Well I guess the title of today’s blog got your attention but I’ll get to that shortly. For some reason I have always wanted to visit Broome, I can’t tell you why because I’m not really sure myself I think in my mind it sounded slightly exotic and of course warmer than Tassie in winter. Well I have finally made it to Broome and I wasn’t sure what to expect, you talk to other travelers and they seem to either love it or hate it, but you get that with any touristy town. So we spent the day checking it out, and Broome is ok with me, I didn’t hate it, I quite liked bits of it in fact.

Our first stop this morning when we finally dragged ourselves out of bed (Horizontal Falls adventure had caught up with us) was the visitors centre to check out local information and pick up yet more brochures and pamphlets. We did ask a young guy working there about the Cape Leveque Rd and what sort of camping was available but he was absolutely useless and basically had no idea what he was talking about. Will ask Mr Google he always has the answers! Beside the visitor’s centre there was a shop selling pearls and pearl jewelry so we called into have a look and timed it nicely to hear a guy giving a talk about the pearling industry and pearls in general. We ended up staying nearly an hour because it was really interesting and we learnt quite a lot about pearls, so much so that I can’t remember any of it to share with you, although we did learn that the most expensive pearls are large, round, have good lustre and an excellent surface and I’ll never be able to afford them!

Second stop was to get Col’s haircut, after 6 weeks on the road he was well and truly ready for a shear, so I left him to it to undertake some more retail therapy. Broome has some beautiful ladies fashion boutiques, really different quirky kinda stuff. I bought a couple of more bits on top of yesterday arvos effort and was seriously headed for more till Col rang to find out where I was so he could meet me. Now if you know me you would know I don’t have the greatest sense of direction at times so when Col asked me where I was I had no idea. I had wandered up some alleyway in Chinatown and couldn’t really tell him how I got there. Luckily I remembered crossing a road so Col figured it out from there and found me.

Number 3 clipper on top. (Looking mean!)

Of course we had to visit iconic Cable Beach, so we made a quick sandwich in the car park and walked down onto the beach to dip our toes in the Indian ocean which was a balmy 24d. Col noticed some cars driving onto the end of the beach away from the main swimming area so we went back to the truck and went to investigate. You can indeed drive your 4wd onto the southern end of Cable Beach so we did. Now picture this, it’s about 32d today not a cloud in the sky, beautiful beach and amazing blue water and we are cruising along taking it all in when I notice this older portly gentleman walking away from the water, I turn to Col and say “I don’t think he has any clothes on” although I wasn’t completely convinced he didn’t. We drove a bit further on and guess what? he didn’t have any clothes! nor did the next couple, or the next old woman or the next older couple. We had manged to find the nudist end of Cable Beach and didn’t know where to look! After a couple more km and the view not getting any better we turned around and went back. We both need therapy now, just too freaky!

Driving on Cable Beach

Yes some of those people are naked!

Much better view than the naked wrinkly people!

We spent the rest of the afternoon checking out Gantheaume Point where there are supposed to be dinosaur footprints visible at low tide but we couldn’t find them and the tide was wrong anyway, so we drove back into town to got to the check out a market that was on especially because of the Stairway to the Moon phenomenon (Col talked about that in yesterdays blog). They were on, not very big but I did get some yummy mango ice cream that is made locally.

Old Pearl Lugger we checked out.

We are thinking of going up the Dampier Peninsular tomorrow to Cape Leveque and camp at Whalesong and do some fishing and swimming and lazing around for a few days before we have to think about heading south again.