Brilliant Broome (Part 1)

We have had an absolute ball in Broome! We pretty much NEVER ate a meal alone at Bertha, it was such a social time for us. We had all been counting down the days until Nana arrived – the children were soooooo excited and it had been a couple of months since Dunc had seen his mum too. Our time was spilt into three bits – a couple of days before Nana arrived, 5 days with Nana, Auntie Marj and Uncle Kevin, and another couple of days after they left as we were having too much fun to leave. As usual, we have taken far too many photos, so I will split Broome over a few separate entries.

Driving into Broome, we passed a little grass fire. We’ve seen a few along the way up here. We saw a lot of burns running between the road and the fenceline, which we figured were reduction burns, but this one was a little larger and less in control. 

By the time we arrived and caught up with Lizzie and Tim at Dunc’s favourite brewery for dinner, the fire was so large that it was very obvious from kilometres away!

We had a delicious meal at Matsos, the first of a few separate visits over our time in Broome… 

And we got to have a quiet day at home, pottering around. I sorted through our shell tub, which was overflowing after 80 Mile Beach. The children did some schoolwork. I had negotiated a funny mixed-up school holiday with Nana coming. They had a week of holidays, a week of school and another week of holidays so we had some catch up to do for our week of school! Ironically, we had the worst site for Bertha in a caravan park yet – just our luck with 3 older people coming to visit! The site was completely uneven and we decided NOT to level the bus as it would have meant the front steps would have been waaay up in the air. So we lived on a gentle slope for a week, and the children ended up sleeping backwards in their beds. We had a cruisy couple of days checking out the town of Broome. 

We went to the markets, which seemed to be running the entire time we were there – Sat morning, Sun morning, Sun night for the Moon, Mon night for the Moon. We scoped out the site for the Staircase to the Moon photos and got more and more excited – Nana was coming!!

Barn Hill Heaven

We made our way from the station stay at 80 Mile Beach, to the station stay at Barn Hill. This meant 9 or 10km of dirt track at each one, and about 5 or 6 gates in total. Barn Hill is about 100km out of Broome and we have heard soooo much about it. Numerous travellers have recommended it, and it was our ‘trump card’ in our plans. We had to run up a schedule in order to plan our dates for Dunc’s mum. She was coming to Broome to meet up with us for a week, and that meant we had to know WHEN we were to be in Broome. This would allow us to book accommodation and flights and stuff, but working out when we were likely to be there was incredibly difficult. Dunc spent HOURS working out a rough itinerary with maps and Google and Wikicamps and printed out a wonderful spreadsheet. Do you think we kept to ANY of it? The first 3 nights were already mixed around and, to be honest, I’m not sure we followed any of it to the letter. We did ensure that we were roughly on track, and we built in a few empty days here and there and an entire week at Barn Hill, knowing that they are enormous and do not need to take bookings. In the end, we ‘spent’ 6 days at Exmouth waiting for our whale shark swim and ended up only having 2 days at Barn Hill.

Now we know why so many people recommended it to us. We had a site in the unpowered section and arrived before midday. Dunc did his usual walk around and picked out a suitable Bertha-sized spot. To get us into the right spot, he drove in forwards first then had to reverse Bertha to straighten her up. This resulted in us almost landing in the laps of our neighbours who were sitting outside their caravan enjoying a quiet moment when he was half way through the manoeuvre. I swear, we were about 15cm from their van. “What time’s dinner?!” Dunc cheekily asked out the drivers window, as they were sitting only 1 – 2m from him. Luckily they had a lovely sense of humour too. He reversed to a suitable distance from their van and all was well. The melting moment cookies I baked for them helped as well. I like to bribe our neighbours when we intend to use the generator.

