Day 31/34. 3rd to 6th June. Broome. Sunset city.

Sometimes you can get in a plane for 3 hours and land in a different country, and everything is so different. Ok, generally 8 hours from Melbourne, but you take my point. 3 hours in a car from Derby to Broome was hard to believe it is in the same state. From shops with bars and screens so thick over them it was hard to see if they were open to essentially the feel of walking down somewhere like Noosa Beach. Café’s, upmarket boutiques and pearl shop after pearl shop, this is a town that has found it’s tourist trade and is exploiting it to the max.

Two classes of tourist, the resort stayer with their neatly pressed shorts and collared shirts and pretty dresses, and then the campers with crumpled shorts, caps and thongs. Two classes of locals as well – the workers who support the ports industry and then the indigenous population. From where we have been, it is noticeable that there are substantially fewer indigenous people in Broome, and you get the feeling it is by design rather than natural occurrence.

We were looking forward to Broome as the start of our beach like holiday – with 4 days in one spot, but we found it just missed with us a bit. The weather was hot and windy – so that may have been part of it – we booked to do a sunset cruise twice and they both got cancelled. So be it. Cable beach was what it advertised – big white sands and magic sunsets. We went down each night to watch it and there wasn’t a lot of people where we were. 500 meters down the beach there were lots of cars driven onto the beach and at least three tour operators running camel rides. Driving on the beach seems funny to us – to be with one at nature and sit in your petrol / diesel engine ute to watch a sunset when you could have wandered down in your bare feet and touched sand. For the camel rides – well, a camel to me is just a horse with a hump, and horses should only be ridden by professionals in a circular motion as far as I am concerned.

The beach is protected by sand dunes and there is very little frontage to enjoy it, and even see it without getting onto it – so it felt the beach was disconnected by a few k’s to the town. Even town beach wasn’t in the town, and that beach at low tide was simply a mud flat for crabs. Ocean Grove stacks up pretty well in my book.

For a holiday destination to be placed at the airport is a funny move. Yes, Coolangatta has it’s aviation air pollution, but Broome seem to go from Engines warming up at 5:30am through to constant helicopter noise from the Woodside offshore platform to around 8pm.

The Matsos brewery however was a hit, and we visited twice for their for ginger beer. The second time we bumped into a a couple we met at Mimbi caves who are from Geelong. That was a lovely afternoon. Another conversation past the “Where you been, Where you goin’, Where you from?”.

After Derby and the art gallery there, we are even more interested in checking out the indigenous artwork on offer from the many galleries. The colours, the stories and the images are interesting to look at and think about. With so many communities now using the art as a way to bring their communities back together, and some beautiful artwork getting noticed on the world stage, it is disappointing to go into a souvenir shop and see boomerangs and tiles in done in indigenous artwork and made in Indonesia.

Backpackers and stealth campers abound, and I had a chat to some in a car park in town Beach. They were very nice and even asked us over for some tea that that they had brought from Qatar themselves. Later when we set out on our sunset walk one night, our van neighbours were coming in and they told us of the horrible dance party that went on at the Port the previous night by the backpackers. 300 people using “social media” to organise themselves to a random spot to “drink” and “probably do drugs”. The port is 15 minutes out of town (everything else in Broome is 10 minutes away, so it is a long way out) and it was probably the best place for them to go and not disturb anybody. Their only mistake was to stay overnight as the next morning, all the tourists and locals couldn’t get in to launch their boats and apparently the cops were called to move them on. I find it amusing that the people next door were so dismissive that they would be “drinking”. I can tell you that caravan parks are the day drinking champions of the world where from any time in the afternoon you can see people carrying a stubby in their hand, sitting with a wine at the pool, or a group sitting around emptying bottles of red wine a glass at a time. To be critical of some young people having some fun and while being out of the way is a little amusing.

Facilities: OMG. The park has recently renovated the amenities block and they have actually taken my feedback seriously. Showers with no curtain, big enough to be able to bend over and not bang against a wall with head or bum, hot water, clothes hooks and drains for each shower. They had even thought of the toilets to be of the rimless variety to keep out frogs and snakes. The only thing wrong was that it wasn’t an ensuite with our own private access: 9.5/10