I don’t know what we were expecting of Broome. We had heard so much about it but we arrived with a completely open mind. However, it didn’t take long for us to start liking it. At least some of the townsfolk have my sense of humour. While we were in the Tourist Information Centre on the way into town, we spotted a brochure for a rental car company called Broome Broome Car Rentals. (Well I like it!)
We had called into the i to find out about caravan parks. Rob’s introduction to the town was not that flash. The woman who served her had the unfortunate attitude shared by some of the locals; i.e., it’s our patch and you’re invading it. We were leaning towards Roebuck Bay Caravan Park but she turned her nose at it because it did not have a swimming pool. Overall, not the best attitude for someone working in such a place.
As we should have done in the first place, we decided to reconnoitre the town. There were some nice parks around Cable Beach, but they were inland and a reasonable walk from the water. We ended up choosing Roebuck Bay because it is on the water, its tourist section is fully grassed (which we had not seen for a while) and it adjoins Town Beach (swimming).
The site we chose was generous in size, grassy and backed directly onto the magnificent blue water of the Roebuck Bay. It contrasted dramatically with the deep red and green of the pindan cliffs to our left and right. Moored in the bay, directly out from our site, were several large boats. Among them were ships of the Paspaley Pearl fleet, some old pearling luggers and the naval frigate that protects our northwest coastline. Just a kilometre or so away and fully within our line of site was the Broome wharf, which is capable of taking very large ships. While we were there, P&O’s Pacific Princess paid a visit.
There was always something to look at. One day I sat in the van, totally absorbed for about an hour by the sight of a seaplane, seemingly flown by a novice practicing takeoffs and landings. It was an ideal spot for a learner, being a vast expanse of relatively flat water. It was not pretty the way the plane wobbled and bounced each time it took off and landed but it was riveting stuff. Even when there was not such exciting entertainment, it was not hard to sit there admiring the view.
Being on the water, we had fabulous sea breezes. That sort of thing is important in the top end.
Roebuck Bay had a number of other attractions for us. It is home to Broome’s Staircase to the Moon. This occurs when the rising of the full moon coincides with a very low spring tide. The light of the rising moon reflects across the wet sand flats, looking very much like a golden staircase. We were lucky because it occurred, for the last time this year, while we were there.
Our Lisa and her little Jess flew over from Sydney to spend a week with us while we were in town. The timing of her visit was excellent. The Staircase, which only lasts for three nights, commenced on the night she arrived. Her plane did not arrive until after the event so, on the second night, we all went to dinner at the Mangrove Hotel, supposedly the best viewing spot.
The name of the hotel does little to describe just how nice the garden setting restaurant/viewing area is. We had a front row table and a beautiful meal. Entertaining us for the evening were three aborigines. They were brothers from a very well known Broome family, the Pigrims. There are actually seven brothers in the family and combined they are the Pigrim Brothers, a very talented country music band. The fee for one hour’s entertainment by the full band is $5,000, so the local pubs and clubs usually only hire three at a time.
Anyway, after a while, the lights dimmed and the band stopped playing. One of the brothers then took up his didgeridoo and started playing it, just as his ancestors have done for ever and ever. As its soulful cry reverberated around us, the moon, a huge golden orb, peeked over the horizon before slowly making its way to heaven. Curl the ‘airs on the back of your neck it would!
Roebuck Bay is also famous for its seaplane wrecks. In March 1942, less than a month after the bombing of Darwin, 16 Dorniers were lying at anchor in the bay. They had arrived from Java after evacuating Dutch women and children ahead of the advancing Japanese army, and were refuelling in preparation for the next leg of the journey. However, during the stopover, Japanese Zeros staged an attack on Broome, destroying a number of planes at the airport and all sixteen Dorniers. There was a great loss of life, including many aboard the Dorniers. They died during the attack or were incinerated, drowned or eaten by sharks as they tried to get ashore.
