Broome

Beautiful blue ocean at last! And we can even swim in it!

Cable Beach at Broome.

The last of the original jetties.

We arrived at Broome and decided to stay at Cable Beach Caravan Park, which is just a few hundred metres from the world famous Cable Beach. It is about 6 kilometres from the township of Broome, which is situated on the shores of Roebuck Bay, as it was here along a creek among the mangroves, that the old Pearling Luggers anchored, when Broome was established back in the 1880's. Today, this area is home to a large number of Pearl shops, selling magnificent jewellery, featuring the local cultured pearls, as well as China Town, and the original old pub, "The Roebuck Bay Tavern". Carolyn remembers sitting on the veranda at "The Roey", back in 1973, and looking out over the bay and the boats. Today you look out over the new Pearl Retail outlets! There isn't much else in Broome that she remembers, other than Cable Beach, which didn't have any buildings, just the old Bali Hai Caravan Park, and a track over the sand dunes to the beach! But that's now gone.

What a sunset.

We made it to Cable Beach!

Cable Beach is listed as one of the world's top ten beaches, and most people know of it as the home of the Cable Beach Club, established in the 1980's, by the eccentric Lord Alistair McAlpine, who came here, fell in love with the place, and spent millions establishing a haven for the world's wealthy. There is a statue of him at the beach, complete with cockatoo on his shoulder, and he would be proud to see that the Cable Beach Club & Spa, as it is known today, still retains its 5 Star status. It has been joined by a number of other resorts and restaurants in the area. The entire area is very flat, and the local building code prohibits construction above two stories, and the sand dunes form a barrier along the beachfront, so nothing looks at the sea or the beach, apart from one restaurant, called Zanders, and the Cable Beach Club & Spa has its Sunset Bar & Grille positioned, where good old Lord McAlpine, had 50 metres of sand dune flattened during the dead of night! McAlpine was a visionary, and also had a quid. He was also responsible for bringing in all the exotic palms and frangipani, to give the place that tropical feel. The local

Coastline at Gantheaume Point.

scrub just wouldn't do! He built a huge

Sunset drinks at Cable Beach.

zoo and stocked it with animals from all over the world. All was going really well, until that famous airline strike of the 1980's when Bob Hawke took on the pilots, and businessmen were flying around in military aircraft trying to keep the country running. Nothing was flying to Broome, and the place almost died. The 18 hole championship Golf Course was put on hold, and pretty soon old Lord McAlpine packed his bags and went to live in Italy!! The zoo is now a housing estate, and many of its buildings are retail outlets. Still, Broome bounced back, and is still high up on the "must see" list of people from all over the world, as an exotic and romantic destination. Only the very rich can afford to live here. Homes in the estate where the zoo once stood, sell for well over $1.5 million, and they are just nice, colorbond steel construction, with 3 or 4 bedrooms, not mansions. 

Another Cable Beach sunset.

Our timing is well after "the season" has ended. The caravan park has over 500 hundred sites, but is almost empty, apart from a few semi permanents, and a few more like us. The park is full of trees, it has a very nice free form pool, and the managers are friendly and accommodating, allowing us to choose any site we like. It is so hard to imagine that during June, July & August, this place is packed, with a waiting list, and that the population of Broome, currently at around 14,000, will swell to more than 60,000. It must be standing room only on the beach, with a traffic jam getting on and off the beach!

Our new awning gets a workout.

Cable Beach is all about the beach. You can drive along the beach, except for the main swimming section, and the favourite pastime for locals and visitors alike, is sunset drinks on the beach. We have become regulars, and look forward to each day joining the throng, watching the sun set over the Indian Ocean. We either head down to the south end at Gantheaume Point, or the northern end where all the camel tours take place. Due to the heat, we have had installed a car awning, that attaches to the roof rack. It allows us to create our own shade, and is a very popular accessory here in the north. It will be getting a workout!

Japanese Pearl Diver's Cemetery.

The history of Broome is exotic and fascinating. We did a morning tour with a local guide, and this gave us a good background to the region.  It became the pearling capital of the world in the 1880's as hundreds of boats descended on the area in search of pearl shell. That's right pearl shell, not the pearls. The world's buttons were made from pearl shell, and it was worth a lot more than the pearls, which were just a bonus. Many of the luggers came from Asia. Many of the Pearling Masters were unscrupulous, and the diving work was dangerous. Young Aboriginal men were "blackbirded" and forced to dive. Young Japanese men came in their hundreds to seek their fortune, and many died from the bends. There is an amazing Japanese cemetery in Broome, funded and maintained by a small province in Japan, Taiji, where most of the divers came from. There are

Pearl Lugger restored and on land.

more than 900 young Japanese divers buried in this cemetery, and reading some of the stories will bring tears to your eyes. The Pearling Masters strutted around in their white suits, and were fabulously wealthy. Hard hat diving was introduced, and the divers could work longer under water, but this only increased the dangers. It wasn't until the decompression chamber was invented that things improved. The Broome Museum is an excellent source for the history of the pearl industry. The invention of plastics killed off the button trade. WW11 saw all the Japanese interned, and their involvement with the industry ceased. It wasn't until the 1950's that the cultured pearl industry was established, and grew into big business, with the Paspaley Family listed among Australia's most wealthy.

