Friday 28th March – Tuesday 2nd April – Broome (and just before)

So the words that need to go with all the photos that the previous post had need to start flowing soon, because the trip is travelling along at what seems like a tremendous pace, so I’d better get cracking before I drown…

As mentioned in what seems to be a post I wrote many weeks ago, though I’m sure it hasn’t been long, we packed up and left Paraburdoo having had a brilliant week with my cousin.

Having looked at several maps and consulted numerous camp guides, we decided that going the whole way to Broome in one hit was going to be a bit too strenuous, so we picked a camp spot called De Grey River that Mr and Mrs Mine recommended, and also got good reviews in camp guides.

On our way to De Grey we were passing back through Karijini National Park, so we headed to the information centre within the park, only to find after travelling 20km on a pretty rough track, that it wasn’t open for the season yet… Possibly a sign at the main turn off would have been helpful! A short stop on the side of the road to admire the surrounding hills and have a quick morning tea had to do us, and then back on the road to Port Headland.

Port Headland was reached in time to check out South Headland first, which wasn’t very impressive, then onto Port Headland to check out the port and view some massive ships being filled with iron ore. Hard to get the scale of just how massive the ships were, but they were huge.

Left Port Headland, travelling east for about 80km until we reached De Grey River. The camp was pretty basic, with some drop toilets at the entrance, and then heaps of bins spaced throughout the camp. De Grey is a free camp spot, that I gather is very busy in winter, but I think there were only one or two other campers there that we passed on our way in, but other than that, it was just us.

We had a couple of lovely swims in the De Grey River to cool down when we got there, and then again before bed as the sun was setting magnificently.

The kids were begging for some more camp stories, so while we were lying in our swags watching the stars, He came up with a satisfactory one, but I totally failed with mine, which I acknowledge was pretty pathetic, so no surprise! HGB then decided that she’d have a go at making up a story. She told a story like she writes it, with bare minimum details, so He helped retell it for her, plumping it out with some good details. Something about a shark and fishing…

MMB then took the stage and told a long rambling story about an alien coming down to Earth and finding a kangaroo and a few other animals and renaming them and taking them all back into space. Her attention to detail and ability to link random details in together is rather humorous. I look forward to many more stories from her in the future.

Early start towards Broome next morning as we headed towards a station just out of Broome that is managed by a friend of a friend (that, as always, we ended up having about five separate connections with). Mr and Mrs Manyconnections were not going to be there on the Saturday night, so suggested we come to them on Sunday morning, and stay at the Roebuck Plains Roadhouse for the night.

That sounded great, so we pulled in at the roadhouse, booked in, set up the swags, dropped the trailer off and headed into Broome to do a bit of shopping.

Deciding that it was time for a bit of out of character tourist action, we also booked in to do the sunset camel ride along Cable Beach. The kids were so excited about it, and He and I were looking forward to it too.

Broome provided us with all we needed. The kids each picked up some new swimmers at Target for some bargain price like $3.20! Nothing like a whole lot of swimming to ruin cheap swimmers in no time. New joggers (or trainers, or treads, or sandshoes, or sneakers, or whatever you call them) were also on the cards as a fair bit of wear, tear and, funnily enough, melting from the hot sun beating down on the trailer had made a new pair necessary. Strangely, we’ve actually lost several pairs of “crocs” (plastic type shoes) to melting and reshaping in the sun – not a problem I’ve ever come across before, which just goes to show the sun has been pretty hot in the last few months.

A quick swim in the very warm ocean saw out the afternoon as we headed to Cable Beach to await the arrival of the camels.

Very strange creatures camels. The ones that we were booked in to ride were fairly well behaved, but they still make some very strange noises and look pretty hideous!

At the beginning of the session, the man who owns the camels gave us a quick talk about what to do and what not to do. We were then assigned a camel, and stood near it and waited until it was our turn to get up. The camels get loaded up from the back of the camel train first, I think because they seem to automatically stand up if the one in front of them gets up.