Five of the wrecks are still visible at the lowest of the spring tides. Then the water recedes in excess of 2kms so it is a good hike to get to them. To do the return trip safely, it is necessary to go out an hour or more before low tide and head back before the flow becomes too great.
Driving on the beach is permitted but the only people silly enough to take their cars out so far are visitors. When the tide comes in, water flows first through the sand, so the movement is not immediately obvious. To the inexperienced, the first indication that the tide has changed is when the sand starts to become very soft. Most vehicles, even 4WDs, will bog in these conditions, leaving the occupants with no alternative other than to walk (or wade) back and watch as their vehicles disappear under the beautiful, but quickly rising, blue sea. The recovery cost is apparently horrendous.
It was a big boost having Lisa and Jess in town. Both Rob and I were badly in need of a grandchild fix. Also, because Rob thrives on places like the Broome Markets and Lisa is likeminded, their excitement at the prospect of attending them was touching. I made many noises of encouragement with the result they happily toddled off without protest after I suggested I stay home and play with my computer. Maybe the other girls might think of coming to see their mum too or Shano, to do some boys things with his dad - -.
Of course, the place to stay if you do not trail your home behind you is the Cable Beach Club Resort. Even at the very end of the season, with most of the annual pilgrims returned home, it is hard to get a table at the resort’s Sunset Bar. What a wonderful place for happy hour and the bonus of the sinking of the sun into the Indian Ocean. Other popular viewing options include setting up a table and chairs on the walkway behind the beach, driving a 4WD along the beach and setting up an easy chair in front of it, or sitting on the back of a camel trekking along the beach. A couple of hundred people do it each day.
Talking about 4WDs on the beach reminds me that being in a place like WA makes you realise just how overregulated we are in NSW. You do not have to pay a fee for a permit to drive on the beaches, you do not have to pay a fee for a licence to fish in the ocean, 4WDs are encouraged, albeit because they best handle many of the secondary roads, and on it goes. Not that everything is open slather. Not all beaches are open to vehicular traffic but enough are to allow the common man to get out and enjoy his environment. (My computer is telling me I am being sexist using the word “man” and “his” in this way – but who cares. I’ll turn the bloody thing off if it continues carrying on like that!)
I’m sure that those people staying at Cable Beach Club at the time we were in Broome would have had nice clean rooms. We met up with my third (is that right Sue?) cousin, Paula Reed and her partner Pete who were doing a spot of cleaning there. Paula’s mum Sue let us know they were working their way around Oz and were likely to be in town about the same time as us. In fact, they arrived just after us and had both got jobs at the Club almost immediately. They must be good workers. We had a barbie at our place and had a great time exchanging stories about the places we had passed through along the way. It also gave Lisa and us a chance of catching up with a rellie we think we had not seen for about 20 years.
Broome is certainly tourist oriented. Many people acknowledge the benefits that holidaymakers bring to town. However, many residents not involved in tourism would prefer that they would all go away. You may remember the sign we saw in the front of a truck lamenting that tourists could not be shot, even in season. It is not quite so funny when you realise that Bradley John Murdoch is currently on trial in Darwin for the supposed shooting murder of British backpacker, Peter Falconio and the attempted abduction of his partner, Joanne Lees. Murdoch was a resident of Broome!
One of the fun attractions of the town is the open-air picture theatre in Broome’s main street. As an indication of the influence of Asians to the development of Broome, the main shopping precinct is known as Chinatown. It was previously Jap Town but that was not considered racially polite so it was changed. (It surprises me my computer accepts that!)
Anyway, the theatre is smack bang in the middle of Chinatown and is believed to be the oldest continuously operating open-air theatre in the world. It looks like an old suburban picture theatre from the front. A small room, almost on the footpath, is the projection room. On the night we went there, the operator had left the door open, probably because it was so hot, and the projectors and huge reels of film were visible to all and sundry passing by.
A roof covers about a half of the theatre but the rest is open to the night sky. Seating is the old-fashioned canvas love seats of the theatres of old.
