Broome is a charming and attractive holiday destination, a tropical pearling port founded in the late 1880s. The pearling industry remains a core activity producing some of the world’s finest pearls. It’s a town of large roundabouts and traffic islands, high curbstones, wide grass and verges, palms, tropical flowering shrubs, and long stretches of road which give the impression of being the infrastructure awaiting residential development. Like Darwin, it’s small airport is the hub of this small, compact town of 13,500.
Our first stop is Wicked to book in a service for the van tomorrow morning. Once that’s done we take a picnic onto the beach, rig up some shade using a tarp and Andy settles down to some fishing. There are a couple of Aborigines fishing bit further along the shore and one comes over to chat and offer us some bait. And can he chat! Soon we are being invited to visit him at One Arm Point, a remote 200km plus drive to the tip of the Dampier peninsular, and he will take us fishing, show us around etc, etc. Unfortunately, it’s not going to happen given our lack of 4wd, but we haven’t the heart to say so. Still no fish on the line, but then our new friend doesn’t seem to be having any more success and the seagulls are swooping down in the hope of stealing some of his bait.
We visit China Town, which is an area of boutique shops, galleries, pearl showrooms, cafes and restaurants – but it’s not remotely like any China town you might imagine. Attractive white corrugated buildings with covered verandas make it an attractive and charming area to browse but. We are here with a purpose, to find a book on India – preferably secondhand – to help with our research. The only secondhand bookshop in Broome doesn’t have any books on India, but has a friendly and chatty couple running it and we get chatting about ‘We of the never, never’ a well-known Aussie autobiography and that leads to family trees and English connections…
We spend the rest of the afternoon at Town Beach. A small, mangrove-fringed beach with a small park, cafe, children’s playground and a few palms for shade. This is lovely beach and we take a swim in sparkling blue warm water. No-one seems to worry too much about box jelly fish even though this is still the season for them. But the water is just too tempting to resist. Ah, this is the life!
There is a campsite on the beach and we stop the night here.