July 18 ... Broome

We timed our departure from Port Hedland to coincide with a ship leaving port. It was one of the bigger ore carriers and the "Elegant Star" moved out quite effortlessly while we enjoyed a coffee.

The Elegant Star

The aboriginal name for Port Hedland is Marapikurrinya and it means "five fingers" as there are five waterways that meet here. The original town is on what was an island, linked to the mainland by a causeway, and much of the land around is still tidal.
After leaving town, the landscape soon flattened out. It was never unattractive but it did become a bit monotonous. There were plenty of flowering wattles and other flowers alongside the road and we knew we were in the Kimberly when I spotted my first brolgas.

Brolgas

It was only 250 kms to Eighty Mile Beach and we were there pretty early, but they still only had unpowered sites left. As we get further north the parks are all really full and that makes it a little less pleasant. The road in to Eighty mile was all dirt but not too bad and the beach was beautiful. This is a very isolated spot and the park is literally the only thing here, but we had plenty of company. Disappointingly they advise "No Swimming" and once we heard about the number of sharks the fishermen catch, we were happy to comply. Also, the first 50ms of water is all brown and silty, and it does not look that inviting even though the colours further out are amazing.

The road into Eighty Mile Beach

Countryside around Eighty Mile Beach

Eighty Mile Beach

Despite the small challenges of no power, we really enjoyed our two days there. They were very lazy ones but passed really quickly. We just walked on the beach and collected some lovely shells for Morgan, and read a lot, and watched the stunning sunsets.

The beach at low tide

Millions of shells!

The tides in this region are enormous, around 8ms, and the water goes out more than a kilometre. The beach is literally covered in shells and, on the incoming tide, it is also covered with fishermen and 4 wheel drives!

But it is the sunsets which are incredible. The roadhouse on the main highway near here is called Sandfire and it is easy to see why.

Sunset

Sandfire 

Most of the people here were older than us and even though it is WA holidays, there were not many children and the park was fairly quiet. On Saturday afternoon there was an open air concert which was surprisingly professional. Most of the songs were from the early years but the jokes were good, and it was to raise money for the Royal Flying Doctor Service, so we stayed for a while.
But it was the traffic and crowds on the beach that surprised us. We did see some really big fish that had been caught but most people weren't as successful.

The fishing crowd

And hardly a fish was caught!

We quite enjoyed our two days but, without being able to swim, that was long enough and we were happy to move on to Broome.

Stairway to the sun

On and on and on ...

Again, the road was again fairly monotonous and the 350kms seemed to take a long time with very little to attract attention, except the bang of the rock that hit the windscreen!  We were glad to arrive around 2pm and quickly checked in before going to explore. This place is PACKED! Every site in every park is full, including the ones up to 30kms out of town, and they are all HUGE parks. Even the "overflows" are full. There are a lot more families here and it is noisy at times but we have an excellent site and have taken up the option to stay for an extra 2 nights as there was no one booked on our site.
We have been to Broome before so we had a pretty good idea of what was here but we wanted to stock up before trying to see the Stairway to the Moon which was on at 6.30pm at Roebuck Bay. We found a good vantage point, parked and waited ... but disappointingly, it was a cloudy night and we were not to see the spectacle. We did have a great dinner at the markets though and I did see my first jabiru feeding in the shallows as the tide went out.

Roebuck Bay

Jabiru

Broome

Unfortunately, during our first day in Broome I developed the migraine that had been brewing for a while so it was a pretty quiet day, most of which I spent sleeping. It is over 30 degrees here and the suddenness of the change is what I think triggered my migraine. We were used to a very comfortable 23degrees and now it is HOT. But we did get the windscreen "fixed" and we did get to the tourist office. Our plans may have to change a little based on the prices that they gave us for some of the excursions! The Horizontal Waterfalls will probably have to wait for another time at $765 each !!
We did a lot of the touristy things when we were here last time, like the museum and the dinosaur footprints, Chinatown and Malcolm Douglas' Wildlife Park. So this will be a more quiet 2 weeks. But that is no problem. It is hot and we have a nice beach ... no where near the "most beautiful in the world" though as it was recently voted!
I was feeling a bit better today so we went down to the port to watch a cruise ship arrive, then spent some hours at Cable Beach. Garry is a bit out of sorts because the paper can come in anytime between 11am, and 3pm, and he likes to read it on the beach. I am put out because there are quite decent waves, just like Mooloolaba, and I was looking forward to a nice placid sea. I am sure we will both cope with these hardships!

The Sun Princess docking

Ready to catch a wave at Cable Beach