The owners are very thoughtful. Before the movie, they displayed a talking slide informing us that the toilets were through the front gate by the side of the screen. I don’t know whether it was because many were waiting for this important piece of information or if it was a subliminal reaction; however, when the sign came up, half the patrons got up and went for a walk!! Going there, as we did to see the movie, Cinderella Man, is a real stroll back through time.
Another interesting feature of Broome is its brewery, Matso’s. It is more of a restaurant where they make beer. However, the lady brewer does a great job with five different beers, ranging from heavy to light. On the day Lis and Jess flew home, we went there for lunch. I tried most of the beers (shot glasses only), and recommend the seafood platter, washed down with a glass or two of Monsoon Blond.
In the morning, before our lunch at Matso’s, Rob and Lis went around to Town Beach for a swim. No problems there, except that on the following day, the beach was closed when a salt-water croc was spotted in the mangroves about 50 metres from where they had swum. Our neighbours reckoned he was a beauty; they were standing on the jetty and saw him leave. Scary stuff.
One day, not long after we arrived, Rob and I were sitting outside the van when a young woman, who turned out to be from Argentina, came over and introduced herself. Apparently, she is from a well to do family. Daddy owns a winery where she works when not writing magazine articles. She said she was researching a story on Love (or “Luuuv” as she pronounced it). After talking to us for a while, she reckoned we were an OK pair to include in the research. She took copious quantities of notes about our life together (which seemed very boring to us) and a couple of reels of photos. Probably end up in an internet porn site somewhere!!!
We must have been in Broome for too long as we even had time for a game of golf. The course has thickly grassed fairways and grass greens – an unusual sight in the Kimberley. It was so green because the water from the town’s waste treatment plant is pumped into dams on the course. From there an extensive sprinkler system distributes the almost endless supply of enriched water to the course proper.
We set out for our game at 6.00am to ensure we beat the heat. At this time of the year, there is not much action on the course after 10.00am. In a cooler time, or if you can take the heat, a short stop at the 19th hole would be most enjoyable. The clubhouse sits atop a large mound above the pindan cliffs with a magnificent view over Roebuck Bay.
In case you were wondering, Pindan is a word taken from a local language that refers to the red soil country of West Kimberley. It includes both the soil and the vegetation that it supports. Around the beaches, it is truly spectacular.
As I said earlier, our view from the caravan was fabulous and the pindan cliffs along the foreshore beautiful. However, the cliffs were not quite as spectacular as the ones at Cape Leveque, at the northernmost tip of Dampier Peninsula. We spent a couple of days there, after travelling up with the postie. We were going to take the Pajero but the people in the van park told us of another guest who had, a few days earlier, taken his 4WD and suffered $5,000 worth of damage.
A woman, Cora, has the Australia Post contract for the mainly aboriginal communities spread along the peninsula. Her route is the 200km cape road that she travels every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. She is a real character. I suspect she would be in her early 50’s. During the week, she lives in a caravan in a Broome van park but on the weekends, she goes home to her husband in Derby. She told us he is a lovely young fellow.
Cora drives a Land Cruiser, not a very old one, but it really shows signs of the battering the road gives any vehicle travelling it. It really is a tough job but, with Cora, the mail must get through. As if it is not bad enough in the dry, her stories of trips in the wet are real eye-openers.
To supplement her income, Cora has a taxi licence and the Cruiser has taxi plates. The car has a bench seat in front, so she squashes in up to five passengers who pay $50.00 each for the one-way trip. When she has a full load, it gets pretty intimate and personal hygiene deficiencies are highlighted.
There were four passengers when we went to stay at Kooljaman, the resort on the tip of the peninsula. When Cora picked us up at 4.15am, Helga (a German tourist who was returning to the cape to stay a few days with an aboriginal family she had met on an earlier visit) was in the front seat. Rob and I therefore hopped in the back and were soon joined by Bob, the manager of the fish hatchery at One Arm Point - one of the aboriginal communities on the peninsular. There was supposed to be another bloke but as he was not at his pickup point at the appointed time, he missed his ride. Cora waits for no man!
