Tales from the Broome Cupboard Broome, Australia

Broome, Australia

Blog Broome

Broome is somewhere that neither Tim or I had been before and given that my friendly travel agent at Austravel had arranged our entire holiday around a tour in Broome we were really excited. Because I won the people category of Wanderlust, the holiday was based around me being able to do a photo commission based on people of Western Australia. There are two main problems here, Western Australia is quite possibly the most underpopulated place on earth and the most interesting people to photograph are the Traditional Owners or Aboriginal people who prefer to avoid having their image taken as it against their beliefs for their images to be seen after their death. I was confident that given the tour we were being sent on was organised by Western Australia Tourism we would be sent to a community more at ease with tourism and would enable me to get some photos for the Wanderlust commission. The tour sounded amazing, we would be whisked off to some of the most far flung communities, we would camp out overnight in a safari camp and would enjoy a traditional beach barbeque after attempting catch our own fish, we would go on a bush tucker walk with a traditional owner, we would snorkel, we would take a boat trip out during the king tides and we would potentially see some amazing wildlife along the way, it sounded utterly brilliant.

After a quick visit to see Melissa and James and to borrow sleeping bags for our camping trip, James kindly drove us the airport. What none of us realised was that the flight, despite being domestic left from the International terminal a good 20 minutes further drive. We made it to the airport in the nick of time and rushed to the check-in to discover that this airport had been upgraded from the normal people manned check-in and it was all electronic, so there was no smiling sweetly to explain why we were late, the computer could quite possibly just say no. We fought with the machine for 10 minutes, nearly sent a bag through with no luggage tag once and finally got boarding passes and bag tags with the help of a real human airport worker who took pity on us and assured us in true Aussie style ‘she’ll be right’. She was right, we were through security and sat waiting to board 10 minutes later and our blood pressure returned to normal.

As I had pretty much just trusted the travel agent to arrange everything, the day before we flew to Broome I figured I may as well send a quick email just to make sure the tour company knew I was a vegetarian and to confirm the pick-up time as it was set for an early 6am start and we only arrived into Broome at 6pm the evening before. I got a reply from them whilst we were sat in Perth airport 5 minutes before we were due to board our flight. The email read, ‘please ring us as soon as possible there is a problem with your tour tomorrow’. Needless to say our blood pressure increased again.

I immediately dialled the number for Jen at Kimberley Wild and discovered that the tour that Austravel had lovingly booked and planned the entire holiday around had actually not started yet, it literally didn’t exist and we were definitely not going to be picked up at 6am the following morning to go on a once in a life time tour and they definitely didn’t care if I was a vegetarian or not. In the 5 minutes I had before boarding the flight I explained our predicament to the tour company that a refund wasn’t really going to help and thankfully they were amazing. They seem to take responsibility due to a booking system upgrade that we had somehow slipped through and took it upon themselves whilst we were winging our way half way across the country to speak to Western Australia tourism and Austravel to try and work out what to do with us.

We arrived in Broome and as we were coming in to land as the sun set is was amazing to see the colours of the bright orange land below alongside the bright turquoise ocean.

As we landed I was desperately refreshing my phone waiting for an email or a text and we had nothing. Tim and I were pretty much just taking it in our stride; we figured the worst case scenario was that we would get a refund and enjoy spending some free money whilst exploring Broome.

We got to our hotel and as we walked into the reception the receptionist was just hanging up the phone saying bye Jen, the name of the lady that I had left in charge of our destiny when we left Perth.

As expected the call was for us, but the receptionist hadn’t taken a number and the number I had was for the office that was now closed, so we got checked in and were greeted with a very warm welcome and a surprising upgrade to the newer block in the hotel overlooking the swimming pool, result!

Eventually after texts, missed calls and some expired mobile credit Jen called us on the hotel phone so we could finally find out what was going to happen. Jen had done the best she could and whilst there were elements that were far better than the original tour, like an overnight in a super luxury safari tent at the oldest pearl farm in Western Australia, there were elements that we were going to miss, namely every single element where we interacted with a single person, this did not bode well for a photo commission, but what the hell we decided to just enjoy it. The other thing that was a little a different was that Jen’s husband James was going to be driving us the 2 and a half hours to the pearl farm and as it was half term she asked if we minded if their kids came. This was fast becoming one of the most unusual tours ever, but hey ho, we agreed and we were very happy to hear that we would be picked up at 9am the next morning.

