Broome, the touristy expensive place to stay? Well, yes, but not necessarily as you’ll see later… We arrived in Broome Monday 8th Sept, and did the typical travelling tourist thingy; staying for 3 nights in caravan parks close to Cable Beach. We spent the final two nights at Cable Beach Caravan Park, a huge park and with plenty of empty spaces (at this time anyway). Here we also found Alf and Veronica, so it was great to be able to catch up and spend some time with them.

So what’d we do in Broome? Well there is Cable beach of course! At high tide this beach is fairly similar to what you might find at the Gold Coast (water is perhaps a lighter blue though). However, due to the huge tidal range, at low tide the water recedes a looooong way out (over 200 metres!) leaving a huge expanse of fine white sand. This sand is very fine, almost clay like in consistency! Of course we swum, and I had a good time body surfing (we didn’t take the boogie boards out), though there was a strong sweep.

Different day, different time, we did a long walk up beach to where the boats are moored, around 8km’s all up. More pretty views.

We had a look at Broome Port, and walked along the Jetty. As the tide was rushing out we saw a couple of large turtles underneath. Through the nice blue water we also saw a large streamlined fish (>1m), such as a mackerel, chasing after some smaller fish. After this we got the rods out and fished off the nearby rocks.

Broome has plenty of places to shop and look around. Nicole bought some togs, so she doesn’t have to wear her triathlon swimsuit everywhere! We looked in some local pearl shops (Broome is a pearling town), but fortunately for my wallet Nicole doesn’t think we need to spend any more money on jewelry for her!!

The staircase to the moon happens a couple nights a month, and we happened to be in Broome at the right time to go and view. The moon rises over the mudflats at low tide, and the moons reflection over the uneven mudflats is what this is referring too. There was a night market there, so we had a dish of thai chicken, and a wood fired oven pizza, for dinner. We did end up buying Nicole a pearl – she liked the below – but this one certainly didn’t break the bank (it’d be a freshwater pearl)!

We knew there was free camping to the north of Broome, on the way to Cape Levique, but access is via 4wd recommended roads. However, friends of Alf and Veronica did a day trip to Quondong Point, and reported that the road was recently graded and would be fine for our motorhome! So Thurs 11/9 we headed off to find a campsite, on roads that turned out to be sandier and rougher than we had expected…. Made it OK though (and as Nicole noticed, the only non-4wd in the area yet again!), and selected a campsite on a knoll near some others.

Turns out the people we set-up near are a very sociable group (3 caravans). One of them was leaving the next day, so they were having a group meal around the campfire, to which we, having set up on the same knoll, were to attend and be fed! Main meal included mackerel they had caught, and there was homemade (or should that be caravan made…) quiche and other stuff. Then it was damper freshly cooked in a camp oven, that the boys helped make, for desert. In our many years of camping, we’d certainly never encountered anything like this before! Following nights were also spent around the good sized campfire (the others had collected the wood), but were a feed yourself type arrangement.

It is a beautiful spot, and absolutely amazing that it is free to camp there. Lots of rocky areas along the shoreline, but some nice sandy places to swim too. The weather was hot and sunny – Friday in particular would have been in the upper 30’s if not pushing 40C! Alf and Veronica had already planned a day trip here, so they dropped in and said hello again on Friday.

So we went for walks, looked in the rocky areas for shells and pretty patterned rocks, went swimming, played frisbee and fished! There is supposedly a 72 hour limit on camping in this area, but everyone we met had already been there for weeks! The only downside is that the 100m or so of water close to shore had recently become dirty, churned up by some windy weather. We still went swimming and boogie boarding though! Further out was beautiful blue seas. I didn’t spend a lot of time with the camera, but it’s worthy of a few more shots.

Sunday (14/09/2014) we packed up around lunch time, said goodbyes to the neighbours, and headed back to Broome to restock and refuel. Couldn’t resist one last swim at Cable Beach though, and it was a good one with the body boards too! As the sun was setting, we headed out from Broome for the last time, and turned down the Great Northern Hwy towards Port Headland.

Was a great place to visit, really enhanced by a nice stay at Quondong Point. I think that was the first time this trip when we sat around without specific attractions/features to go and visit/view. Wouldn’t say we felt we’ve been needing it (the whole trip has been pretty relaxed), but it was nice to do. Also quite happy to get on the road and be moving again 🙂