The houseboat had a permanent crew of three, one to drive JET A1 over the falls plus a young chap and a good-looking German girl to cook and look after visitors. After we left they had a party for afternoon tea and another party for dinner and to stay the night.
When the seaplane's pilot radioed in to say he was approaching they asked him to descend through the gorge and land beside the houseboat. Thus we were able to board the aircraft directly without all the performance of the life jackets required by a ferry trip to the plane on JET A1.
He declined! Some people have no sense of adventure.
The flight home took us out over the Buccaneer Archipelago and then down the coast and back to Derby. In Pam's aerial photograph below, Loch Street, the town's main street, runs diagonally through the picture towards the lower left corner. If you could extend Loch Street down beyond the photo's border, you would find that it crosses mud flats and ultimately terminates at the jetty. Derby is surrounded on three sides by mud flats - there's no sandy beaches here.
At the bottom of the picture are new houses under construction - the ones with the grey roofs. Our caravan park is somewhere in the upper left, possibly just out of the picture.
So what happened in March to cause the numbers to skyrocket? We use a very good website called Australian Caravan Park Reports (http://home.vicnet.net.au/~badger04/) to see which parks other caravanners recommend at our next port of call. It is a really marvellous tool for people such as ourselves and we highly recommend it. A few months ago Mr. Badger, the gentleman who runs the site, kindly included a link to our site and suddenly, up the visits went.
We flew here once, several years ago, in the summer (wet season). Our short stay was spent going from one air conditioned location to another, such was the heat and humidity outside. When it rained it came down so hard that within minutes the streets were kerb to kerb torrents that the storm drains couldn't handle. Then the sun would shine again and everything would steam. Our hired car was not allowed on dirt roads so we were confined to the town.
That was our previous experience of Broome but now we'll look at it in the dry season and through the eyes of more experienced travellers.
Broome has changed a lot. It has grown and is still growing fast with much development in evidence. Alice, our poor GPS, is very confused as so many roads have been altered or built since she was programmed. Broome has become a useful sized town in that many of the larger chain stores are here which we found useful - we were even able to access some replacement parts for the caravan. Naturally, the expansion will not be to the liking of many who loved the 'Old Broome' but that's what passes for progress.
We visited the famous Cable Beach. The breakers were not doing a lot for the surfers who made the best of what there was.
is your thing then Broome's as good a place as any to do it.