Nothing much seems to worry or scare Cora but under the rough exterior, (she has a very rounded vocabulary that would allow her to talk freely with many of the truckies we listen to on the 2-way radio), there is a soft side. As she travels up the road, she enjoys listening to talking book tapes, which she borrows from the Broome library.
On our trip, conversation flowed freely until Cora had her breakfast, a sausage roll with lashings of tomato sauce. That was the time for me to attempt to catch up on some of the sleep I had missed through our early departure. However, it was then that Cora decided to put on her tape.
As I dozed, I was aware that a woman was narrating the story. I paid little attention until something she said brought me to full attention. I don’t think I’m a woos; however, at five in the morning, crowded into a car with group of people including two women I had only known for an hour, I could easily have done without a detailed account of a particularly torrid sexual encounter and how each of the many and varied activities thrilled the heroine to her very core. Cora appeared oblivious discomfort around her.
One of the benefits of travelling up with the postie is you get free access to the aboriginal communities. The communities along the peninsular actually encourage and welcome visitors but, upon arrival, they must report to the community’s Administration Office to purchase a permit. It costs $5.00 (plus GST). Because the Admin Offices do not open on Saturdays, Sundays or public holidays, visits are not allowed on those days.
On the trip up, we called in at Lombadina, a community close to Kooljaman. The place is a credit to the residents. It is clean and tidy and the grassed meeting area in the centre is a lush green. The community is catholic and their church is something special. It is a small building with corrugated iron on the outside and paperbark inside walls. There is no glass in the windows but there is a bell in the belltower.
Compared to Cable Beach Club Resort, Kooljaman is quite basic. On the western side is a small campground with a group of dome tents at the rear. One of them was our home for the two nights of our stay. Each sits on a wooden platform that extends out the front to provide a small patio, big enough for a couple of chairs. They are ideal spots for afternoon Happy Hour. The tents are high enough for me to stand comfortably and expansive enough to fit a double futon, a chest of drawers, a bed light and importantly, a fan. The off-season rate is $60.00 a night.
In front of the campground, well back atop the pindan cliffs, is a covered picnic table/lookout. It is a great spot, during the day for watching the humpback whales passing by, and in the evening for watching the sun setting into the Indian Ocean – whilst drinking a glass of soda water of course.
Directly below the cliffs is sunset beach (swimming not recommended). Standing on it late in afternoon, seeing the transition of colour from the blues of the sky and ocean to the white of the sand to the vibrant red of the pindan, is truly magnificent. Though not taken late afternoon, the attached photo lets you see what I mean.
A small island, Leveque Island, sits about 100 metres offshore from Cape Leveque. It was obviously the tip of the cape before the sea broke through the pindan some years ago. The channel between the two is too deep to walk across; however, at low tide it is possible to walk around the cape’s rocky shoreline to sunrise beach on its eastern side.
The other way to get to this swimming beach is to follow a boardwalk built over a high ridge running through the resort. Along the way, are the safari tents, basic beach shelters and a shop/restaurant.
By comparison with the dome tents, the safaris are quite opulent. They would want to be because they rent out for around $250.00 a night.
The beach shelters are the most interesting. They are on the very edge of the beach and consist of paperbark pole frames roofed with palm fronds. At the front is a door-less entry beside a half height wall, also of bound paperbark poles. The floors are sand. Other than a fire pit out front, that is it! To stay there, you need your own swag plus whatever else you need for survival; but, even so, it costs $60.00 a night.
In the middle of the park, sited at the top of the ridge is a lighthouse that, at night, flashes its light over the campground. It is not intrusive though you certainly are aware of it.
