Tuesday...30 August 2011

Done a whole lot more of nothing. The weather has improved to 35c!
Went into town for a look at Chinatown this morning, had fish and chips for lunch. Went and got my nails painted a nice bright purple...
We had a visitor this morning, a frilled neck lizard that lives in the park and considers our site and the couple around us to be his own personal hunting patch. Himself threw a couple of crickets in his direction and he happily chomped into them. Wouldn't raise his frill though. Guess we not that scary to him!

Saturday...27 August 2011

Cable Beach

Life is soooooo hard in Broome!
Been doing more of the nothing stuff, we sit outside the van in the 33c weather enjoying the breeze and the nice warm air. Every so often someone will wander past and stop for a chat otherwise we sit in the peace and serenity and watch others going about their holiday.
Couple of younger ones over the drive from us had a night on the town last night and came home late and noisy but did eventually quieten down sometime past one oclock.
There are heaps of fifth wheelers in Broome, the one next to us pulled out yesterday on the way to spend four months at a certain Perth park so no doubt we will bump into them again.

Thursday...25 August 2011

So what have we done? Nothing, that is called slipping into Broome time!
The beauty of Broome is that there is very little to do and all day to do it in. We drove around town, took a look at Cable Beach, yep it is still there, the sand is still whiter than white the sea is still bluer than blue, the pretty people still litter the beach area covered in sunscreen and very little else....status normal.

Tuesday...23 August 2011

Well we have been to Derby. We went down to the wharf and had a look at the tide......
When the tyre place opened on Monday morning Himself wandered in and after doing most of the work himself (as the owner had wrecked his back over the weekend), got four new tyres on the F250 and put the four tyres off the car onto the caravan. So now we have Cooper tyres on both the car and the van. He is fairly pleassed with himself as the bloke at the tyre place was so grateful for the sale and the help he gave us a seriously good discount which made the tyres cheaper than they would have been in the city.
Our luck continued when I rang the Broome Caravan Park to ask when they were likely to have their first vacancy knowing that at this time of the year everything in Broome is booked solid. Seemed they could fit us in for as long as we liked beginning today...wonderful. So here we are in downtown sunny Broome enjoying the pleasant 33c weather and trying hard to speed up enough to slip into Broome time!!!! More information on how we are coping when we have had time to take a look around and see if there have been any changes since we were here last year.
Important note: THE best fish and chip shop in the north west is for sale. Hope it gets a good owner and is not shut down.

Saturday...20 August 2011

Wow, lots has happened since last entry. To begin with, remember the scenic flight? Well they originally said we would  have to wait until Thursday to get on a flight, unless we could be ready in two hours for that particular day. We took the there and then offer.
On Thursday one of the scenic flights gave a bit more adventure than the tourists paid for.
It fell short of the runway on landing and crashed with one pilot and six paying passengers. They are all ok, but were ferried to the local Kununurra hospital to be checked out. They are very very lucky people. The official reason is being given as engine failure on landing.......hmmmmmm. All I know is I am glad we took the earlier flights as there was no way I would have gotten in to any plane after that event on the Thursday!!!! Or to quote  Himself, I would be still screaming hysterically even now if that had been me....
Well done the pilot who did well enough no matter what the reason to have seven people walk away from that one. To quote a saying I once heard...Any landing you walk away from is a good  one!
So on Friday we  packed up and left Kununurra, we went further than planned and ended up in a free camp at Mary River. Getting in and out of that particular camp was a bit hairy as it involved crossing a causeway over running water in the Mary River and the bitumen on the road is badly broken up and full of shakes and shudders to cross. But once on the other side there is a huge camp beside the river and us and about fifty other caravans made camp for the night. Would have been really really good if the people with the four loud dogs bothered to keep them quiet. They made camp right near the one and only toilet and every time some one went near the toilet building the blasted dogs all set up barking and growling. Up early this morning to continue southwards. We discussed our options along the way and decided to pop up to Derby for a look as we had not been here before.
Along the way we went through Fitzroy Crossing and it must have been footy finals time or they are really really into their Saturday footy. We started passing groups of indigenous folk waiting beside gateways a good 150kms out from town, they were all obviously waiting for a pick up of some sort. When we got to Fitzroy Crossing every man and his dog and his mother, mother in law and picinniny were coming out of the bushes and wandering around town in the direction of the town oval and they were all excited and talking about their teams. One was Tigers and the other team was the Crows. No idea who won but golly they were excited. We got fuel and got to hell outta there, one surely does not want to be in an indigenous town after a hotly contested footy match!
Ninety kms from our destination there was an ominous bang from one of the caravan tyres. It blew to bits and took parts of the side of the caravan with it! I walked back along the road and removed the debris of the shredded tyre off the road and found the broken bits and picked them up, maybe somewhere along the way we will pass someone who can fix it. Any one know how I can remove the black marks from the white sides of the caravan? Himself changed the tyre and we came on into Derby but being the weekend we have to wait until the tyre shops open on Monday to get it fixed.
The caravan park we are in is over the road from the local Tyrepower business. So close.......
Anyway along the way I found out where the Curtain Airforce Base is, so I guess the day was not a waste. I am sure there will be other things to see and do here too. Apparently Derby has the biggest tides anywhere in the world, they can go to 11 metres and we are parked right near the beach next to the tidal mud flats. Should be worth a look if we are around when the big tides happen.

