Broome

O'Toole, the camel.

I thought Geoffrey Boycott taught me the meaning of tedium years ago but it appears that I have been under a misapprehension about the true depth of the word. Tedium is not watching Boycott grind a meaningless two day 100 it really involves driving from Port Headland to Broome.  I think the distance is a mere 500kms but it feels like an eternity as nothing changes, nothing. Even the Wedge Tail Eagles move around in the same pattern. Unless I had the steering wheel to bash my head against I might have sworn I was in a very bad dream or watching Geoffrey Boycott blocking full tosses for five hours straight.

Here is a Wedge Tailed Eagle floating endlessly over the highway waiting for a car to smash a cow,  wallaby, snake  or lizard or presumably anything that they can eat.

I apologize for dribbling from the start but I think Boycott, eternity, real tedium and 100% humidity took it's toll on me. Broome was not I expected. There is an airport in the middle of town and several hundred eagles circling above it. Broome itself does not really have a town centre, it sits on a peninsula with Roebuck Bay, China Town, the pearl stores, an ice cream shop, Sun  Pictures garden cinema and Matsu's brewery on one side and Cable Beach with all the resorts, caravan parks and camels on the other. And the airport in the middle, planes fly low over the cinema which really added to the effects of the action sequences in Ironman 3.

There is a little bit to do in Broome. The museum is a good place to start. Run by volunteers and staffed at the front desk by Mormon elders doing their tour of duty. I was surprised and amused to see two clean cut boys sitting there in the aircon and not out on the streets doing the door to door thing but who could blame them. Broome started off as a bit of a crazy lawless town and proceeded to become even crazier and more lawless until customs and police arrived after 50 years of operation. Far too late to save the local aboriginal population who had many of their men shackled and forced to dive for pearls until they were too consumed with lung infections to be of any use. Later Japanese, Indonesian  and Philipina's came over to do the dangerous work until eventually WW11 happened and people ended up using plastic instead of pearl for buttons. Pearling made a resurgence in the 60's when pearl farming became established. There is a good exhibit of pearls at the museum as well as a very impressive shell collection, there is also a lot of random stuff like the telephone exchange exhibit which is pretty funny.

After being filled up with history you can duck around to Matsu's Brewery for a good feed and a selection of fine beers. Chilli or Mango beers would not normally top my list of brews to try but up here in this humidity they make sense and taste good too. They also knock out good pale ale, pilsner, ginger beer and a dark ale. All of this is created on the former premises of Mr Matsu's trading house which has a big wooden bar, cool rooms and a shaded beer garden. Finn enjoyed it too.

On Saturday's and Sunday's there is a pretty decent little market out near the court house. Knick knackery, cheapish pearls and some good asian food and that sort of thing mainly. If you are hot go and see the lady that sells hats as she also sells those cool neck tie things that you did in water and tie around your neck to cool you down, handy...kept this family alive along with the $16 pedestal fan from Target.  

Camels are wonderful animals, resilient, strong and graceful mostly and they also look funny but they are not designed to be ridden, I mean there's a hump on the back innit. Anyway it has not stopped three operators making a mint out of convincing suckers like us to get on one and go for a stroll down Cable Beach. It was hot and yes uncomfortable but it was fun. The boys and went on a camel with some unpronounceable name which I renamed O'Toole after the lead in David Lean's epic Lawrence of Arabia. "Kill them all, take no prisoners." I mumbled to myself as we heaved off. 

Ships on the beach

All smiles, notice O'Toole with the biggest grin "Sorrre bottoms foorr you my friends, ha ha ha haaaaaa!!!"

Camels were a lot of fun and all of them were boys bar one, apparently they get a little frisky and naughty when there are too many girls present. After we did the ride we went to say sorry to our bottoms with a cocktail, the kids had slushies and we watched the sun go down.

And Cable Beach is not a bad beach, a few rocks but the water is warm and you can swim with sting rays, heaps of them. You are also allowed to drive on the beach if the whim takes you. If you still want more after the sun goes down head back to Chinatown to Sun Pictures cinema garden (grab a takeaway to take in) and plant your camel sore bum in a deck chair and take in a movie.

Mount Tom Price and Karijini

It's a bit of a drive out to Tom Price but then again it's a bit of a long drive to anywhere out in these parts. But I did do my bit to cut 50 klicks off the trip from Coral Bay to Tom Price by taking a dusty detour around the back and therefore avoiding Paraburdoo, not that it impressed Amanda much as everything got covered in red dust and it was a little bumpy in parts. Still it was an adventure and the scenery was awesome, lot's of hills made out of iron covered in red dust.

Above is a picture of my feet and Mount Nameless in the background. As you can see it is fairly steep, Amanda will tell you all about when we return because her car drove up almost to the top although her eyes were closed for some of the descent! Fun, adventure and good view from up there.

