Broome - The first time

We were super excited to get to Broome, it was time for some touristing, shopping & organising.  We booked a caravan park because we were told we would have trouble getting a spot if we just turned up, so we booked into Tarangua Caravan Park. It turned out to be not that busy, but it was a nice park with good sized shady sites, good amenities and good service.  It was $36 a night for a powered site & we stayed for 6 nights, we wanted to see Broome before it got to busy. Again we were grouped with the other real campers in trailers, tents and bongo buses. Mostly we had good neighbours including some other young couples fro Emu Park and Mackay, funny how it works out, we had barely seen any other travellers the same age as us, and this time we had 2 other couples that live within 300km of us. We had some very noisy loud Italian backpackers for a couple of nights, there was 4 of them in a Toyota Camry and all they had was on tiny pup tent between them. They talked loudly but the worst thing was the fact that they locked and unlocked their car 5000 times a night with all the associated light flashing and beeping, every time they moved more than a step away from their car, we got over that pretty quickly!! They also all had matching short bathrobes that they wore around at night aftertheir  showers, memorable....

After we set up camp on the first day, we soon hit the showers, put on some non-bush clothes & went to check out the sites of Broome.  We did a bit of a drive around and then parked in the town centre at China Town. We were amazed at the sheer number of pearl shops, I would check them out later! It was soon time for lunch, so we found a pub the Roey (Roebuck Hotel) and had an awesome burger and beer. After lunch we had a bit more of a wander through town, but it was pretty hot & we were buggered, so we headed back to camp for a quiet night. 

Day two was more of the same, looking around town, lunch at the famous Matso's Brewery, a walk on Cable Beach for sunset and dinner out at a beachfront restaurant on Cable Beach, a short walk home to the caravan park and it was a great day. 

Day 3 in Broome was pretty great too! We went to the courthouse markets in the morning & these were really good, a great mix of awesome food, arty & crafty bits and pieces and fresh fruit & veggies. After those we went for a browse in the shops in town & I even got to browse a few Pearl shops, no purchases yet though! After a quick lunch we journeyed the 30km out of town to Malcolm Douglas Croc park, Malcolm was one of Mat's idols so we just had to visit.  It cost $35 per adult but was only open from 2-5pm with a croc feeding at 3pm. The whole park was really great & the croc feeding was really good. We got to hold a baby croc, they then fed a pen of 70 big crocs & then we walked around the park & they fed the really big crocs.  There were birds & marsupials & it was a great relaxed park. We really enjoyed it. Broome is expensive for everything, but we felt we got value for money at the croc park.

The next day we went for a drive up towards Cape Leveque to check out some of the free campsites just out of town, ready for our next visit after we finish in the Kimberley.  We had a look between Willie Creek pearl farm up to James Price Point including Quondong Point, there were some great campsites, but it was really busy already.  We first hit the coast at a place between Willie Creek and Barred Creek, we came towards the beach and noticed there was one camper already out there, as we came towards his camp, he wandered around his site, completely naked! Seriously, we seem to be attracting the naked people! We drove off without stopping, it reminded me of that BCF ad on TV where the guys crank the music and look dodgy, may be this guy was doing the same thing to keep other campers away! 

It was a good day trip & was good to check out if we would get our trailer in which we would easily. A late lunch at the pub, followed by some meat shopping so we could get it frozen on 240V power and that rounded out our day.  We had two more days in Broome which were pretty much just organising our selves for our trip on the Gibb River Road, where we are planning to take about a month to complete & also go up to Kalumburu, so some serious food & beer shopping had to be done. 

Broome was a great stop, we are glad we did it while it wasn't too busy & the camping was a bit cheaper because it was outside of peak season.  It was pretty hot during our stay so they reckon that is why Broome was a bit quieter than normal, we were happy to take it not being busy!