That evening we didn’t stray far from the hotel as the receptionist had advised us against walking to the town in the dark so we first checked out the Irish pub that was attached to the hotel. This really did make us feel like we were in the outback as when we walked in it felt like the music stopped and 30 people turned around and looked at us. We had a look at the menu and sadly discovered that the cheapest dish was about $25 a head and this was definitely not our sort of place so we bowed our heads and sauntered back out as the 30 faces all returned back to the footie and their pints. Aside from the Irish pub, out hotel had a drive through bottle shop attached so we figured crisps and beer would be our bargain food option if we couldn’t find an alternative, thankfully Tim had spotted a room service menu in our room and 20 minutes later we are sat enjoying fish and chips which have cost us less than $25 between us, yay. That evening we packed our overnight bags for our adventure and got an early night.

Once again Austravel had cheap-skated on us and we didn’t get a hotel breakfast, instead we had some squashed croissants that I had bought in Perth and a 3in1 coffee to get us started. We checked out and stored our bags for our return the following day and we were delighted to be asked if we wanted the same room for our return, of course we want the lovely brand new upgraded room, yes please!

So we set off on our half term tour, kids in tow in the back launching large plastic dragons across the car and munching on their picnic. In all fairness they were really well behaved and aside from a few squeals of ‘Dad are we there yet’ they let their dad do his standard tour guiding. Little did we realise was that James is indeed a tour guide so we were just getting a one on one private tour which was great. The tour was taking us out along to Cape Leveque on the Dampier Peninsular. It is unreal how much history there is about this little part of Western Australia. The road from Broome is unsealed after about the first 30 minutes, but thankfully due to an incredibly dry wet season the road was in fantastic condition and with James’ running commentary we were at our first stop before we knew it.

So here are some factoids from our journey:

The Dampier Peninsular is named after William Dampier, an Englis
hman (who I for one had never heard of before this tour). Born in 1651 in Somerset Dampier joined the Merchant Navy and after his service was cut short due to ill health he began his own expeditions. He was amazingly the first Englishman to explore parts of what is now known as Australia and he was the first person to circumnavigate the globe 3 times. Dampier was an avid note taker and wrote many books during his journeys, detailing and drawing the animals, flowers, tide flows and coastlines. Much of Dampier’s work was subsequently used by Charles Darwin to advance his own theories. Aside from Dampier Peninsular, Dampier has harbours, towns, mountains and even a street in the UK named after him. One of his ships also led to the naming of a bay on the Peninsular, Beagle Bay.

Beagle Bay is a small aboriginal community which we did visit but only the sacred Heart Church which was finished in 1918 and was constructed by the local aboriginals along with Pallotine Monks who were acting as missionaries in the area. The church was constructed entirely with materials that could be found in the area. The inside of the church is decorated with pearl shells which were readily available at the time.

Whilst we never got to visit Beagle Bay we did get a great story which centres around it, the story of Diamond Jack Palmer. On the 3^rd March 1942 Captain Smirnoff was flying from Java, Indonesia to Broome with evacuees and had been given a wrapped cigar box to pass to an Australian Bank on his arrival. Unfortunately Smirnoff’s plane was hit by a Japanese bomber on its ascent into Broome and it crash landed on Carnot Bay a short distance from Beagle Bay killing 4 of the 11 people on board. A rescue mission was sent and Smirnoff and the surviving 6 evacuees were saved. Whilst recovering in Melbourne a Commonwealth Bank Officer visited Smirnoff to ask of the whereabouts of the Package, Smirnoff could not tell him as he had been more concerned with saving the people on board than the package, which he then learnt had £300,000 worth of diamonds inside (£20,000,000 today). After the crash local aborigines, fishermen, children and one soon to be famous beachcomber Jack Palmer visited the crash site and scavenged anything worth taking. Jack Palmer had been a simple hardworking man and miraculously after this crash he seemed to be living a much more opulent lifestyle. There were rumours of aboriginal children playing with shiny rocks, word of Jack Palmer emptying diamonds from a salt shaker. Diamonds turned up in houses, trains, trees and fireplaces, but in all around £20,000 worth of diamonds were recovered, so somewhere there are millions of pounds worth of diamonds still hiding. Jack Palmer stood trial for stealing the diamonds but was found not guilty and the mystery of where the rest of the diamonds are remains to this day. Had I read this story earlier I would have been demanding that Austravel send us to Beagle Bay gem hunting!

