Saturday, October 10, 2015

In the morning, the 360,000,000 year old Devonian reef cliffs oversaw us at breakfast and tonight we walked along Cable Beach looking out across the Indian Ocean where the winds sweep across from Africa to Australia. From flies investigating my eyes, nose, lips and ears nearly driving me to distraction in a large open campground with only 4 other vehicles to a town with cars, people and the humidity that comes from the ocean breezes. We have not had a more different beginning and end to any day.

The last of the unsealed road was much as before with cattle wandering across the road, tires strewn every few kilometres and even the occasional dead van abandoned and usually burnt out. Geoff saw one with maps and clothes still inside.

Traffic was less than we had expected. Some days we met 6 – 12 cars all day. Campgrounds and sites of interest were also nearly empty which meant that we often had hiking trails to ourselves. The reason of course is that this is the beginning of the hot season leading into the wet and increasing humidity when sane people stay inside where there is air conditioning.

Broome was founded in the 1800’s as the capital of the world pearling industry. Aboriginals were kidnapped and marched in chains to the coast to serve on the boats and later Chinese and Japanese provided the cheap labour. During WWII the Japanese bombed Broome in one devastating attack on the ships that were ferrying the Dutch out of Java. I hadn’t realized how threatened Australia was, more particularly how vulnerable they felt until the capitulation of Japan.

The day ended with a walk along Cable Beach listening to the surf, watching the sun set and enjoying dinner overlooking all this beauty.

(Geoff’s note) The middle picture shows a “chicken strip”. In the transition from the gravel road to the sealed highway we drove along 10 km of single lane bitumen (asphalt). Facing an oncoming road train I quickly became the chicken and moved off the road.

• Uncategorized