We walked down the cliff trail to the beach on the first day, and went for a long walk. That night I was chatting on Facebook when I ‘met’ the family down the way from us. The children searched out their van the next morning and we had loomband-ing kids on board soon after that. We ended up all heading to the beach for the afternoon and the kids had a ball playing with new friends. Just quietly, I had a ball meeting new friends too. Dunc got to try beach fishing again, with his usual success. At least he had a beer this time! Barn Hill has a communal BBQ on Wednesday nights so we all brought our snags along and paid $4 each for a delicious dessert of Sticky Date Pudding – yum! We didn’t realize it was BYO plates and spoons, so I ran back for our huge stack of kid’s plates. After the day with my IKEA beach bag and my stack of IKEA plates, I’m getting a bit of a reputation here. Good thing it wasn’t raining so they didn’t see my IKEA umbrella…

Station Caravan Parks ­- 80 Mile Beach

From the freecamp at De Grey’s, we headed east along the coast to 80 Mile Beach. We stayed at the caravan park at 80 Mile Beach, and this is a great example of an industry which is HUGE and (again) I had no idea existed until we started this trip. I was very naïve back then…

So I knew that Australia had huge ‘stations’ and that these were enormous properties where people raised/farmed cattle or sheep. (I had no idea we had so many GOATS in Australia though.) I know these properties can be as large as the US state of Texas, though many of them are a little smaller than that. I DIDN’T know that so many of them also have little caravan parks that cater to travellers. Bertha is set up for free camping, so we really only need a patch of ground and power or water now and then, but these stations have fully set up amenities blocks and camp kitchens for those travelling in caravans or tents without facilities. They have stores that sell bread/milk/basics and even fuel if it is remote enough. Many of them have added bonuses like meals or entertainment at night. One even has a bowling ‘green’! We really like staying in these places, as the people seem friendlier and more laid back than in a larger town. And by people, I mean the travellers, not the managers!

80 Mile Beach is one such station stay, though that wasn’t particularly obvious on Wikicamps. It is accessed by 9km of dirt road and, even though the Oodnadatta Track has scared us off of corrugated roads in general, we will take Bertha down a shorter track if the destination is good enough. We have worked out that a gentle cruise at 10-20km/h means we roll over the bumps without stirring up the dust too much. It chews up a heck of a lot more fuel, but that’s ok for a short bit. We are happy to wave caravans past us, though we have noticed many other people are also driving at our sedate speed. I always prepare for corrugations by moving everything off the bench, just in case, and our broom (which lives wedged between the fridge and the wall) is pretty much guaranteed to fall out, but that’s no stress.

The main thing about Station Stays, is that you are making your way through an operational station. This means multiple gates and grids, which they use to regulate the movement of stock. Every gate needs to be opened and closed again after Dunc has driven Bertha through.

80 Mile Beach was well worth the effort though! The beach was insanely beautiful and the shells were amazing. WA is a state where beach driving is permitted so Dunc had to give it a go again. We stayed 2 nights and spent the days wandering the beach looking for shells. Dunc threw a line in from his new surf rod in the hope of catching a threadfin salmon. Ha! No luck there. No-one was having any luck, and apparently this was due to the time of year according to the guy at Broome.

We did get to watch some entertainment in the form of a stubborn old man. Apparently he had already moved his car 3 times due to the tide and just didn’t want to move it anymore. We watched it creeping in and in and in. Everyone kept saying that at least it was high tide, and it wouldn’t come in any further, but it was. In the end it was well up to his side steps – and this was salt water, not just a river crossing! The sand was washing away from under his tyres too, so it was settling further down in the sand with every wave. A number of people had offered help, but apparently he was too proud to accept any. They all kept driving off after chatting to him. It was getting dark soon – the sun was only about 20 minutes away from setting and I was worried about how I was going to be able to drive off and leave this old couple and their car at the beach.

In the end a ute arrived. I think they were from the station and not prepared to let him suffer. They hooked up a snatch strap and within 2 minutes he was free and further up the beach. Seriously, it was 2 minutes of help. All that angst that I experienced, worried about this poor man, because he wouldn’t accept 2 minutes of help. We were able to head off home to Bertha free in the knowledge that no cars were drowning that day!