Anyway back to our tour and we have come almost to the end of the peninsular, or at least as far as James is taking us on our family day out. We stop for a couple of viewpoints in search of turtles, dugong or sharks and sadly don’t get any sightings but next we are onwards to a Trocus Shell Aquaculture Centre. Basically a Trocus Shell is a sea snail shell which for hundreds of years has been used by the local aboriginal people, the Dampier Peninsular is home to the tribes known as the Bardi and Jawi groups, they used to live on Sunday Island and unlike the outback tribes the Bardi and Jawi live off of the ocean. The tribes in the area are still permitted to catch and eat Sea Turtle and dugong and are regularly seen fishing using traditional spear fishing methods in the area. The idea of the Aquaculture centre is that you can see the shells, see how they are carved, and get an explanation as to how the shell is used in paint manufacture. However when we turned up the owner, bob, was not expecting any tourists so we pretty much just got to wonder around and look in the tanks. He has squid, barramundi, some injured turtles that were recovering and a lot of shells slowly growing to size. It didn’t seem much like a commercial operation but we soon discovered that the Trocus shell tanks are actually out at sea in tanks growing and these tanks are just for the tourists.

Finally we made it to our destination, we had had cake enroute but James had forgotten the mugs for coffee so we were well ready for lunch. We had been deposited at Cygnet Bay Pearl Farm, the oldest pearl farm in Australia, which is still working. We had a buffet sandwich lunch which was delish and then we were shown to our safari tent, it was AMAZING! It was about 1km from the reception with the ocean just a 5 minute walk and bush all around. It was proper luxurious, we had an ensuite bathroom, a double bed, a fan and 24 hour electricity. The only small problem was the 1km bush walk to the reception, restaurant and pool. When we asked the owners whether there was any that we could get picked up for dinner to save the walk in the dark he had a better solution and the next minute we are driving our very own proper battered old Aussie ute to transport ourselves back and forth at our leisure.

This was absolute luxury for us, we had an afternoon dip in the pool and watched the sunset, we had a buffet dinner which was delish, we found an awesome green tree frog hanging out in the camp kitchen, we listed to the sounds of the bush as we slowly fell asleep and woke as the sun came through the tent, absolute bliss. The next morning we had breakfast, checked out of our amazing tent and hopped onto a boat trip out into the Buccaneer Archipelago, the home of Sunday Island. The tour started on quite possibly the coolest piece of kit ever, called Sea-Legs created in New Zealand, it is a boat that has wheels which means you drive it into the ocean and when you are deep enough you just fold the legs up and you are good to go, ingenious!

Once we were on the main boat, we set off and had a look at the pearl farm where the rows of nets are hung in the water slowly growing cultured pearls, a method that has been used here since 1946. The area was beautiful, with calm blue sea, stunning yellow mangrove trees just dotted in the ocean. We saw a few turtles, thankfully not being fished, we went in search of crocodiles who are known to lurk around Sunday Island and we saw an amazing island made up entirely of old shells which made the most incredible noise as the tide rose up against it. Sadly we were not here at the right time for the king tides which create the amazing horizontal waterfalls, regardless of whether our tour had happened or not we would not have seen this as we were here at totally the wrong time, well done Austravel!

Back on dry land, we just had time for one last buffet sandwich lunch before we joined up with a tour group who had come from Broome that morning and has seen the sights that we saw yesterday. It is always a bit daunting joining a tour half way through, but we had no worries, this lot were so antisocial they were not talking to each other after a 6 hour bus trip together. The first stop on the tour was magnificent, it was Kooljaman, a Bardi owned bushcamp overlooking the ocean and down at the sea there is just the most beautiful bright orange cliffs overlooking the beach. It was beyond breath-taking and also quite annoying that this was just 10 minutes down the road from where we had spent the night and there were signs everywhere for bush tucker walks and indigenous day tours, seriously how did no one think that this might have been a better place to send us?! Hey ho, after taking in the view we went to the other side of the cliffs for a refreshing dip in the ocean. It was refreshing but it was not entirely relaxing as not only are this white sharks, tiger sharks and bull sharks in the area, there is a rather large chance of seeing a crocodile in the ocean, wow. The water was murky and whilst we had a splash around and took a few fun and relaxed selfies,
we were definitely not feeling relaxed and so we made our way to the bus just in time for afternoon tea.

Slightly disappointingly the journey home was just a straight trip, with one quick stop at the side of the road to try and catch sun set, given that this was meant to be an $800 each tour, I can’t help but think we could have probably got better value if we had made our own plans, but you live and learn and as it wasn’t our money there was not a lot we could do to complain. Regardless we had had a good time and made the best of a massive mess, I just can’t wait for Wanderlust to ask for their photos, I suspect they are going to be a tad disappointed!

