December 7th
(Broome continued)
Some other little ditties from Broome:
Yep, that's Michelle's bare butt off to surf. For a few other surfing a la mode shots, click here.
We were hanging out on Cable Beach one afternoon, as we were want to spend a great deal of our time, and as the tide went out ( it travels about 150m in and out a day) it unearthed a station wagon half buried in the sand. A lot of people drive on this section of the beach, as when the tide's out there is a wide beach of hard sand. This car obviously hit a soft spot, or was too preoccupied with the frivolities of the nude beach (the other attraction of this section of beach) to notice that the tide was coming in. That may seem strange, but when it decides to turn it's not mucking around; from 0m to 9m in six hours.
Look at that car! Poor suckers. We're obviously still on the North Beach. Must be Nigel's influence. Nice hat, huh.
Our trip to Cape Leveque was cut short by an unfortunate accident with our food storage facilities which we won't go into here. Another beautiful spot with a fantastic white beach revealed at low tide and red cliffs on one side of the peninsular, and crystal clear water around a reef on the other. A lot of the reef is exposed at low tide and you can walk/snorkel around and see great vibrant colours of fish and coral because everything is so close to the suface and gets lots of light. Saw a stingray, but no sharks. We also went on a carnival ride-like adventure along the 4WD beach track to a creek, which was the location of our first attempt at fishing. Well, actually our very first fishing expidition was at Coral Bay, and far too embarrassing to regale you with here. Just ask Al some time about how fish love Peanut Butter. This time we had real bait, and plenty of fish around, but not a whole lot of success. The one fish we did catch we couldn't recognise, so we threw it back in. Consulting with the fish guide after we got back (because doing that before hand would just take all the fun out of it) we found that it was probably a really good fish to eat. Ah well, it saved us the trauma of having to work out how to scale and fillet it anyway. The whole time we were thinking that we might see a croc at any moment. Particularly Al, who has this fear that a croc is going to come flying 50m from the water onto land and nab him where he stands. Actually, I think that he'd kind of like it to: satisfy his curiosity since we haven't seen even a hint of one yet.
Some other creatures that we have seen a lot more of lately are these little guys, tree frogs.
When Terry first took us on a tour of Coconut Wells, he said of the toilet: "the frogs have kind of taken over here." In fact, they had pretty much taken over EVERYWHERE, sitting around the place looking down at you wherever you looked. And there seemed to be a hundred more of them when they started croaking at night. They were quite placating in a way. There couldn't be too many snakes around with all those frogs about. There were lizards, though, and this one big skink (like a lizard/snake) that lived in the kitchen. He was about 2 feet long, and would come out in the evening and pig out on all the beetles walking on the floor. Unconcerned by humans, even humans who really didn't want him around and would sort of try to scare him away...
Reluctantly, we left Broome and an amazing sunset behind us and headed North to Derby and into wicked lightning. Derby's an interesting place in that it is surrounded by mud flats and mangrove swamp created by the huge daily tides: the biggest in the Southern hemisphere in fact, and second biggest in the world. The biggest, BTW, is in the Bay of Fundy, Nova Scotia Canada. The largest tide here is 10.8m and because the whole area is on a shelf, which means it remains shallow for a long way out, the tide covers huge distances each day. We took these pics at the local wharf, the first at midday at low tide, and then the sunset shot at about six the same day. Pretty wild huh? And that was only a 9.1m tide!
You can't swim anywhere around here as there are crocs. The kids we spoke to on the wharf had seen one just that morning, as well as a hammerhead shark. Friendly waters these. Not that the water looks particularly inviting as it is a 'ice coffee' colour from all the mud. Commercial ships don't dock here anymore, but they've just started exporting Zinc and Lead. The barge sits at the edge of King George Sound and comes in at high tide. The barge then dumps it's load onto ships out at sea.
The other big attraction at Derby is the prison boab tree, There are lots of boabs around the place, but this one is special because it was used by the police in the 1800's to keep prisoners that they were transporting to trial. There are a few of them scattered around the Kimberly. This one is believed to be over 1500 years old, and is more than 14m around. When you climb inside, there's a cavity inside about 4m high, that extends from the dirt to where the branches begin. Lots of people have carved things into it over the years, and the tree has grown out from this, making the carving look even bigger. Here's a pic, and a more average size Boab for comparison.
You can climb right inside this thing. It's actually nice and cool in there.
Here's a more usual-sized boab. They store water in their trunk, kinda like a cactus.
Las t night we grabbed some fish and chips and a cheap bottle of red (chilled? - I guess that's better than keeping it out in the 38 degree heat), and headed for the open air cinema. The movie was abysmal (Event Horizon - don't bother), but the atmosphere was cool. Sitting in long rows of deck chairs, just like the ones at the Somerville in Perth, with our wine and takeaway, with the stars above and lightning off in a corner of the sky.
There's not much to do here; we're just making last preps for the Gibb River Road. By all reports, much of it is already too risky as far as flooding, etc. We'll be doing an abbreviated trek, and cutting down to Fitzroy Crossing, then on to Kunnunara.
