Broome

Well what a great day I’ve had again today! Having stashed my bags safely, I took a trip around Broome to get my bearings and see what I could see. 

I had actually arrived a day earlier than planned, thanks to good fortune and two very nice people, Gerald and Maryeka, now living permanently on the road. I spent the evening with them before being woken at about 0300 this morning by a bilby pinching the three nectarines I had bought yesterday. I caught him red handed too, one in his paws, the other two at the base of the tree up which he was preparing to dash, should make an attempt to repossess them. I left him to it and just laughed because he looked so ridiculous, like a burglar caught in mid burgle but still trying to look innocent.

I had a few wildlife encounters after that too. A really pretty but aloof frill neck sat above my tent for most of the day, while a few green tree frogs stuck around too, only well away from him. And one jumped in my dinner the night before.

So riding around, I discovered an interesting memorial in town, commemorating the development of Broome as a  centre of cultivated pearl industry. I had assumed it had been going for a while but apparently not so as it really started in the mid 1950s, having moved up from Cossack down near Point Samson. 

A Japanese man  got it all going but surprisingly met considerable opposition in the early days but he persevered and Broome developed, quickly becoming established as the centre of Australia’s pearl fishing industry and the country’s  first multicultural town, having been founded equally on the input of Europeans, Torres Straight Islanders, local  indigenous people and the Japanese.

It is only a small place, hardly the size of a large European village, but it is clearly important as it has not only its own airport but an international one, complete with  jets as opposed to propeller driven city hoppers, and an electronic departures board.

I took a ride out towards Willies Creek Pearl Farm, about 27 kms up the Cape Leveque road. This runs up through Beagle Bay where there is a church built by nuns and featuring an interior made of mother of pearl.  It is supposed to be quite spectacular and I had considered riding up there, but had been warned that the road is very rough, particularly towards the northern end. So I thought I would scope it just to see how bad it was. 

Well the first bit was fine, flat and sealed bitumen, easy to ride on, although it had clearly claimed a few casualties, as denoted by this double death marker from 2007.

The bitumen then suddenly stopped and turned into a sandpit, leading off into the distance and over the horizon. 

And the sand was deep bull dust in patches, and difficult to ride on, even unladen.  It was also curved at the sides like a shallow, wide flat half pipe, so the deeper sand was on the middle with the thinner sand and bare smooth rock  up a bit an nearer the sides. So I tried riding up there but it was even worse because the thin sand slipped on the bare rock.

After struggling with that for about an hour, and having wrestled for 18kms on equally deep but flat and so easier sand yesterday, I decided that maybe it wasn’t a trip for a bike after all, particularly as this was the easy end, so I turned back.It is a road I will do at a later date, perhaps in a more stable vehicle.

So after getting back onto the bitumen, I found the only bit of shade along that road, had a well earned drink and decided what to do instead. 

There were a few sobering signs about, which I noted for future reference.

Cable Beach sounded like a good idea, and as its just down the road, that is where I went. I had been told that the shore there was great to ride along at low tide, and as luck would have it, the water was going out.  So onto the beach I went, rode along it as well as into the shallows, parked up and had a dip, then waited for the sun to set. 

Pink and orange light lit up the whole place in an incredible end of day display. 

It was one of the best I have seen so far but it was also surprisingly quick, indicating that Broome is actually quite far north and relatively close to the equator. There must have been a hundred vehicles on the beach with me, people all watching the sun disappear for another day. 

And at the top of the ramp was this old BMW bike and chair, but the owner had spared it the ordeal I had inflicted on poor old Gerty. Probably one of the reasons it was still in such good order.