Our time in Broome

So we ended up only being offline for 9 days. The Gibb was amazing, that us all to come, but first here is a post we have written about our time in Broome…

Of course our time in Broome began at Cable Beach, it is iconically touristic but it is also stunning and somewhere that just oozes relaxation. In my previous post I mentioned that we stopped in at the beach to watch the sunset, we did this before anything. After that stop we headed to my Aunty Therese’s house, which is right near Cable Beach and wonderfully so, as she was hosting Lianne, Alex and I for the time we spent in Broome. Her house was a welcoming space, as she described it it felt like we were staying in a tree house, surrounded by stunning wood everywhere inside and out.

We had a wonderful dinner and then slept in soft, fluffy beds, which was a little bit of heaven after almost 4 weeks in our rooftop tent/Li’s tent. Our first full day in Broome was spent mostly at the beach soaking up the sun and tanning, or attempting in my case, but do stay tuned because I do have a tan forming throughout our time in Broome. Before the beach we had a delicious breakfast at The Zookeepers Café, which Alex and I had tried on our first trip to Broome a year before. We then went to check out Gantheaume point where the dinosaur steps are and where spectacular red dirt meets clear blue water. We were unfortunately unlucky with the tide and unable to see the real footsteps, but we enjoyed the view and took some cute pictures.

Our second day was spent, if you can guess…also at the beach. You see this is how my tan starts to build from white to off white, and for Alex and Lianne from brown to browner. Before we headed to the beach however, Lianne and I decided to spend an hour or so in town shopping for bathers. It was a successful journey for both of us, which was celebrated by a nice lunch with Alex joining us at the Mangrove Hotel. Later on, it was definitely lovely to just lounge around in the sun, read a book, play some tennis and basically swim whenever we got too warm. The weather in Broome was fantastic, about 30 degrees every day, just wonderful really.

Whilst speaking with my aunty and of course after our little visit to the visitors centre we had thought of heading up to Cape Leveque for one night, and then doing a few nights camping with my cousin, her family and friends who had invited us to join them camping at Middle Lagoon. So we planned that night to set off the next day, however when we rang Cape Leveque they had no places left for a few nights, so we decided to stay another day in Broome and go exploring a little.

That night we had seen there was a movie we thought might be cool showing at Broome’s iconic Sun Pictures theatre, where you sit in old cloth chairs with the stars above you. The movie “Rough Night” was showing at 8:30pm so with my aunt’s suggestion we all went down to Gantheaume point and the four of us had a wonderful view whilst BBQing on the beach.

After a pretty cool meal, where we were one of the last left on the beach and with Alex checking the incoming tide every few minutes against our cars position, Lianne, Alex and I headed to the movies. With some popcorn and some homemade brownie I had prepared earlier we sat back and watched the first movie we had seen in 3-4 weeks. It was really fun to sit outside in this beautiful cinema that had been around for so many years, the film itself was also pretty good.

So instead of heading off to Cape Leveque the next day, we spent that day again at the beach and then on the Willie Creek Pearl Farm tour. A small drive out of town took us to this beautiful little oasis, with deep murky blue waters, white sand and then many pearls. The tour was really informative, we had about an hour’s presentation about the production of pearls, how they are graded by a few categories and then the overall process of the organisations functionality.

Lianne was asked to help open up an oyster and see if there was a pearl inside, she used her muscles and then got to observe a full dissection of the pearl which she thoroughly enjoyed.

There was a pretty nice pearl inside, however it was not nearly the same calibre as the ones they would sell, making our pearl a dud. As you can see our pearl (on the left) was natural looking in its shell, whereas a pearl worth $10,000 +- looked beautiful but a little unnatural in it’s surroundings, alongside a little cleaning crab.

The tour finished with a small boat ride around the creek, where we got to see the resident crocodile. The next day we set off on our journey up the Dampier Peninsula, which was so fun filled it has earned its own post, to be released soon!

