Wednesday 27 July – a day with Di
This morning I chose not to go
sightseeing with the group but to stay back and catch up on a bit of
diary and blog while I waited for Dianne to finish work at 11am. She
met me at the motel and we enjoyed a cuppa and left over carrot cake
while we discussed plans for the afternoon.
First we went pearl earring hunting in
Chinatown but that proved quite fruitless as Broome pearls were too
big and too expensive (like over $2000) for a pair of clip on pearl
earrings.
We then drove out along the main road
turning in towards Roebuck Bay along Crab Creek Rd. Along the
waterfront we visited a few of Dianne's sites for monitoring
migrating shore line birds. I was thrilled to see Brahmini Kites
and a Rainbow Bee Eater actually eating a moth.
Further along we had a quick visit to
the Broom Bird Observatory which is apparently internationally famous
amongst birdos.
Back out to Cable Beach on the other
side of the peninsula where we had a delicious (if very late) lunch
at Zanders watching the sparkling water. I was disappointed with
Cable Beach as, although it is quite a pristine aesthetically
pleasing beach, it looked quite boring with absolutely no waves or
rocks.
We then went home to Dianne's much to
the delight of her two dogs. We chatted for a while before heading
for Reddell Beach to walk the dogs and look at a few dinosaur
(sauropod) footprints. Unfortunately the best footprints can only be
seen at very low tides. The rocks and dunes on this beach were quite
superb in the light of the setting sun. There were also large numbers
of hermit crabs inhabiting any shell they could find.
We drove on to have a quick look at the
port and some more sauropod footprints at the point.
Back to Di's to feed the dogs before we
both joined the others at the motel for dinner. I actually achieved
around 11,000 real steps today, not bus bounce steps!
Thursday 28 July – Roger's Birthday
Up early today and just toast and
travel sick tablets ready for our flight to Horizontal Falls. It was
another amazing experience. We flew over the falls and, being in
convoy with three other 6-seater planes, it was interesting to hear
the pilot chcatter through the headphones about the way they avoided
one another in their flight paths.
We continued flying west and south with
glimpses of breaching whales and landed at Cape Leveque, apparently
the worst airstrip in the Kimberley. The plane that landed after us
certainly had quite a rocky landing. Blake landed ours very smoothly.
We were surprised to find a great cafe
at Cape Leveque and were served a full hot breakfast. I ate very
little as I still had the return flight to consider.
There was time for some to have a swim
but I decided to walk to the Western Beach and was greeted by views
of whales in the distance and a pod of dolphins quite close to shore.
Back on the plane and south along the
shore line we were able to see lots more whales, a turtle and maybe a
sunfish? Whenever we were banking or coming into turbulence Blake
warned us and even though he said it was the roughest he'd had this
season we landed smoothly and I was not even queezy after about 3
hours flying time in a tiny plane.
Back at the hotel Joan and I had a bit
of R&R (rest and rehydration) before heading across the road to
the Broom Museum. This was a great little museum with lots of
interesing displays of local history and the pearling industry as
well as a lovely cool room where you could sit and watch
documentaries that included historical video footage.
When the museum closed at 4pm we headed
next door to the Thursday night markets. A quick search found the
glass maker that Dianne had told me about and I bought some of his
beautiful creations.
Back to the motel for a shower, some
blog time and dinner before collapsing exhausted yet again.
