Our ‘last’ few days in Broome

After we left Nana, Auntie Marj and Uncle Kevin at the airport, we hung around Broome just a bit longer. We had enjoyed it so much. We were supposed to leave on the same day they did, but we had moved Bertha to one of the ‘overflow’ caravan parks and were staying on. In fact, due to Bertha’s size, we were in the overflow of the overflow – a large paddock behind the PCYC carpark overflow. We had no power or water, but after a week of being plugged in, that wasn’t an issue.

We saw some more of Broome’s sights and caught up with our friends again. We checked out the Crocodile Sanctuary, and the kids saw a movie (How to Train your Dragon 2) while Dunc and I went out for dinner for the second night in a few days. (Nana had babysat for us so we could have a ‘date night’. It was WONDERFUL!)

Dunc did some inventing and made a groovy little self-supporting fridge shade. He’d finally changed the wheel seal a couple of days earlier so Bertha was feeling loved.

Lexie got a birthday package at the post office, and my beautiful sister-in-law included something for Angus too.

Of COURSE we went back to Matsos and Dunc had another tasting paddle – this time with lots of friends which makes it taste all the more delicious!

We spent some more time in town and checked out the pearl luggers in Chinatown. Dunc seemed to have the most fun of all!

We also checked out the dinosaur footprints. Broome has lots, but they are only visible at the very low tide, and they are not signposted at all. There’s enough information about them, and a cast at the top of the cliff where they are located, but they do not encourage people to actively seek them out. They had some footprints stolen (a horrible person actually cut out and took away the rock they were in!) and now there’s information about it but you kind of have to find them yourself.

  

We had originally intended to see them with Nana and I am SOOOOO glad that didn’t happen. It’s a class 5 hike to get down the cliff to see them, and then a scramble over and around rocks that were covered with algae and wet with sea water and the light rain that had fallen overnight. We chose Friday to see them as low tide was at the reasonable hour of 8.30am as opposed to the earlier days when it was as early as 6am. I was horrified to see two tour buses full of older travellers and any number of retirees making their way down in their white shorts and socks and sandles. I cant believe that the tour operators include that in their itinerary. They are implying that it is an okay activity to attempt and I was worried for our kids – let alone all those obviously less able tourists! There were people carrying handbags, coffee cups, loose handheld cameras and a few with canes! Crazy.

We made our way down safely, even though Lexie and I were in thongs. In the end that was the most sensible footwear as we just took them off and shoved them in pockets. Barefoot was best as we could feel the ‘slipperyness’ of the rocks that way. We even had a couple of people tell us we were in the best ‘shoes’.

We finished off our time in Broome with a farewell with our friends once more. It was Jordyn’s birthday, so I whipped up a cake and dug out the decorations again. Afternoon tea turned into dinner, and Dunc got out his clippers to give Isaac a well overdue trim. Our farewell was interesting as we were going different ways and not sure when we would catch up again. As it happens, that was sooner rather than later!