Around Broome

I like Broome. Maybe not the most exciting place in the world, but it has a quiet charm about it that is actually quite endearing. It is not very big, either spatially or in terms of population - apart from this time of year when the latter triples thanks to travellers seeking winter sun. There isn’t that much here other than the usual collection of shops, small businesses and a few tourist orientated things, but it has a good feel about it, relaxed and unhurried, and its been my fortune to spend just over a week here.

It's famous for Cable Beach, the place where a telegraph cable crossed the Australian coast, having left the south western coast of the UK, near Lands End. The camels are the most famous things about it now though, taking tourist for an evening jaunt along the sand.

A sculpture of Lord McAlpine is on the grass just by the entrance to the beach. He is a freeman of the city, having done much for tourism here. Interesting what links people to certain places.

I had only intended to spend a couple of nights but because a non appearing tyre, it was an extended stay. Although that forced a plan rethink, it has worked out well and gave me time to see the place, get on with a few things and also to meet people. 

The market was petty good. Arts and crafts mostly, with a bit of music and people busking.

I visited Maryeka and Gerald a couple of times, the two really nice older people from Tasmania, now permanently on the road. They are currently holed up in WA doing jobs for people, and I was able to help Maryeka sort out her phone and show her how to do a few things on FaceBook. I have no interest in FB per se, but I surprised myself and knew more than I thought, having picked it up along the way as I use it.

Phil, with whom I am currently staying, is a real gem of a bloke, genuine and good fun. We have had some good chats, swapped many stories and get on very well. Whilst I am more than happy being self sufficient and self motivated, it is great to hook up with people from time to time and share their lives for a while, seeing things that they see, hearing their opinions, taking their recommendations or directions and experiencing and just passing the time. It sort of fleshes out the bones of a place and brings it to life. I love it.

He took me to Matso’s brewery one afternoon, and I was expecting a big imposing place with lots of activity. But not so; a small affair tucked away behind a pub, and I realised that I had been riding past it all week and hadn’t even noticed that it was there. Mind you, that was probably just as well because it  serves all sorts of interesting beers - such as mango beer, ginger beer and dark side, a ginger beer with a shot of particular rum in it. I’m not much of a drinker but was a pretty good find.

Broome was once a big cargo port, the largest on the NW coast by the end of the 1800s, but then it grew into a major pearl fishing town by the middle of the 20th century, thanks mainly to the advent of cultured pearls.  The old jetty in town was restored some years ago, although it is still rather rickety, suspended as it is above swampland, and not a place to venture after a few drinks. It was built for Streeter’s,a jewellery company in London, and was the route by which mother of pearl was loaded onto boats standing out in slightly deeper water.

Whilst wandering down there doing nothing in particular, I met Evan and Pip, two cyclists with whom I had played cat and mouse whilst riding northwards up the coast from Perth.  

They recognised me - probably the riding pants gave me away - and it turns out that Evan knows Terra, the woman I met several months ago heading towards Pemberton from Augusta, on her seven year walk around Australia. It is a small world in many respects but then again, its not when you consider that most people actually live quite sedentary lives and in one area, leaving the wider world relatively empty.

It was also bombed during WW2, one of the several top end towns to be attacked by the Japanese.

Broome is home to the  Sun Picture Gardens, the oldest continuously operating outdoor picture house in the world, and it is really quite special. 

The usual tin shed facade opens into a courtyard filled by old projectors and screen paraphenalia, then deckchairs, which face a huge screen.

Having been told that frequently, when a movie is playing, a plane appears over the top of the screen at a very low level, shaking everything and drowning out the sound, the end of the runway being about 1/2 a kilometre beyond the screen. And sure enough, on Saturday night as I watched Tracks       (the story of Robyn Davidson’s walk across the centre of Australia with four camels and a dog back in the 1970s) exactly that happened, but I was so mesmerised by it that I forgot to take a picture. When a second plane appeared two minutes later, its was nowhere near as spectacular as the big jet; the RFDS off to do a job.  A good evening’s cinema experience but with a difference. The film was good too.

And who should be in the audience at the cinema but Marilyn and Phil. I’d last seen them several months ago in Norseman, just this side of the Nullarbour. They had apparently spotted me a number of times along the way, but had always missed catching my eye or saw Gerty unattended. It was good to catch up with them and find out what they had been up to.  

Like me, they also knew of Mike, the man walking around Australia, and told me he was holding a sausage sizzle at Bunnings the next morning. So, off I went, and sure enough, there was Mike, just where they said he would be. I had last seen him just north of Sandfire Roadhouse about eight days ago, and again, spent a good hour talking with him and his mates from the Broome Men’s Shed, a sort of WI for blokes. Really fun chatty blokes busy arguing over the best way to cook bangers. Funny.  I later had a beer with Mike and he told me about how he had got walking, some of the challenges of the long distance stuff that he does, and some of the people he has met and the things he has seen; I like him, a nice, genuine man.

Much of the land in this area belongs to the local aboriginal people, and that shapes the development of the ‘white’ town and perhaps explains some of the seemingly odd pattern of development, with places squeezed in very close together in some areas, despite there being open land all around. A new housing estate spreads out from the airport, but a wall is under construction between it and the airport perimeter. Apparently, they plan to build houses on the nrrow strip of land between the perimeter fence and the road and the wall is a sound barrier because that is one of the few available tracts of land still available, despite the wide open space spreading out in all directions.

And building work on the estate across the road has stalled, with houses half finished and apparently abandoned, with steel framed shells and timber strutted roofs open  to all and sundry. Nobody knows what the holdup is though, but it is quite erie. 

They are all single storey buildings, cyclone proof but rather oddly, surrounded by plush lawns ( the finished ones at least) with integrated irrigation systems, a direction of the Shire because it looks nice. Every morning the sprinklers are on, keeping the grass green and councillors happy, in an area where water is a valued resource. Native gardens, increasingly popular elsewhere in dry old Western Australia don’t seem to have a look in here; I wonder why they went with grass which has no purpose other than decoration, over more climatically suited plants. Who knows.

Anyway, now I have my long awaited tyre, tomorrow I shall be off, heading towards the Gibb River Road. One of the reasons I waited was so that I could get a good dual purpose tyre rather than a full on knobbly or a road job. It will be rough but no more so than some of the places I have already been, but it is very remote so little chance of new parts.