Day 148-158 18th to 28th August; Broome

Ahhh! Beautiful Broome!!! A great place to relax and chill out. We had booked into the Cable Beach Caravan Park, which was one block back from Cable Beach and roughly 5 k’s from Broome township. It was a near perfect place to be positioned especially since we had not really had a chance to “beach it” since we had left Maroochydore in late May. So the kids were really keen to spend as much time as possible on it. Cable beach is even more beautiful than the photographs convey, with a wide expanse of powdery white sand and beautiful turquoise coloured water, stretching on for miles. At the same time, just behind the dunes, the white sand blends with and is then consumed by the bright red sandy soil that is prevalent throughout Northern Australia. All of Broome is watered by the Artesian basin that covers a huge area of that part of Australia as well, so wherever this water is applied quite verdant tropical gardens and lawns grow. Of course after 10 days off road the amount of washing that had accumulated and the state of our clothes was something to behold, so it took a good 5 days before we has that under control and had also restocked our “pantry”. Some friends from Melbourne Jon & Megan Ellks, were also staying at the same park, so we spent some time catching up with them and their children. Other than that we filled our days with trips into town, viewing the “Staircase to the Moon”, markets, sunset nibbles and drinks on the beach with the Ellks and the McGrinders (our Gibb Road partners), camel rides on Cable Beach. The Shinsu Matsu (Festival of the Pearl), was also on whilst we were in town, so we went and viewed some of the street parade festivities as well. Liv & Rube also went to the famous open air cinema with Rachel to see Mamma Mia, which they really enjoyed. I also got the radiator problem attended to in the hope that it might just get us back to Melbourne without any further problems, (only a distance of some 6,000 km!!). Broome itself is an interesting mixture of cultural influences. The Japanese obviously, from the pearling days, a Chinese influence as well as Indonesian and Aboriginal cultures and of course the influence of the European settlers and the cattle industry n the Kimberley region. It has a collection of up market restaurants and cuisine that reflect these influences. The newer architecture in the town also reflects this heritage. It was a very interesting town to spend some time in. We had booked 3 nights at Kooljamon camping area at Cape Leveque, beginning on Thursday 28th Aug and the Ellks were also going to be there with us. On Monday 25th Aug we said goodbye to the McGrinders, who were also taking off to Cape Leveque for a few nights, before heading south through the middle of W.A. and home to Esperance. It was sad to see them go as we had forged a strong bond and friendship with them whilst travelling over the Gibb and at Broome for almost 3 weeks now.
By Wednesday afternoon we were ready for the next section of our journey and that evening at sunset we bought a bunch of chips and drove down onto Cable Beach and had our dinner on the beach., along with a drink or two!!! Our plan was to leave next morning and spend 3 nights at Cape Leveque, some 200 km north of Broome, then back through Broome, on towards Pt. Hedland and through to Karijini National Park in the Pilbara.