn IOUs. The late start for our movie would now make the late movie very late!

 The kids had front row seats with comfy bean bags provided.

 So great!

 The foyer at Sun Pictures full of old movie posters and film contraptions.

 More fun at the pool.

 We ate a couple of times at the Divers Tavern - also within walking distance of our caravan park.

 James has been crazy for building houses of cards.

While 7 nights in Broome seemed like a long time, it was good to clean up, wash up, and restock before heading up the Dampier Peninsula and then onwards into the Kimberley. 

Broome was our last scheduled town stay for this trip, meaning all food, fuel and water top ups have to be done as we pass through towns or roadhouses. We are limited with our set up to 60L of water and about 7 nights worth of food before we need to refill. Our plan is to take about 2 weeks to cross the Gibb River Road - you can do the maths, we are going to run out before we reach Kununurra at the other end. 

But first we are off to Middle Lagoon for 4 nights on the Dampier Peninsula, another beautiful and remote part of Australia.

Last afternoon at Cable Beach. Ready for our next adventures.