Back in Broome, we checked back into our lovely room and once again ordered room service and got an early night ready for yet another massive tour the following day. Again James was going to be our guide, but thankfully this was just a normal tour on a proper bus with other people. We were headed to Windjana Gorge and Tunnel Creek. Windjana Gorge is a massive 355kilometers east of Broome so this was going to be a massive days travelling. Our first stop was a proper outback road house, with animal skulls, a dunny and lizards sunbathing, we would be returning here for dinner on our way back so we put in our orders on our way past.

Next up the most famous Boab tree in Kimberly – the Prison Tree. This tree is also known as a Baobab in South Africa and this particular huge example is said to have potentially been used to secure prisoners being transported for sentencing. It is unclear whether it was used to place the prisoners inside the hollow trunk or to secure them around the trunk whilst they took a break. Either way, it is a pretty spectacular example of a Boab tree. It now has a fence restricting access to it, to protect the roots and to prevent any further name carvings in the bark.

Back in the truck and we continued to Windjana Gorge. Part of the Windjana Gorge National Park, the gorge is around 100 meters wide, 3 kilometers long and the walls are 30 meters high, it was carved by the Lennard River. The rocks are part of the Napier Range, an ancient Devonian reef system that is over 375 million years old. Walking along the walls of the gorge you can see fossils from animals so old and obscure that you would only usually see in a Natural History Museum. Not all the wildlife is fossilised, there is a somewhat healthy population of freshwater crocodiles in the gorge, most were pretty small, but I still wouldn’t want to get too close to them.

The Gorge was phenomenal and after a quick picnic lunch we were off to Tunnel Creek.

Tunnel Creek is also part of a barrier reef system from the Devonian times so is over 375 million years old. This 750 meter tunnel is about 15 meters wide, 12 meters high and once again has been carved out by water flowing through. In order to go through the Creek, we donned our reef sandals (fake ones of course bought for this very trip) and lit up our head torches and commenced the climb over the massive boulders at the entrance to make our way inside. It is things like this that I love about Australia, no safety briefing, or hard hats, just water proof shoes and a head torch and we were good to go. The water in the Creek was really cold and varied from ankle to knee deep as we slipped and slid through the 750 meter tunnel. Some parts had had a roof collapse so you could see right through to the sky, some were pitch black. As we were nearing the end of the tunnel we could see little red reflections in our torchbeams against the side of the tunnel. “Ah that’s just some little freshies” said James, meaning fresh water crocodiles. Seriously Australia, that deserves a warning sign if nothing else!! At the end of the tunnel we came out into another creek, the water was warm and potentially still full of freshies so we just sat back and watched the incredible kingfishers darting around. The only way back to the bus was back through the tunnel, so after a short break in the sun to warm up we ventured back into the crocodile infested cave to retrace our steps.

There is a story that goes with Tunnel Gorge our guide managed to make this story last for a good 4 hours of the journey, I fell asleep at parts and missed entire sections so if you really want to hear about the aboriginal bush ranger that went rogue and met his fate at Tunnel Creek, here is the wiki page for the story of Jandamarra https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jandamarr a.

So that was it, aside from our stop at the roadhouse for dinner our tours of Broome were done, we got home late and decided that we couldn’t possibly just sit around the pool at our hotel for the next day so we set about hiring a car to explore the town under our own steam.

Broome is an odd little part of Australia’s history, in the 1880’s pearling was big business in Broome, beginning with harvesting of oysters for their mother of pearl and developing to the cultured pearl business which still exist today. The pearling history is a dark period for the history of Broome, the first enterprises used aboriginal girls who were enslaved to dive, called blackbirding, pregnant girls were especially sought-after as they were thought to have better lung capacity. In 2010 a statue was placed in Broome as a memorial to the girls that were blackbirded during this time.

As slavery was abolished and new equipment was needed to enable divers to go deeper Asians and Islanders were employed, at this time the Asian influence over Broome began to explode turning Broome into a mini Chinatown with the Asian inspired shop houses that still line the streets today. Many Japanese settled, started families and made Australia their home after initially coming for the pearling industry and Matso’s brewery is just one house hold name that shows the Asian roots.