Tom Price is quite an oasis, very green and full of young people, I think I was the oldest person there. About 800 people of the 2,500 local population work at the Rio Tinto mine. There are about 500 FIFO's and it has one pub and one petrol station. So in effect the town has one iron ore mine and two gold mines. 

Callam made some friends in the camp groung. We had been feeding Galahs and Corellas until I saw a sign saying not to feed them. Apparently they are a real pest around town and that have expulsion weeks where they let off sirens to get rid of them. Anyway they were fun for a while.

We all went down to the mine on a tour. Here we are nice and clean before the tour.

The tour itself was very informative, of course, so much so we only remember snippets. Tom Price was an American who took a helicopter ride out here and said "Wow, look at all that black stuff sticking out that mountain...it's pure iron." When he told the Australian government they said "Yeah, so what mate. It's miles from bloody anywhere you can go and scrape it off the mountain." Tom Price died before the mining started in the mid sixties, we named the mountain after him but not a nearby mountain called Mount Nameless. Rio Tinto owns the mine and the railway that runs 236 wagons of iron ore rock and fininings out to Dampier each day. Rio Tinto don't like Twiggy Fortescue so they won't let him use the railway so they have sole use of it. Twiggy has loads of four wagon road trains that run up and down the road from his nearby mines to Dampier every day. It's very hot and dusty at the mine and there is quite a bit of very heavy and big machinery. Look at these pics.

Finn and Cal sizing up an old Tonka.

The boy and girls that drive the big trucks like to beep their horns long, hard and often as they pass.

The red dust gets everywhere and it wise not to lean against anything. Look at Marley's leg.

They dig big holes up here as you can imagine.

As impressive as the mine was for all the human ingenuity that goes into its workings there was also the natural beauty of Karijini National Park to visit as well. The park is the second largest national park in WA and the little part of it that we decided to visit was the Dales Gorge area. It had an excellent visitors centre which is that well designed that it blends into the environment, we only found it because Finn hit it with his head whilst searching for somewhere to pee. From the outside it looks like a huge rusting ships hull, on the inside it is full of really interesting stuff. The video commentaries by the local indigenous people are great as are the stories that that explain the lanscape and some of the star constellations. 

It was nice in the aircon of the visitors centre but we had a trek to do. "Not far" I said "Quick walk and a swim and back for a picnic at another swimming hole." 2 and half hours and five 5km later we had walked along the top of the gorge, clambered down a cliff, swam in the beautiful circular pool and trekked down the bottom of the gorge and had a swim at Fortescue falls. There was a twisted ankle, a bloodied shin, an unplanned slip and swim and some hot faces but by crikey it was a good adventure.

Ahhhh, the swim after the long climb down. 

It's lovely Dad, but it's hot.

Are we there yet?

Just prior to our second swim.

Macho macho men.

The kids decided that this pool would look good in our back yard, scaled down perhaps.

Surely this has to be one of the most beautiful places in the world.

Shark Bay to Coral Bay

It's a long way into Shark Bay from the main highway that threads north to Port Headland and beyond but it is well worth the effort. A couple of travellers tips though, make sure you stop off for supplies at larger places before you stop in Denham or Monkey Mia, and if you are thinking of camping in Denham bring a drill in order to get the tent pegs in the ground. I recall looking at three tomatoes for sale for $4 at the local store in Denham with the same stunned disbelief that I had looking at bent peg that I had been bashing into the ground an hour before. The next day I was stunned again when we saw emus in the sea at Monkey Mia. One could say it was a stunning experience all round. Callam covered off very well the experience that we had on the Shotover catamaran in the previous blog but I will add a photo of the crazy emus.

And I suppose now thinking about it after seeing kangaroos on the beach in Cape Le Grand it does seem to make sense to have these two beach loving animals as part of our national emblem.

We were lucky enough to arrive at Monkey Mia for the third feeding of the dolphins and as luck would have it Marley was lucky enough to be chosen to feed one of the dolphins.

I stuck the Go Pro in the water....and as luck would have it a mother and calf swam past. But because video is a pain to upload here are some photos of those cheeky creatures.

And I better not forget these two sea dogs we saw out and about.

Overall Monkey Mia and Shark Bay were well worth the visit. We were fortunate enough not to compete with crowds of people and we saw a lot of sea life.

Coral Bay was  our next destination. We stopped off in Carnarvon for supplies, it looks nothing like Carnarvon in Wales BTW. This place had bent gum and palm trees that seemed to have been bent by the strong winds the place tends to experience. They grow a lot of tiny bananas up here which are quite delicious, they even have a little big banana on the road out of town which commemorates "The home of the lunch box banana." I was too stuuned/lazy to take a shot of it so you will have our word for it.