BSB and I were given a camel called Joe, HGB and He had Wongi, and MMB and AHB had Muscles. We all loaded up without issues and as we were up near the front, we didn’t have to wait long before we were all off up the beach.

Camels are a much smoother ride than I thought they would be, though we didn’t get above a walk, fortunately! There are several staff members (all attractive young women) who walk alongside the camel train talking to each rider about their camel, and then taking photos for you if you want, which we obviously did.

As I mentioned, BSB and my camel was called Joe. He was an ex-racing camel, though was very well behaved. Joe didn’t really like following behind Wongi though (or any other camel apparently), and walked as far forward as he could, which meant we almost ended up next to Him and HGB on Wongi.

The sunset was beautiful, and just seemed to get better the further it sank.

As touristy as the whole thing is, it was very professional and we all enjoyed it. I think the kids ended up getting a little bit bored towards the end, but it was really beautiful.

As the camel ride was a sunset one, it was obviously a bit dark by the end. We quickly grabbed some fish and chips in town, then headed out to our camp at Roebuck Plains Roadhouse.

Uneventful night, with only a few ants… those little suckers are everywhere.

Up early the next morning and out to the station to meet Mr and Mrs Manyconnections. Mr Manyconnections met us on the driveway as he was ducking into town to drop a friend of his son back home. He quickly directed us to a good spot to set up just next to the homestead, then headed off.

Mrs Manyconnections met us in the garden and the kids bolted off to find all the things to explore while we sat down for a cup of coffee. This was the beginning of a very fun and relaxing couple of days.

The Manyconnections were very friendly and welcoming. We ended up sleeping in their house as the mozzies and ants were reportedly rather friendly. He and I even got to sleep in a bed, and the whole house was air conditioned, which made for some very pleasant sleeping.

AHB was kept very happy as The MC’s had two boys, one the same age as AHB and one a couple of years older. Lots of nerf guns and running and climbing and flying fox action to keep the young chaps happy.

The station has a quarters for the guys to stay in, which also has a kitchen and a full time chef who cooks amazing food and keeps everyone happy. We were invited to head over to have smoko on the Monday and it was the most delicious brownie and cake and watermelon, so we were feeling terribly blessed. I then discovered that AHB had actually been over the day before with his new friend to raid the fridge – a fairly common occurrence, which I could hardly blame them for, with such great food about!

Mr MC had then organised for Him and me to go for a ride in a helicopter with Mr Crossfit, who runs his helicopter mustering business from a shed on the station – what a treat! Mr Crossfit is an awesome pilot, and He had a great run out to do a quick muster of a paddock, shut a few gates, check a few waters etc. I then went up for a quick spin across the plains. Absolutely amazing to see the whole area from such a different perspective – the coast was so close and the plains that were near it were still flooded with water, then the trees and scrub seemed to go forever. The entire property was close to a million acres, so a fairly impressive amount of land to be looking out across.

He went for a drive with Mr MC that afternoon out to some distant part of the property to show a grader driver where he was going to be working, or something, and the kids and I did some journaling and homework type stuff.

Originally we had planned to leave on the Tuesday, but Mr and Mrs MC invited us to stay as long as we wanted, so we bowed to the pressure of the kids as the two MC boys had a teacher strike at school, so would be at home, and in all honesty we were having a lovely time getting on top of a few jobs and catching up with Mr and Mrs MC when they were around.

Tuesday afternoon we ducked back into Broome to check out a few more tourist destinations. Gantheaume Point was really lovely and our first look at the true “Kimberley coastline”. We had a great time doing some rock scrambling and exploring before doing a last stock up on supplies.

We spent some lovely evenings talking shit and drinking too much. Finding many things in common and really just having a great time getting to know this lovely family.

Wednesday morning saw us up and all heading out the door together, the boys to school, Mr and Mrs MC to work, and the Backus Adventurers back on the road.