NW WA Tour - Broome

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.