About 50 metres from the resort is the end of a dirt landing strip where three or four light planes land and park each day. Nothing like taxis, parking fees, long queues, etc, etc. Just hop out of the plane, walk across the road and check in; or, as with one of the planes that would land each day while we were there, follow the pilot through the resort to the swimming beach for an hour’s swim. After that, it was a short stroll back to the plane for continuation of the tour - to the horizontal waterfalls.
At the end of our very enjoyable stay, we met up with Cora for the return trip to Broome. She got a bit of a shock when we offered to help her unload and deliver the mail and parcels for Kooljaman. Obviously, her customers don’t usually see the need to help.
Our first stop on the way back was the One Arm Point community. There, Rob and I hopped out and made ready to help but, horror of horrors, the lock on the rear door of the Cruiser had succumbed to the pounding of the road and it refused to open. The locals were milling around waiting for their mail but because the rear compartment was isolated from the rest of the car by a wire grill, it looked as if they would miss out. However, clever Cora remembered how the grill was installed and between the two of us, we were able to move it enough for me to squeeze into the rear compartment and unlock the door from the inside.
We made a couple more stops before pulling into the Beagle Bay community. It is also a catholic place but compared with the church at Lombadina, theirs is a palace. It is a large (by local standards) white rendered block structure with a similarly constructed bell tower. The windows are leadlight and they, together with the altar and its surrounds are all framed with mother-of-pearl shell. It is quite spectacular. Opinion on the preferred style, Lombadina or Beagle Bay, runs at about 50/50.
So impressed was Cora with the help we gave her that about an hour after she dropped us off at the van, she turned up on our doorstep with a pass for the conducted tour of the Pearl Luggers display in town. It was for four people and was worth $75.00. She had won it in a competition but thought we would enjoy it more than she would.
All up, we had three weeks in Broome, long enough to become good friends with our neighbours, Ross and Cheryl, who had been “wintering” there for seven months. We will be calling in on them on our way through Perth. They are, however, anxious that sometime we meet up again in Broome. Cheryl is fairly certain she has been accepted for registration as a marriage celebrant and has offered us a renewal of vows freebie on the grass between our vans and the bay. Wow!
Our neighbours on the other side for a while were a young French couple, Ariane and Sebastien. I thought that I should demonstrate to them that we Aussies at least try to speak other languages. I said to them at one stage, “Je suis que je suis mes je ne suis pas que je suis.” (Don’t think I got the spelling right, but you get the drift.) Sebastien, whose grasp of English is very limited, responded with, “It is very confusing.” I explained that I had learnt it at school when I was doing French and it was all I could remember of the language. The fact that it was the caption below a drawing of a man following a donkey had imprinted the words in my brain.
Ariane and Sebastien must be a bit thick, as I had to translate the words into English for them. “It means,” I said “I am what I am but I am not what I follow.” Sebastien continued to look confused but Ariane said, “Very impressive – but of little practical benefit!”
“You don’t think it would help me much ordering a meal in France then?” I asked. “No,” said Ariane, “unless you were ordering donkey!” Smartarse young bird.
Anyway, if you want to practice your French and have a look at some of their photos, have a look at http://www.out-of-office.org/main_voyage/australie/index.htm. Click on Sebastien to see their pictures or on Ariane or their car to practice your French. The flags on the right side of the screen will take you to where they have been and where they will be going on their travels. You might have guessed that Sebastien is a computer professional.
p.s.
We did have dinner and a most enjoyable evening with Ross and Cheryl when we eventually arrived in Perth. It is sad to report, however, that since then they have separated. We caught up with Cheryl in Broome when we returned there a few years later. She was then living by herself as a permanent resident of Roebuck Bay Caravan Park.
A couple of years ago, during a tour of Europe, we stayed for a few nights with Sebastien in France. He and Ariane had a beautiful little baby boy when they arrived home from their big adventure but sadly, shortly after, they too separated. Sebastien was a magnificent host. We were fortunate to also catch up with Ariane and meet her little man. It was wonderful doing so.