I arrived in Broome last Monday. This was always planned to be my mid drive rest, so I had booked a cabin at the Caravan Park in Cable Beach, and I’m really glad I did. It’s been a great break and the cabin had an extra bonus of a washing machine, so everything I own has been thoroughly cleaned while here. The 4 hour trip up here saw the landscape gradually change to more tropical. The only wild life spotted were some dead cows beside the road – the carcasses look a couple of months old so I suspect they are left over from the floods. That’s apart from the goanna on the window of my cabin – at least it wasn’t a crocodile.
As you’re driving, the road signs and markers count you down to the next roadhouse which are quite often 2 hours apart. You always get a 5 k warning for the roadhouse along with advice on the distance to the next services. While a road house sounds pretty grand, and they were pretty flash on the Nullarbor, up here they tend to be a shack and they only way you can pick them is by the vans or trucks parked outside. I’ve driven past a couple and had to do a quick u-ey to pick up fuel. Here’s a photo of the Sandfire Roadhouse on the road to Broome.
My first couple of days in Broome were spent getting the air con in the van replaced, as well as washing and cleaning everything I own. I also headed into town for a feed of Vietnamese – wonderful. Val arrived Saturday afternoon into a nice 31 degrees after having left a 0 degree morning in Canberra the day before. At 3pm we were collected to go on a sunset dinner cruise along Cable beach. Fantastic night. We spent the first couple of hours outside watching the sunset while enjoying sundowners and chatting to others on the boat. A bit of extra entertainment for the 50 or so of us on the boat was when couple did the proposal/acceptance thing at sunset. We then moved inside to a 3 course silver service dinner. Separate tables, but close enough to chat with your neighbors and again, really great food.
Sunday we headed into town, which was pretty dead. Back for lunch at Cable Beach before settling into an afternoon of watching the footy.
On Monday we took a flight up to Cape Leveque and the Horizontal Falls. I’ll write up a separate post on this because I want to try and include some video footage. But here’s a bit of a preview.
Tuesday was back into town when the shops were actually open, followed by lunch at the local brewery. Val headed off today, and I’ll be hitting the road tomorrow. I’m planning to head across the Kimberly as quickly as I can. I’m going to bypass my planned detour to Derby as the consistent advice, even from our pilot on Monday, is that there’s nothing up there. I’m also going to skip my planned stop at Halls Creek. There has been consistent feedback on the site I use to research and book my caravan parks about the troubles and vandalism in town, and my hairdresser was telling me that not even the truckies pull up there any more – a pity for the town. Not sure what the answer is. Here the bottle shops are only open limited hours, you have to show your license and are limited at what you can buy. I went across the the neighboring bottle shop just after opening at 11 this morning to restock some supplies after Val’s visit and while I was there 2 taxis pulled up and waited while some locals went in for bottles of spirits. I’m guessing this last photo is a bit hypocritical by c’est la vie.
Round about 