Coral bay is approached through some very arid country dotted with termite mounds and red earth. It is surprising then to get out to get out of the car and get hit by the humidity. It we were primarily in Coral Bay for snorkelling, fishing and swimming with whale sharks, sunburn was just an added bonus. The good thing about Coral Bay is that you can walk into the water and in a few metres you are swimming amongst some beautifully colourful fish and coral. Finn was very excited by all this and found a confidence that was to encourage him a few days later when he went out snorkelling in the open sea on Ningaloo reef proper where to his delight he saw some even bigger coral formations coral and two Loggerhead turtles, his squeals of delight were hilarious.

Marley and Captain Macca

The boys with brother Jim

Unfortunately Finn was just a little too small to dive with the whale sharks but he did manage to see one from the surface. The rest of us managed to get into the water up to five times each to see two whale sharks up close and although they were reasonably "small" at 6 -7 meters thy did appear to be very large and majestic.  

A view of our boat out on Ningaloo reef

The whole experience was made possible by Captain Macca and Callam and Finn's new brother, Jim.

Another great experience we had was out on the boat Seaforce reeling in all sorts of snapper , cod and the occassional Red Emporer. Cal and I did pretty well catching the biggest two fish of the day , a Gold Banded Snapper and a Red Emporer. For those that are interested we used two hook baited with sardines and squid on a hand line dropped to 100-110meters. Cal did the long haul up with a couple of fish including a 2kg Honeycomb Cod, it was the best fish he had ever eaten. We had so much fish we had to give some away.

Our two big ones which other people also had their photos taken with them! Fibbers.

Our box of fish.

Well we are in the Pilbarra now and will update soon on our Karinjini Dales gorge experience and our trip down the Rio Tinto mine. Cheers for now.

 

Animals in the Sea at Monkey Mia by Callam Thomas

We went on a big boat in Monkey Mia called the Shotover. We saw a manta ray, it was really fast and big. A tiger shark came to us. Tiger sharks can eat people if they want to.

Here I am lying on the net of the Shotover

Finn and I met some cool people from Brasil

We saw a massive squadron of sting rays . Some sting rays can look like a shark, they have a head like a shovel but a tail like a shark and they are called shovel rays.

Here is a Loggerhead turtle

A squadron of rays

The dolphins that rode with the boat.

A turtle bobbing to the surfce.

A crazy sea snake was twisting and turning. Sea snakes are not harmful unless you really annoy them. We also saw a pod of dolphins that nearly hit our boat.

There were funny turtles that stuck their heads out of the water. They can live over one hundred years.

We saw sun burnt dugon with a sunburned back.

And the sunburned dugong.

Perth and Fremantle

Seven days gone in the blink of an eye. The hurly burly of Perth is some 800k away from Coral Bay which is where where we are now. The pace of life could not be in more contrast. Finn is enjoying turning six today and we are letting him decide what is the agenda for today and for the moment it is Mario Kart and some Harry Potter game on the Nintendo at the moment. Whilst he does battle with that I shall try and recall some of the events of Perth and Fremantle that we experienced.

Perth is a big place, 1.7m people with about the same amount of cars which are constantly choking its highways. All the houses look new and there some extraordinarily rich people that live in houses the size of shopping centres. Fortresses built out of mining and engineering wealth. Kerry Stokes' pad looks like a corner shop compared to some of the mansions that border the shores of The Swan from Perth to Fremantle. Houses in Fremantle are smaller and the traffic is less but very large container ships are parked on the high street. Fremantle also has a statue of Bon Scott, a functioning brewery and a prison that now functions as a museum. It also has a rather good market that operates Friday and Saturday and in it there is an Indian man with an Indian take way shop that sells the best deep fried Indian delicacies in the world. Each one of these deep fried things have unpronounceable names (I did recognise samosa though) but my recommendation would be the the stuffed sweet chilli, heaven on a stick.

Finny in front of the magic shop

Not sure whether it was a reflection on Perth or not but we spent three nights there but two days in Fremantle. Perth is a nice enough place, very clean, good air, nice park and beautiful river but Freo has vibrancy, salty air, deep fried food and a brewery. It also has an oldish lady that walks the streets picking up everyones rubbish, I was going to take a photo of her but I just watched her in stunned admiration, maybe she had an obsessive compulsive disorder or maybe she just liked her city to be clean, whatever her motive she deserves an award.

We enjoyed a trip down the Swan from Battery Point to Fremantle on a cruise boat. It just gave us the impression that there are an awfully lot of very rich people that live in Perth in big palaces next to marinas that have very big expensive white boats in them. There must be poor people somewhere but we could not see them. Perth sprawls forever and on the way out north the freeway reduces to to a un-signposted roundabout, but that is another story.

The long walk to Freo prison

Here are some pictures from Perth and Fremantle.

Using the amenities in the yard

The legend

Checking out the digs in 3 division

A giraffe and a camel at the docks.

Little Creatures.

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And the markets