Kathleen
Broome, Australia – May 8-11, 2016
Have you ever heard of Broome, Australia? Such an exotic sounding place. Flying into Broome, on Australia’s northern coast, does feel a bit like flying into the back & beyond, and for good reason. This small town is the gateway to the Kimberly outback region, which is also extremely sparsely populated. The “town” is spread out in a grid, but the blocks are about quarter of a mile in length and things are more spread out than a glance at a map would indicate. We are glad we got a car.
We had to make the decision not to do any safari tours into the Kimberly, but we were quite happy to see Broome on its own merit. The “world-renowned” Cable Beach is probably 3 miles long with white white sand. They famously take tourists on camel rides at sunset, however, if you read my Morocco blog, you will remember that I am not a huge fan of camel rides, so we opted out of this. The weather was a little bit cool and overcast for the season, so while I did manage to get one short dip in, we didn’t spend a lot of time in the water. What we did enjoy immensely was a couple of spectacular sunsets. One from the main area, and one from a magnificent rock formation at the other side. We walked down the bluff and found our very own spot from which to watch the sunset, we were all alone for a mile of beach and the colors did not disappoint.
Broome was born out of the pearling industry, and they still farm pearls all the way up the coast to Darwin. I didn’t buy any, but I learned a lot about how pearls are valued and looked at some incredibly beautiful (and expensive) specimens.
We spent a few pretty relaxing days in Broome and we stayed at a guest house where the owners were extremely friendly and forthcoming with local information. It definately felt like a singular place, and given that there is really nothing within a thousand miles of Broome in any direction, it certainly was remote. We would definately recommend a few days in Broome to anyone travelling to Australia.