Broome really is a little slice of paradise amongst a land that can be pretty harsh and unforgiving. After travelling through the hot and dirty towns of Port Hedland and Karratha, a relaxing holiday is what we needed... and Broome was the perfect place!
The town is set out in a way that's very easy to get around, with the town centre on one side of the point, the port at the end and Cable Beach on the other side. And even though the town has a population of around 14,000, Broome has an influx of over 100,000 tourists a year. With this many people flying or driving into town, the facilities in this place are great - you could eat at a different restaurant each night, spend hours shopping in all the great little boutiques or at the markets on Saturday and Sundays, have a few cocktails at the huge number of bars and pubs or just relax on the beach in your hired banana lounge, under an umbrella.
But the natural beauty of this place is what really got to us. The vast red desert meets the azure blue sea and there are white sandy beaches in between. Paradise! The weather is also a huge draw card with most winter days averaging a lovely 33degrees, with nights dipping to the early 20's. No wonder people warned us that we could quite easily slip into 'Broome' time, and in fact we did, staying eight nights instead of the three or four that we had originally planned! And we would have stayed even longer if the temptation of sitting in the lovely cafes with an iced coffee in hand and drinking beers at the Sunset Bar while watching the famous Cable Beach sunset each night, didn't take a huge chunk out of our bank account.
Cable Beach really is heavenly, but the beach was closed a few times during our week-long stay. The first was due to a shark sighting (in which there are a lot around these parts - sting rays too) and on another day, a tourist was stung by an Irukandji jellyfish, but was thankfully okay, as these jellyfish can be fatal. Yikes! Lucky our caravan park had it's own pool!
Another attraction you have to see when you rock into Broome, is the Gantheaume Point area. This point has amazing rock formations and vibrant colours and gives you a great few of Cable Beach as a whole. But the coolest thing about this point, is that when the tide is really low, you can see real life Dinosaur footprints that are over 120,000 million years old! Broome is actually one of the homes of the most recorded Dinosaur footprints in the world. Pretty crazy stuff!
I think we were able to really get into the relaxing vibe of Broome because we happened to score one of the best campsites at the beautiful Cable Beach caravan park, a 7 minute walk from the beach. The office lady was soooo sweet and actually thought we were on our honeymoon (two years too late, honey!) so she booked us into a great little powered site, right next to the amazing tropical pool, so each night we'd fall asleep to the gentle sounds of the pool waterfall! Bliss! See that scooter in the picture? More on that later! So much to say! So little time! But one thing's for sure - Broome was bliss.
Yours in the great outdoors,
Odette
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