Today it was just 222k from Derby to Broome. The long drives seem to be well and truly behind us, not that we had that many. The two longest drives for us were from Hells Gate to Boroloola and then from Boroloola to Daley Waters.
We have now left the Kimberleys behind us as we start our journey south along the Great Northern Highway. This highway has recently been upgraded from Broome to Kununurra and it is a beautiful road to drive on. There are a lot more caravans on the road as peak tourist season kicks in. We have also found that the caravan park prices have increased dramatically coming into peak season. Where we are staying at Broome, it has jumped by almost $20/night as of the 1st June. Perhaps we will start looking for a few more free camps to offset the high prices.......maybe.....
About 100k from Broome, we passed the recently re-opened Kimberley Meat Co-operative Abattoir. It is a tremendous boost to graziers at this end of Australia to have this mothballed facility re-open as cattle were being trucked 2,500k to the nearest abattoir in Perth. It seems so ridiculous in this day and age that there are so few facilities in the top end of Australia where the vast majority of cattle are run, and how much better to slaughter the cattle where they are grown and have the meat shipped out in boxes. Commonsense is in short supply sometimes, but in all fairness with cattle prices as high as they have been, the profit margin, at the time the meat works was mothballed, would have been minimal and hard to justify.
Just a few kilometres past the abattoir we came to Thunderbird Operations Mineral Sand Mine. From the Sheffield Resources website I read this:
"Thunderbird is the first significant heavy mineral sand deposit to be discovered in the Canning Basin and is one of the largest and highest-grade minerals sands deposit globally. The deposit, hosted by highly weathered Broome Sandstone contains valuable heavy minerals including ilmenite, zircon, leucoxene, rutile and anatase". Interesting. 😁
Our arrival into Broome has an edge of excitement. The place has always held a certain charm and no doubt all the photos we have seen over the years of the camels walking along Cable Beach at Sunset have added to that charm. Once we were settled into our caravan site we took a drive around Broome and of course the first place to visit is Cable Beach. The water just looks so inviting and we are looking forward to a few swims on this glorious beach. We then drove around the town centre, trying to get our bearings, but it is a fairly easy city to negotiate. We are having lunch tomorrow at Matso's Brewery that turns out to be just a five minute drive from us. Later this evening we walked along Town Beach that our caravan park sits adjacent to. Cable Beach it is not, but nonetheless when the tide is in it would be nice to go for dip under the shadow of the jetty.
Surprisingly we don't have a lot planned for Broome. I need someone to look at my laptop that continues to overheat and we might do a tour to one of the Pearl Farms. We do have a Hovercraft tour booked for Wednesday that skims over the tidal flats to visit historical sights, dinosaur footprints and on very low tides, the wrecks of flying boats sunk during WW11. I will keep you posted.
Just to show you what my travel day looks like, I took a photo of the lap table that I use in the car. I try to research as much as I can while we are driving along, mostly using the Lonely Plant Guide to Australia. It is a great book to travel with and I have seen it sitting on many a dashboard! I also have my notepad handy and of course a good map. My camera usually sits here as well as the GoPro. It's a decent sized lap table.....
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