broome beach therapy

We arrived to a busy and bustling Broome in August. The shop car parks were full of travellers vehicles, restaurants were full of grey nomads and the beach was packed. The weather was quite perfect: warm during the day, sunshiney yet cool enough in the evenings to carry a cardigan with you. 

The town has emptied out now, it's lovely and quiet and the 'wet' brings a really different vibe. It also brings with it hot and humid weather and very little 'wet'. Sometimes a brief storm will roll through during the night and rain will fall but by morning it is sunny and dry again - I always feel so ripped off when this happens!! 

So, in this season it is easy to feel just a little cooped up. There's not alot to do but run errands, stay cool in air conditioning, and swim at the fully shaded pool. Sometimes the cabin fever starts to set in. We have realised just how important it is to get out in the afternoons. There is usually a suprpisingly refreshing breeze at the beach (just don't get there too early!) which isn't necessarily present in the early morning. So we go, and walk, and explore and let the cabin fever fall away. It's my therapy! 

Gav is on holidays so we are going to be going on a little break for a few days. We're looking forward to a change of scenery and a pool to swim in, even if we are only going 10 minutes down the road! Then we will spend some time at home getting a few things 'baby ready' and just taking it easy. 

The following photos were taken at a range of coastal spots: Town beach, Reddell Beach, Gantheaume point, Cable beach.

Beasts of the Northern Wild

We had been looking forward to getting out of the city so much - getting to some place where we could feel a little more connected with the natural world.  Now we're living here we're loving being able to just duck down to the beach - or even just out into the front yard - to find some creatures doing their their thing - combing the beach for food, hiding in logs, eating each other...

Here's some of the local characters from round here.

 

Above the Kimberley ~ ranges and rivers

These were taken in the East Kimberley, flying between Kununurra and Kalumburu.  It was raining when we landed in Kalumburu, and even felt a little cool.  It's one of the most isolated places I've been and felt strangely like being in PNG (probably helped by the rain and the missionaries).  The flight crosses over some remote territory, and I realised pretty quickly that the famous gorges of the Kimberley are just a fraction of what's really out there.  Would have been nice to have had a better camera, better weather and a less bumpy ride, but hopefully I've captured some of the sense of mystery and wildness out there.

Local tales

Since coming here to WA, one of the things we've enjoyed is getting into some local stories.  Tim Winton has never been too far from the top of our reading lists, and we've both read a little of him here, as well as enjoying Cloudstreet on DVD, The Turning at our local Picture Gardens, and his interview with Jennifer Byrne on ABC a little while back.  We loved watching Satellite Boy at Sun Pictures so much that we did it twice.  I've read Jandamarra and A Town is Born, both gut-wrenching, brilliant accounts of people rising against injustice in the Fitzroy Valley.  We got Bran Nue Day on DVD too, a bit nuttier than I expected.  

It's intriguing how soon after coming to a new place you start to feel a special connection to the local stories, and how the stories then help to build and deepen your connection with the place.  Those stories from the Fitzroy Valley especially had more meaning for me as I've developed more of a sense of the place, and reading them has given me a much richer appreciation for both people and land.

I've just finished That Deadman Dance, a great book that caught my eye at a yard sale in Derby.  It seemed somehow familiar to me.  A beautifully told story from the south coast of the state, a place once known as 'the friendly frontier', although of course, no frontier has ever been 'friendly' for too long.  Looking forward to our travels down there.

Above the Kimberley ~ the dry lands

Work has had me flying around a bit, mostly in small planes.  Seeing the land from above, the patterns crafted by soil, water, wind, fire, and cattle, the occasional straight line of road cutting through, I love it.  Thought I'd share the view.  These pics are from the Fitzroy Valley - an open space, the ranges of the Kimberley to the North and the Great Sandy Desert to the South.

 

BROOME! / first impressions

So - it's actually 3 months now since we arrived here, got a little bit behind in the posts!  But it's fun to go back and look through the photos from our first weekend in Broome, remembering that feeling of looking out across the bluest sea after weeks of dragging ourselves on and on through the dusty vastness of nowhere...

Photos are -
 / boab at town beach
 / the courthouse markets (unbeleivable!  these two were playing at our local market in Brisbane just before we left, then we arrive in Broome and... voila)
 / roebuck bay
 / camels?  yes - camels!
 / cable beach
 / cable beach again
 / stepping into a new sea - gav...
 / ... and mel
 / streeters jetty
 / sunset at gantheaume point

DARNGKU / Geikie Gorge

So right here at the end of our trip (almost!) we finally booked ourselves in for a tour.  We had read about the cultural tour on Geikie Gorge (read about it here, get the details here) and were keen to book in, not just for a boat trip on a beautiful gorge, but also to get some insight into the aboriginal culture around where we'd be living for the next 6 months.  Geikie Gorge is just out of Fitzroy Crossing, a town about 4 hours drive from Broome where Gav would be spending a bit of time doing some work.  The drive from Parry's Lagoon took us through some of the dramatic East Kimberley ranges, through Warmun (where we stopped at an amazing arts centre - you can now view a Warmun artwork from the Eiffel Tower!), and Halls Creek (where we stopped at the best visitor's centre we've seen, but missed the famous IGA), and finally into FX.  It's a bit of a unique town, hopefully some more on it some other time.  And after a day in FX, we headed out for our gorge tour, with our local Bunuba guide, Bill.

The gorge was formed by the Fitzroy river cutting through a limestone range that is actually an ancient fossilised reef, made by some distant ancestor of our modern corals back in Devonian period.  The river cutting through the limestone creates amazing rock formations, and the annual wet season floods keep the lower parts of the cliffs a pristine white.  Bill's tour took us through the natural history of the area as well as touching on some aspects of Bunuba culture.  He took us up the gorge in his boat, spotting freshwater crocs on the way, and for a bit of a climb up through a cleft to the top of the reef, pointing out bush foods and bush medicines.  Looking out across the reef was like gazing over some alien landscape - with all the jagged rocks, deep clefts and caves, it's easy to see how the Bunuba people were able to hold out against the European invaders back in the 1880s.

We camped out beside the Fitzroy river a couple of nights, then got up early on Saturday morning for our final dash into Broome!