We arrived back in Broome, had a lovely dinner with my aunt and her friend and again enjoyed sleeping in real beds. Monday the 24^th July was Lianne’s last full day in Broome and with us so we thought it deserved starting the day in style and having breakfast at Matsos brewery. We got there nice and early to enjoy the morning sun whilst we ate looking over the mangroves. We then of course took a trip back to the beach, our resident place whilst in Broome, where we soaked up some more sun, watched the tide recede to an extreme distance and unfortunately Lianne was stung by a jelly fish. Luckily they had a stingers station at the beach, given there are a number of jelly fish in the water, the thought of peeing on it was not really an appealing option, I have no idea why…

After our sun filled day, where I must add we were all glowing a little from the sun, yes me included, we headed out for dinner. We decided to have a nice meal at the Mangrove Hotel again as it was delicious food and a beautiful setting. Unfortunately the tide was out when we arrived so we didn’t have the same spectacular view like last time, but we enjoyed some nice food and drinks, and taking a few pictures.

After dinner we had booked the famous stargazer’s tour, it started at 8:30pm and we had to be there early so we headed off with enough time onto the dark road and followed the stars (there were stars in the trees to guide us there, all in our instructions). The tour was completely full with about 40 people there, which was a lot more people than we had expected. We were welcomed and told we could take a look at Saturn and Jupiter through some of the giant telescopes they had out, it was pretty spectacular to see these stars up close, especially Saturn with it’s rings.

We took our seats, these little red beach type chairs, and waited for main show to begin. Greg Quick, the owner and creator of the tour introduced himself and right away we enjoyed listening to his voice, it was so calming and in combination with his awesome long white beard, he reminded us of Dumbledore. He explained that, believe it or not, but the world was round! And in that case when we all go to watch the sun set we are in fact actually watching the earth turn away from the place in the sky where the sun is shinning. Our terminology was all wrong, but he gave us the benefit of the doubt and let us laugh at ourselves throughout the process. Throughout the tour we got to get up and view a few different stars, including spots within the milky way, and then some extremely entertaining named stars; zubianshamali and zubiankanubi (no idea how they are actually spelled but you get the idea, they are weird names for pretty cool bright stars).

One thing we found extremely interesting was the explanation of the earths movement and how that affects us. It was a really interesting tour, we were flooded with information and understood why so many people who live in or have visited Broome recommended going on the tour. Since the tour we have been watching the sky and trying to see what we could remember, not much but we can find south!

The tour finished around 10:30pm so we headed home. The next day we were up early, around 7am, as Lainne’s flight was just after 9am. As it was Broome there was no rush to get to the airport too early, but around 8:30ish we headed towards the airport. We were surprised that after we had checked Lianne in and said our teary goodbyes, that Alex and I were actually allowed to go through security and wait with her till she walked onto the plane. We sat inside the terminal (all of the airport being really one terminal..) and chatted about the last month and all that we got up too. The time came and Li was ready to board. After many waves she finally entered the plane and we were there standing at the terminal gate. It was sad to say goodbye to Li who had been our companion for the last month, but she had so many exciting things happening when she got home and we had now the next leg of our trip ahead of us.

Alex and I had decided to leave Broome ourselves the day after, so once we had said goodbye to Lianne we had some breakfast down at town beach and watched her plane fly overhead. Then we headed back to my aunts to start preparing and packing. We made a shopping list and planned out a number of meals as our next stop was the Gibb River Road for around 10-12 days give or take a few. We filled a whole shopping trolley, in fact maybe more as we visited both Coles and Woolworths. We got back and packed the car in the front yard, looking like typical backpackers and in turn filled our car with even more stuff than we think we had before, including new crates and boxes. Our whole back seat is now full with food boxes we moved from the boot, making things a little more accessible but also meaning there is no longer any space to sit in the back. I am sorry Li but your spot has been overrun by 2 weeks worth of food haha.

We were all set and the next day we were off.

Overall life in Broome was really hard, we really didn’t enjoy staying there at all…said no one ever (in the dry season that is).

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