Round Australia: Day 48

Day 48 Broome

Well the day started as usual with Maureen disappearing off on her bike down to the beach. Unlike

Maureens bike, helmet and shoes all secured

Cable Beach

our last few addresses we are not right on the beach but about 1 1/2 kms from it. Just around the corner is the Broome School Camp where our daughter Tia stayed when she was in year 7 and she thought it was way out of town. Back at Girt I had breakfast and got ready for the day. Our plan is to go into town and wander around Chinatown. After breakfast we took Trude into town. The road layout here is a bit confusing but we are starting to get our heads around it, basically everything surrounds the airport. You can see that the

Lounges and umbrellas for hire

Beach gear for hire

planners really did not expect Broome to grow as it has. I visited Broome 30 years ago and the airport was on the outside of town, now it is about in the middle!

Talking about visiting Broome before, Maureen visited here also about that time and had a few ours here with her friend Rosina and the impression was not too positive with memories of drunks lying about on the road and she was also here for the Shinju Matsuri (that is the name for it, checked it out today) and the street parade with the big dragon. The parade is on again today and she wanted to see it again. There was a market at the courthouse near China town so we started there. We parked in McDonalds car park and unloaded the Beast and set off to look at go to the markets. They were a

Broome School Camp

Boabs in the street

small one and we soon worked our way through them. Our neighbours at the park are running a stall there selling glasses and we saw them there. We then heard that the parade was on this afternoon so we decided to have lunch and hang around. We expected that the parade would be about 2 ish, but during lunch we heard it was three and then we heard it was 4. We had waited until just after 2:30 and decided we would go shopping instead. As we were walking off we got a stranger named Margaret to take a picture of us with a diver statue and then we took hers. As we were walking off, Maureen’s brother Doug Martyn rang, we had heard he was flying up here as his company CHC flys out of here. He was in

Court House Markets

Old Pearling Lugger

town and literally down the road, so back we went to the café and met him there for coffee.

There is nowhere I know of where you can be sitting having coffee and directly over you and seemingly within a couple of hundred metres a PC3 Orion flys in to land followed by a huge jet a few minutes later, the airport is so close. Doug had a coffee with us and we caught up with what is happening at home. His son Jarred had a lucky escape. He had a flat tyre on

Maureen with a hard hat

Lugger being refurbished

the side of the highway and was in the middle of changing the tyre which was on the left hand side, and a truck wiped off the driver’s side of his car – wrote it off. So so lucky. I would buy a lotto ticket if I were him.

Doug had to move on and we will catch up with him later in the week if we can. By this time the parade was starting and we watched it go by. Just like the Mandurah

China Town

China Town Phone booth

Christmas parade and very good. The surf club had a float in which was a trailer that carries 2 Surf Boats and full of kids. The Indonesian sail training ship had suffered some damage sailing home and has stopped here for repairs and they had they crew in the parade as a marching band, absolutely wonderful and a highlight of the show. They put on a special show at the end of the parade.

Sun Theatre

By the time we finished with the parade and some of the show after, we left to go shopping and got there at 6. They are open until 9 every night and Maureen noticed that they were offering 15c off petrol for spending $100 and tonight is the last night. Maureen worked out we needed a big restock and went shopping, got a $100 worth and put it through, got the deal and loaded it into the car, then went back and got

Sun Movie Theatre

Sam the Dragon

another $100 and the deal, then loaded up the car and back she went for a third time! Three receipts for cheap petrol. An eye for a bargain, with petrol at 180 a litre every cent counts.

We are now back at Girt and settling down. It has been a long day and we are both tired.