Having the freedom of a hire car was amazing, we really got to see and enjoy all Broome had to offer and what a little surprising town it was. With a population of just 15,000 which grows to over 45,000 during the tourist season, this really is a town where everyone knows everyone. We drove a loop of the city, we saw Streeters Jetty one of the main pearling ports in the city, we visited the Pioneer Cemetery where Diamond Jack Palmer is laid to rest, we found ourselves down at the port where empty beaches went on for miles and treated ourselves to an icecream and Tim scored a selfie with a camel at Cable Beach. Cable Beach is one of the most special places to watch sunset in Australia, so we found ourselves a spot and watched as the sun set in a magnificent fashion signalling the end of our final full day in Broome. However we were not done yet, we still had one evening and half a day before we left so that evening we went to Sun Pictures, who claim to be the world’s oldest operating picture gardens. From the front this looks like any of the other wooden shop fronts on the miniature high street, but when the doors open you are greeted with one tiny ticket office and beyond is an open air cinema screen with row upon row of deck chair style seats. We were lucky and Deadpool just happened to be showing, but we would have inevitably sat through any junk just to say we had been. It was a warm evening; we snuck in our cheap supermarket jelly sweets and took up front row deck chairs. I can tell you one thing, the chairs are definitely the oldest operating chairs in any cinema in the world, if you are any taller than 5 foot you are going to have a hard job getting comfy in one of these. Regardless it was amazing, especially when a huge plane came into land about half way through the movie, it scared the life out of us, talk about 3D!!

Our final day and the hotel had been kind enough to let us keep our room until 6pm, seriously this was some pretty spectacular customer service. We were packed and ready for one last trip around to see the final sights.

One place that every guide book tells you to visit is the Japanese graveyard, here 919 divers lay who
lost their lives to the pearling industry. The graveyard is very pretty; it is very orderly with headstones made from local rock carved with Japanese characters. However we walked through the Japanese graveyard and what we found beyond was just so beautiful. It was just normal old Broome cemetery but there was something a bit special about it, we have visited so many graveyards on our travels, some are pretty, some sad, some iconic, this was just so full of love and care and attention. Of course like any graveyard some graves had been long forgotten but the vast majority in here were covered on every spare patch of soil in plastic flowers, solar lights, fairy lights, some had trinkets to remember their loved ones but the most startling and lovely element was the chairs that people had taken and placed to spend time with their loved ones. Maybe I am just a bit odd, but this graveyard just had a very special and loving feeling to it.

We just had time for one last bumble around the town for a few photos and a trip to see Sun Pictures in the day and after a refreshing stop for a Golden Gaytime and a Bunderburg Apple juice, we were done.

Things may not have quite gone to plan as far as our tours were concerned but in true Aussie spirit the guys at Kimberly Wild looked after us as best they could and picked up the pieces from the almighty mess that Austravel had created.

You may think that I have been a bit harsh to Austravel as they just made one little mistake in not actually confirming a tour that our entire holiday centred around but their incompetence and the fact that they are far from Australia experts just kept showing, first we asked for a hotel close to the airport for our final night in Perth to avoid a £50 round trip taxi, to which we are told that they don’t work with any hotels around the airport so could not, then when we start to look at what we can do in Broome there are two major and very special attractions which most people would plan their trip to Broome around. First at full moon and on the lowest tide of the month dinosaur footprints are revealed in rocks on the beach, at the same time if the weather is kind there is a spot where you can see what is called ‘the staircase to the moon’ where the angle of the reflection of the full moon on the sea creates a perfect staircase to the moon, as the name suggests. We were so excited about seeing both of these amazing natural phenomenon until we looked at the dates and realised that both would be available for viewing the day after we left Broome, seriously Austravel, you need to do some serious research and pull up your socks. To add insult to injury I received a circular email from Austravel yesterday suggesting that I book a holiday to the coral coast to swim with whalesharks, it is a shame the season ended a week before they sent this email!! I am not a fan of travel agents at the best of times but if anyone is planning a trip to Oz, please avoid Austravel at all costs as they were a huge disappointment.

Our holiday may not have all been perfect but we went to places we had never been, saw things we never knew existed and had a damn good time doing it. We have often said that the best things in life are free and when we are on a free holiday in Australia that could definitely not be more true. If WA tourism and Austravel would like to send me back again to see if they can do better the second time I would be more than happy to oblige!

Broome you have been amazing, next up Exmouth! The free holiday ends here but when Wanderlust have sent us all this way it seems sad to miss out on something that has been on our bucket list for as long as we knew such a tour existed, the most long awaited part of this trip for us both, snorkelling with whalesharks (at the height of the season!) on the Ningaloo Reef!