Maxin' and relaxin' in Broome

Sunset in Broome

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April 25: Karijini NP to Port Hedland (Mileage: 2843 km)

April 26: Port Hedland to Broome (Mileage: 3466 km)

April 27: Broome

After a solid day in Karijini NP, we left in the early evening to start the journey to Broome.  That night we risked a little of the darkness (sun goes down at around 6 there right now!) to get as far as we could, and ended up spending the night in Port Hedland.  PH exists only due to mining needs in the area, and you can tell it when you get into town.  The male:female ratio was definitely biased from what we could see, and definitely not in favour of the upper crust of society.  We asked about a good place to eat, and a pizza parlour was suggested.  The pizza was definitely good, but I had reservations when we walked in.  Inside the restaurant, there were tons of spiderwebs, a fly-trap that had not been cleaned for a while, plus a guy sitting there smoking beside the counter.  Not to mention the massive steel gate and chicken wire surrounding the premises (not that there was much good in there to steal...)

I had a stark realisation that evening, that I was becoming stereotypical trailer park trash.  We had stayed in caravan parks almost every night, and that night I was walking around shirtless, completely unshaven, with a beer in hand around the park.  Danger...  ;)

Left PH in the morning to continue the next 600 km up to Broome.  This part of the country surprised me a lot, as it looked a lot like the U.S. Midwest or the Prairies in Canada!  No real harvesting going on, but tons of flat, grassy fields around the highway for most of the trip.  Felt like I was driving into Minneapolis...  Made it a little easier to have a lead foot that day...

We got into Broome in the late afternoon, and decided to go check out Cable Beach (known as one of the best beaches in Aus).  It certainly was absolutely beautiful and quite huge, but when we got there we faced a large number of warnings about stingers (jellyfish) in the water.  The last sting was...  wait for it....  1 day before.  No way we were going for a long swim.  Really disappointing, since this was one of the reasons we came there.  Fortunately the caravan park had a very nice pool, so after a short nap on the beach we decided to go for a dip in the pool.

We went into the City Center in the evening, and were confronted with quite a scene.  The whole downtown area is not very large, and was filled with tons of drunk Aboriginals causing havoc in the park.  Not disturbing tourists or threatening in anyway, but they were there in full force - yelling, running around, drinking, and making a large amount of noise.  The cops came several times to take booze and tell them to move on.  Also stopped into a service station and saw an Aboriginal person in front of me get rudely told off by the staff member at the counter, who then gave me a nice smile when I got there.  My first taste of the double standard in Aussie society out here.  Interesting vicious cycle of low tolerance of the white people to the Aboriginals, causing frustration and upset in the Aboriginal peoples, causing them to be more obnoxious, leading to an even lower level of tolerance in the white people.  We saw this several times on the north coast of Aus and into the center.  I am surprised that many of these towns have not blown up.  Reminds me a lot of the reservations back in Canada...

The next day was our admin catch-up and resting day in Broome.  Just hung out doing laundry, a little email, and writing, and spent a lot of time by the pool.  Nice to have a little break for a day for a change.  Saw a nice sunset from a decent restaurant that night, and then hit a little tavern near the caravan park.  Aside from the coninued Aboriginal problems in town and a little bar fight that took place in the tavern, it was a pretty chilled out day.