Aussie Geolidays: Broome

Campground: Tarangua Caravan Park 

Facilities: Toilet, Showers, Potable water, Powered sites, Laundry, Camp kitchen, Rubbish bins. 

Good stuff: Generally a nice feel and friendly owner, facilities are good and only a 10 minute walk to Cable Beach. 

Not so good stuff: Roadwork just by the caravan park and not too close to town but can't have it both ways (Cable Beach and town)! 

Price: $34 two adults per night.

From Cape Range NP it was time to cover some ground again (unfortunately more quickly than we had hoped to pick up our tent foot, Liz's new mat minus a bulge and Margaret's door springs).

Driving from Exmouth to Broome was when we realised how big and remote Australia can be. This 800km leg did nothing for our fuel economy; the brutal 30km per hour head wind, 32 degrees ambient temperature and 96% humidity (making it feel like 53 degrees) which all conspired to get Margaret a bit hot under the collar. The air-con was rationed as the temperature gauge allowed, but still made abysmal economy but hey, at least she’s not running on petrol!

One of the ridiculously long iron ore trains that we saw pulling on over 200 carriages!

The NW Coastal Highway turned to a mining highway from Nanaturra Roadhouse to Port Headland, the latter being essentially a port and mine camp that had exploded into a town complete with huge iron ore stockpiles and massive ships. To then only see 5 cars on the same long straight coastal road heading north for a subsequent 400km was a bit of a shock, and they were all going in the other direction! We thought that living in Queensland and working in remote areas would have meant that northern WA wouldn’t be too much of a surprise; we thought that WA was going to be relatively similar… It is a whole other class of nothingness especially for being along the coast!

And what did we think of Broome?

It was a surprise getting here; we hadn’t heard a negative thing about the place so we had high hopes. Cable Beach sunset was like no other verging on Murray-Sunset amazement for colours, which we enjoyed along with the other hundred people who were there with us. Broome almost has an Asian vibe with the most scooters complete with open face helmets that we have seen since Vietnam- probably inherited from the pearling history.

The highlights of Broome were away from the town centre being the port jetty where we managed to see massive fish, a sea turtle and sea snake as well as Gantheaume Bay where we pretended to see dinosaur footprints.

Fish and chips with an amazing sunset, what more would you want!

To us it looks like Broome has a few issues… the main tourist area with all the pearl shops looked refined, as well as the luxurious resorts around Cable Beach, but when you wander further a field everything seemed worn down. It also looked that they are a large number of people out of work in the parks and randomly lying down in the heat of the sun sleeping on the sidewalks. Reading into it, we found out that Broome is going through its own recession and internal struggles as a town. It’s shame for a place with so much potential to be on the slide downwards.

Broome's answer to a lighthouse...

... walking a little further along the views are stunning...

...and if you are lucky enough you get to see some dinosaur footprints as well Staircase to the Moon but we missed out by 2 days, due to the tides, so we just saw the dino casts :-(

We drove around to a few of the caravan parks before deciding on one… Roebuck’s Bay Caravan Park had what were essentially the backpacker’s quarters across the road and then the more scenic unpowered area with no facilities that was more expensive?! At Palm Grove Resort we were met by an incredibly rude lady who made it clear that we hadn’t read the tiny writing in passing that stated there weren’t unpowered sites. Pulling into Tarangua Caravan Park was bliss. Looking at the place from the outside surrounded by frangipani trees and the friendly owner made us feel welcome and at home straight away. The facilities are good and it is a fair bit cheaper than the other caravan parks around – it’s our pick of the town!