Wednesday....17 August 2011

Entry #2 for today, make sure you read down to the first entry for today, which is actually yesterdays happenings entered late!!!

Ok today we drove over to Wyndham.
When we arrived we drove to the port. There was a small cruise ship but access to the wharf was blocked so had to admire it from the roadside. The boat was the Orion which tours from Broome to Darwin to Bali and return. Most of the action at the Wyndham port these days is the export beef cattle trade. Wyndham used to have a huge meatworks but that was sold off and then burnt down and finally shut. Now there is only the cattle and bauxite being shipped from Wyndham.
The highlight of any trip to Wyndham is a must do trip to the Five Rivers Lookout. The road to this lookout is 3.7km of very steep winding road and can be a bit hairy but oh boy the view!!!
From up there you can see The Durak River, The King River, The Ord River, The Pentacost River and the Forrest River all running into the Cambridge Gulf which is the inlet that Wyndham sits in.

Then we bounced 25km out a dirt road to look at the famous Prison Tree. This is a huge Boab tree. In the early years of settlement the police used the hollow centre as a prison to hold prisoners during the wet season when they were unable to transport them to the jail in Wyndham because the roads were under water. Himself had no trouble getting in but quickly discovered that getting out again was a touch tricky which is no doubt why they used it to hold prisoners!!!

We also stopped and looked at the Moochalabra Dam which is the water supply for Wyndham and we went through the Museum which was full of fascinating information about the history of the town. We also learnt about the Koolama which was bombed by the Japanese during WW2 in 1942 and after it limped back to Wyndham, it sank 40m from the jetty and is still there.

We were going to have a quick look at El Questro on the way home but ran out of time. Never mind we will take a look next time.

Wednesday...17 August 2011

Missed yesterdays blog. Too darn tired!
We went out to the Ord Dam or Lake Argyle and toured the area, drove over the spillway wall etc. It really is very beautiful out there. Water everywhere.

Then we came back into town and took a scenic flight with Alligator Airways in a small 6 seater plane that left Kununurra and tracked out over the vast irrigation fields of the Ord River Irrigation Project to Lake Argyle and we flew over the entire length of it, seemed to take forever. Lake Argyle is 23 times bigger than Sydney Harbour and during the wet season it can be 64 times bigger. It is classified as an inland sea. And it is all man made!
From there we passed over a couple of cattle stations and had a view of the edge of the Tanami Desert and arrived at Purnululu National Park, better known as the Bungle Bungles.
We landed at the Bungle Bungle airstrip to collect a couple of passengers and when we got back in the air we circled the Bungles for 15 minutes looking at places like Cathedral Gorge and Piccaninny Creek and Echnidna Chasm. Stunning.
On the way back to Kununurra we flew over the famous Arygle Diamond Mine, just another mine from the air but the diamonds in that mine are the highest quality in the world. Quite a big day and three hours in a tiny little plane with no room to stretch legs or even move around is rather tiring.