Broome port on Roebuck Bay.

One of the quirky features in town is the position of the Airport. The runway is almost an extension of one of the downtown main streets. As you drive through town, it seems like the planes are coming straight for you! It is a busy airport, and home to some huge helicopters that service the off shore oil and gas rigs. The Port is well away from town, and it too is a busy base servicing the off shore oil and gas rigs. It is where the cruise ships dock as well. We also found a great seafood restaurant out at the port and had terrific fish 'n chips for lunch.

The Sun Deckchair Picture Theatre.

Pearl Retail Shops.

Town has two shopping centres, one with a Woolworths supermarket, on the outskirts of town, the other with a Coles, and that is situated right in the middle of town. Generally, Broome is all pretty well spread out. Downtown has the old China Town area. It was originally known as Jap Town, a truer indication of the population mix, but renamed after the second world war. There is also the Sun Deck Chair Cinema, the world's oldest running cinema of its kind. We went to the movies on Wednesday night to see Captain Phillips, which was great. Well worth seeing, it is the true story of a US container ship taken by Somali Pirates. It was quite an experience, sitting in our deck chairs, eating choc tops, with bats flying past the screen, and the roar of low flying aircraft just above us!

Morning walk on Cable Beach.

Coffee at Town Beach Cafe.

We are loving our time here in Broome. Each morning we get up early and head down to the beach. We walk towards Gantheaume Point to the south, returning to the main beach for a well deserved swim. At 7.00am the temperature is already around 30 degrees, and the water is a a beautiful 27. We got a bit of excitement one morning, with a large black fin emerging just beyond the breakers! Turned out to be a giant Manta Ray, and the fin was him flapping one of his wings on the water. We are assured it is safe to swim here, despite the occasional crocodile that swims by, and there are irukandji, small deadly jelly fish, and sea snakes, two of which we saw dead, washed up on the beach. But unlike in Darwin, the locals here are the first into the water. The Town Beach, close into town, is beside the mangroves and is not the place to swim. There is a boat ramp here, and a water park has been built on the land, but we have seen some carefree people having a swim. We prefer to go to Town Beach and go to the Cafe, where the friendly proprietor Bruce serves up great food and coffee, in a wonderful location on Roebuck Bay.

If you won't buy me
one I'll get my own!

Beer tasting at Matso's Brewery.

Day after day, beautiful hot, sunny weather, nothing much has changed in our routine. Walk the beach, swim, coffee somewhere, swim, drive onto the beach for sunset happy hour, home for dinner. God it's tough! We fitted in some extra sightseeing around town, including China Town Arcade, which should be called Souvenir Town Arcade, and of course those dangerous pearl shops. We wandered down to Streeter's Jetty, which is the only jetty left from the boom pearling days, and what visit to Broome would be complete without a visit to Matso's Brewery, a boutique brewery out near Town Beach, that also serves good meals. We each tasted two beers, I went for the Pale Ale and the Dark Beer, whilst Carolyn went for the Mango Beer and the Ginger Beer. All were pretty good, and we both agreed that the Ginger Beer was the pick. I just can't get into Boutique beer. They just all seem to have a stringent after taste I don't like.

The Clubhouse and 18th Hole.

Goanna hazard!

We went out to the local Golf Course, as it has one of the only hills in town and you can get a good view over Roebuck Bay and the Port area. When we got there we were surprised how green and good the golf course looked, so we decided to have a game. No problem getting on. In fact we only saw three other people on the entire course. Turns out that the water treatment plant is next door so the golf course gets all the treated water. The couch fairways would put a lot of big name courses to shame! Two greens were out of play, apparently due to vandalism, but the remainder were excellent. There were some unique hazards, like the goanna that walked all over my line while I was getting ready to putt! we both played surprisingly well, given we have hardly played. 

Catching a few of the last rays!

Camel ride on Cable Beach.

Our last day in Broome was just like all the others. We finished with sunset drinks on the beach. I'll leave you all with two iconic photos that typify Broome, the sunset and the Camels. In case you are wondering, we opted out of the camel ride on the beach. We have done a couple of camel rides on our journey, and here they are expensive. It is also an uncomfortable ride, most notably at the beginning and end, and it is really hard not to spill your drink! Besides every day we just sit and watch the passing parade. There are now three different companies offering rides, so each afternoon they all lumber past about five minutes apart. Our last Cable Beach sunset was a beauty, and we had time for just one more movie, before packing up the next morning and heading further south.