Broome day 2
We started the day with a 3 hour bus tour around Broome. They took us to Cable Beach, Simpson's Beach, Gantheaume Point, and Town Beach, but we opted out of the Town Beach stop because I'd already walked there that morning and I was antsy to get to the Courthouse Markets before they closed at 1pm.
Even though we had our own rental car, I planned the bus tour because I wanted guidance on the best places to see as well as get stories and information you can't get from a brochure.
Like this:
Houses here don't have rain gutters. They are useless in the intense rain season.
Houses here also don't have letterboxes. They often get water logged. A few years back they considered putting in letter boxes but the people decided they enjoy the social experience of going to post office to get their mail.
Cable Beach got its name because of the 1889 communication cable connecting Broome to Indonesia, and subsequently the rest of the world. The Courthouse is the original cable house.
This region is called "The Kimberly." When you drive on the red dirt roads, it's called a “Kimberly massage.”
There are not many roads this far out in rural Australia. When a road get's damaged, the options for Siri to reroute you are very far. The Fitzroy bridge went out this past January, and anyone who had gone east to Darwin got stuck and had to drive all the way to South Australia, over to Perth, and back up to Broome. Yikes! That would take about 100 hours of driving, without the stops!
The regional prison, just a stone's throw from our hotel, is called the "Broome Airbnb."
Did you ever wonder why Australia's sport colors are green and gold? Henry happened to ask this question just last week and today we got our answer. They are inspired by Australia's National flower, the wattle, that has green leaves with bright gold blossoms.
The bus guide told us all about the Pearling Industry
Tides in Broome vary dramatically from high and low. They change over 8 meters in depth! All that new water and moving in and out every day carries a lot of nutrients that nourish the oysters. Before the plastic button came along, Broome produced 95% of the world's pearls.
Diving for pearls is risky work. Locals could do it without equipment in the shallow waters, but the shallow areas quickly became depleted of oysters so the industry had to move to deeper water with weighted diving suits.
Many men from Asia came to work, but the conditions were dangerous and many died from the bends, diver's paralysis, shark, jellyfish or drowning. There are cemeteries in Broome designated for the Chinese and Japanese immigrants who died there, some of them only a week or so after arriving.
The “Intombi” boat is one of the original pearl luggers.
Gantheaume Point
The lighthouse here no longer needs an attendant. Only the fireplace remains of the caretaker's house. There is a private residence there where a man bought the land and built a house and pool for his wife who had arthritis very bad. The salty ocean water was good for her pain. He carried her everyday down to the pool. That is LOVE. Now the house is vacant. It was up for sale at some point but was only in a price range for the extremely wealthy.
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| The man who brought his wife here for the therapeutic properties should have used this natural pool instead of building one. But I suppose it would have been hard to carry her here. |
Just behind Henry were a few steps down to a flat area that looks like a perfect jumping point right into the ocean.
This was at high tide. If it was at low tide, we’d be able to walk quite far out to see dinosaur tracks. Instead they have some replicas up near the path.
These are dinosaur track replicas. The actual ones can only be seen at very low tide. The difference from low to high is about 8 meters!
Simpson’s Beach
This is where the harbor is for exports.
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| This is called Morning Glory. I can see how it looks similar to the Morning Glory weed in Utah, but the leaves and blossoms are 3-4 times the size. |
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| This looked like a mini version of cliffs in Southern Utah. |
We found a green frog that seemed too far from the trees. We rescued him and returned him to higher ground.
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| Henry got to see this frilled-neck lizard run across the lawn on its back legs at the Japanese Cemetery and crawl up the tree. |
Courthouse Market
Just after exiting the bus tour, I met Ahmat Bin Fadal at the Courthouse Markets. He sells silk scarves his wife makes. He told me he’s been in Broome for 63 years and used to do pearl diving. After hearing the stories on the bus tour, I felt like I’d just met a celebrity!
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| That’s him in that clunky scary looking diving setup |
He said he nearly died once. I’m sure he nearly died everyday because it was a dangerous job. It was really cool to meet him! He told me his story was online so I looked it up.
The Courthouse Markets had excellent local art and photography. They even had a vegan food truck that had delicious lentil "meatballs" and rice.
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| This beautiful large Boab tree was at the Courthouse Markets |
I bought a Staircase to the Moon photo from Damien Kelly. I also bought a few photography prints from a guy named Matt Deakin. He moved here from England. He said he meant to only come to Broome for a weekend holiday but fell in love with it and decided to stay. I can totally understand.
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