Broome

Broome! The place of beautiful sunsets, pearls, incredibly high tides, amazing history and Torquoise green beaches!

We arrived there and thankfully, providentially managed to get the last spot available in the Cable Beach caravan park. We had arrived at the onset of the school holidays and it seemed as if everyone in Australia was descending on Broome! Our stay there started at Cable Beach Caravan Park. From there we stayed one week at the SDA church camp grounds which functions as an overflow caravan Park, then we stayed one night in the town caravan park and a further week in the Pistol Club overflow caravan park.

Town Beach

Town Beach (also known as Roebuck Bay) is just an amazing splash of artistic colours. The waters are a breathtaking Turquoise, the sand is red, the mangroves are green and the blend of the colours just keep you looking and looking. We spent many happy days at this place and couldn’t get enough of it!

Unfortunately, we found out some sad history about the place.

In World War II, because of the Japanese take over of some of the Indonesian Islands, Australia carried out a rescue of all of the Dutch families that were stationed there. They were in the middle of transferring the families from the Dutch East Indies, through to Broome and then on to Perth for processing when the Japanese came without warning and began an air raid! Some of the stories of that horrible afternoon are etched into sculptures by the beach. I have included some of the pictures. There is a beautiful little book about a young Aboriginal boy who was working on one of the sea planes when it happened. He was trying to swim to shore to get away from the shooting and fire when he noticed a young woman and her child struggling to stay afloat in the water. He went back and rescued them. He was incredibly sad that he could not rescue everybody as there were many cries for help from the water as young families, in transit from the East Indies were shot at and died in the water.

On very low tides you can go out and see the wrecks of the aeroplanes from that day.

Fishing

Since fishing was the community thing to do on the pier we decided to give it a go. Gerson and the kids tried two days of it and didn’t catch even one! It was quite disappointing. There were other fisherman who were catching some pretty amazing stuff, including sharks, Barramundi, and a couple of other interesting types of fish.

Broome Museum

We spent one afternoon at the Broome Museum. This had a lot of artefacts from the time of the Japanese Raid of Roebuck Bay. It also had World War II aircraft that had been hauled up from the beach. There were all sorts of shells. The kids also got to do a little age appropriate treasure hunt through the museum which they enjoyed. They also learned about Dinosaur Footprints which are found on the rocks at the beach in Broome and James Price Point.

Pearl Industry and Biggest Pearl in the World

Learning the History of the Pearl Industry in Broome was fascinating. It was started by Japanese businessmen. Then an Australian family decided to give a go at it. We got to see the old Pearl Diving Suits they used to use, learn about the Benz and see Pearl Oysters harvesting in water in the Pearl Farm. Unfortunately we didn’t travel to the actual Pearl Farms by the beaches as this required a tour, but we go to see the biggest Pearl in the World, found out that Mother of Pearl was mainly used to produce buttons and spoons before the invention of plastic, and saw lots of videos of the hardships they went through in Australia in the pearling industry.

We also learned the fate of the poor Japanese families who had been doing pearling in Broome and surrounds for generations, only to find themselves put in prison because of World War II. The only reason they were imprisoned was because their country was fighting with Australia. The Government did not take into account that they had been living here for generations.

Cable Beach Camels

One of the highlights of Broome was, of course, Cable Beach and the Camel Ride. We spent a couple of evenings on Cable Beach including opening of Sabbath with a special dinner. The camels were a little smelly but they were majestic to watch. When it was our turn we learned that Ezras camel was named Khan and he was the top camel of the farm. We were only riding for 30 minutes but we were very sore after we had finished. The camels were very slow and majestic.

We learned that the camels were actually brought across from the East of Australia and that they don’t put them on a train or truck, instead they walk them across.

James Price Point

James Price Point is a free camping spot about 45 minutes from Broome up the Cape. I, Catherine, decided to take the kids there while Gerson was working and did not realise it was such a rough road. I had not taken pains to figure out how to put the car into 4 wheel drive and the tires could have down with some letting out of air. We managed to get through it though with fully inflated tires and amateur driving.

Here was where we were looking for dinosaur footprints. We thought we found some and we will show you a couple of what we thought.

This place was full of colour. It had very red cliffs and was full of amazing butterflies flitting about on the wildflowers. Apparently a company is trying to sink a gas well in this place and there are efforts being made to stop this and preserve this beautiful part of Australia.

Staircase to the Moon

There is a phenomena that happens once a month at Roebuck Bay. The Moon rises low over the waters over the bay and the silvery light looks like a staircase directly to the moon. We left one day before the phenomena occurred. We had a look the night before and we will just show you something of it.