As previously mentioned, our first day in Broome we were both running on empty due to our snore-a-lot roommate. But since we were seeing tropical weather for the first time in months we had little time to waste and promptly made our way down to Cable Beach which is the “famous” beach in Broome and just so happened to be around the corner from us. We spent a few hours just chilling out there and whatnot, as we had to take advantage of the 30°C weather (it seems, up until this point that we have been visit¬¬ing all of the cities in Australia that actually experience their version of winter). At the beach, I decided that a leisurely stroll was in order, and the next thing I knew, I was walking amongst fat, old naked people. Turns out, I had walked myself right into the nudist beach, although the hot chicks were nowhere to be seen. Just old dudes with wrinkly balls and women my grandmother’s age who somehow think it’s appropriate to weigh 400 pounds and sunbathe naked. Nightmares! After escaping the nudist beach with my shorts intact, Leeanna and I went back to the hostel and managed to arrange to get a room change. For the rest of our time in Broome, we were afforded a four person room with no one else in it, which was a lot better than sharing with the fuck-head they called Rodney. After resettling in, we made our way back to the beach where we had booked a sunset camel ride. Turns out the two things Broome is most known for are its camel rides and sunsets, so why not just combine the two? We ended up having a great time on our camel Amos and the sunset was tres magnifique! Hell we even got to feed our camel a carrot. What more can you ask for?
Saturday we decided to visit Malcolm Douglas’ Wilderness Park/Crocodile Farm. The only problem was that it was 20 kilometres outside of town. To combat this, we rented a little gas-powered scooter, which I almost crashed instantly the first time I got on it. Turns out you’re not supposed to put the throttle all the way down in front of a cement wall. This naturally made Leeanna a little bit nervous about hoping on but I was eventually able to convince her that I was a stud driver. Before heading out to the wilderness park, we stopped at the Japanese cemetery in town to quickly check it out. Broome has a long history of Japanese people living there, as the town is famous for its pearls and evidently many of the best pearl divers came over from Japan. After getting out to the crocodile farm in one piece, we paid our sickly high admission ($30 each) and made our way in. As soon as you go in, there are crocs just everywhere, both freshwater/freshies (not man-eating) and salt-water/salties (love snacking on humans). We took some time to check out the hundreds of different crocs and croc pens, in addition to a wide selection of other Australian wildlife such as an owl that barks, wallabies, dingoes, etc. I almost shit my pants walking by one of the chain link pens when a croc decided to lunge towards the fence at me! Leeanna found this quite amusing to say the least. What we and everyone else was really there for though was the crocodile feeding and tour. This was pretty entertaining, as the croc keeper or whatever you want to call him goes around to all the different cages and feeds the crocs. You get to see crocs fight for food, jump out of the water, and just generally do tons of crazy shit that would make any sane man a little bit nervous. We also all got to hold a baby crocodile and take pictures of ourselves with it acting like stupid tourists. After the tour we rode our scooter back into town, very much looking like Jim Carrey and Jeff Daniels a la “Dumb and Dumber”.
The next day Leeanna decided that she wanted to sleep in a bit, while I wanted to ride around like a badass on my scooter before my 24-hour rental was up. I rode out to a place outside of town called Gantheaume Point, which provides some beautiful views of the ocean and cliffs and all that great stuff. It is also home to some fossilized dinosaur footprints that you can see when the tide is low at certain times each month. Naturally when I was there the tide was in, so I had to settle for staring at a concrete slab with replicas of the footprints. Really quite stupid, but naturally I took pictures of it anyways. After filling up the massive four litre gas tank on my sweet ride, I went back to pickup Leeanna and take her out to drive the scooter before it had to be returned. I managed to convince her to drive in a parking lot but that was as far as she would go. Pussy! That afternoon we discovered that they were having a free BBQ at the Broome Surf and Lifesaving Club down the street from us, as they were celebrating the end of some big Western Australia tourism campaign. It featured free hot dogs (I ate like 4, cause I’m a gluttonous pig), the most famous band in all of Broome (the irony), a reptile show, face painting, etc. It was good times all around and I had to go lay on the beach for a while afterwards to let the meat settle into the trunk. After meandering back to the hostel I decided, not sure if it was consciously or sub-consciously to get piss drunk around some strangers Leeanna and I were hanging out with. Turns out I started cussing a lot and making fun of them, which led the girlfriend to corner me as I was exiting the bathroom and drag me to the room before I really upset to uptights. Apparently I embarrassed her, but I just think the other people were all losers and had no sense of humour. Just sayin’.
The next morning I managed to drag my hung-over ass down to the bus stop and we made our way into town, or more specifically China Town which is the heart of the city. Turns out it used to be called Jap Town, but in keeping with the worldwide theme and not wanting to be racist I guess they decided to rename it. Our first tourist stop of the day was Sun Cinemas to take a gander at the world’s oldest outdoor picture garden. I believe we call such things movie theatres in Canada, but picture garden does have a nice ring to it, I must admit. After realizing we had forgotten the memory chip for our camera and no pictures would be taken today, Leeanna and I headed over to Pearl Luggers, a museum and tour on the history of pearling in the Broome area. To be quite honest the tour was shit as we had a rookie tour guide. This, combined with my throbbing head made the whole experience seem like the worst forty dollars I had spent in some time. After our education in pearling we perused what little there was to peruse in the downtown district of Broome before heading back to our hostel and getting ready to hit the road the following morning.
Tuesday morning I made my way out to the campervan place to pick up our newest ride which we would be taking to Darwin (about 2000 kilometres away). Just to clarify, all of our campervan rentals so far have been relocations, which basically means when a company needs a campervan moved from one city to another they will hire it out really cheap to you. Usually they cost only $5 a day and often times they will refund a small percentage of your fuel costs. The only catch is that you have to meet their deadlines for getting the vehicle from point A to point B and you often have a restriction on the number of kilometres you can use (thus limiting side trips). It is a great way to see the country from ground level, although it’s not as cheap as most people expect due to astronomical fuel prices and vans that seem to drink gas. Most of the vans use between 15 and 18 litres of fuel per 100 kilometres. Add into the equation that once you are outside the major cities, gas prices rise from about $1.30/$1.40 up to between $1.60 and $1.80 per litre. Since Leeanna and I have been doing relocations for the campervan companies, we drive different vehicle all the time. This time we were lucky enough to get a 6-man campervan that featured three double beds, a television, a bathroom and good amount of space for two people! Anyways, after swinging back to pickup Leeanna at the hostel and grab groceries we had a decidedly late start to the day and therefore only drove a few hours to the small town of Fitzroy Crossing. The one thing I must say you really start to notice in the northern part of the country, especially in the small towns, is the large number of Aboriginal (Native) people. Interesting fact, they (Aboriginals) have the oldest surviving continuous culture in the world. Another interesting fact is that they seem to dislike wearing shoes and appear to be afraid of dentists.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment