Day 154

30 June 2013

Today we had to leave our paradise : ( but not a moment before our 10am check out time!

Mission today was to get back to derby to pick up the van and continue on our merry way towards Kununurra.

Leaving Broome for the last time was quite sad, we have definately vowed to go back there! We loved it! But all good things must come to an end so we are off again! Not before a classic Broome sign to remember it by! Haha

Picked up the van in Derby and headed back along the highway and started heading east towards Kununurra. We drove 400kms to Fitzroy Crossing and decided to pull up stumps here for the night at Fitzroy River Lodge.

We are noticing it is very busy atm! Tourist season is in full flight! Caravans everywhere!!

Made a nice mess on our site sorting out the car and van again ready for another van storage and tent extravaganza through the Kimberley's!!

First we rest and when we wake a big drive to Kununurra!

Carly & Joel

 

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Day 153

29 June 2013

Up early to head back to Broome. Before we left we wanted to check out the lagoon so headed down and took a few photos. A lady had told us she had seen octopus and all sorts of creatures in these rock pools, unfortunately the only thing we saw was a little crab! Oh well!

Back down the bumpy dirt road to Broome, it had really dried out since we had come up on it and we had a feeling it was pretty freshly graded..so not too bumpy at all. When we got back to broome we had a little look at crab creek which we had been meaning to check out for a long time but never got around to it! It's a beautiful outlook over Roebuck Bay, the water colour is so nice and teamed with the red cliffs surrounding, it's just stunning!

We decided to try out our new skills learnt from Bundy and go and try and find us a mud crab! Joel found a stick, which made him look the part...

But we didn't find any big suckers! : ( little ones though so if nothing else we were in the right area!

We were planning on riding the camels at Cable Beach today but we made the decision to put the money towards a night in a spa room at the Oaks Broome instead! We decided after 6 months in a tent/caravan we deserved one night of luxury!

Room was beautiful and we used every possible luxury we could in our one night stay! Had a spa in our bedroom, had about 3 showers (I haven't felt this clean in 6 months), pool, pay TV, room service, champagne and dishwasher! We are wondering how we will ever leave this place!!

A fantastic relaxing night and now climbing into our king sized comfy bed for the best nights sleep we have had in 6 months!!

Carly & Joel

 

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Day 152

28 June 2013

Today we were up early to pack up camp, say goodbye to Kooljaman and head to our 1/2 day spearing tour at a nearby community.

We were a little too keen for the tour and arrived 30 mins early so had to sit and wait in the car outside of a pretty ordinary looking shop and lots of stray dogs lingering around. These aboriginal communities remind me of streets in Laos - streets of poverty... Dogs wandering around everywhere, puppies, rubbish everywhere, dirt roads, dirty houses, overgrown gardens, smashed up, rusted out old cars and children running amongst all of this. It's sad really considering we are a rich country; however this is their home and they have freedom to move if they want to live a different life...right?!

Anyway our tour was with Bundy who pretty much rules the roost in this community, if you want to do something on this land, ask Bundy! Our tour starts with a quick 4wd in the sand to a location near Chile Creek where Bundy jumps out of his car and proceeds to give us a history on the area.

We then start down towards the creek and as its low tide we can walk the whole creek as there are only patches of water. Bundy starts by showing us how to find pippies...

And then cuts down some tree oysters which will be cooked with the pippies on the fire a little later. Next he shows us how to locate fresh water in a salt water creek. This was interesting! Two things that tell you where to find fresh water....1. Look for animals drinking, they will not drink salt water, 2. If cant see animals, listen for bush birds (not sea birds) and if you can hear pigeons look for their prints in the sand, they will lead you to fresh water! Pigeons would not come to salt water area unless they were looking for water. Makes sense but I would never have thought of it! So fresh water found we start heading back to the cars to get our spears!

Bundy shows us how to attach the spear part to the wooden part.

And we are off to spear something, anything! Haha but not before Bundy tells us that there are 5 resident crocs in the creek but they should be up further! Thanks Bundy! Spears in hand we follow Bundy to some water, tide is just starting to come in, Bundy spears a fish and his spear is thrashing around in the water and he is chasing it, swimming after it, finally grabs it and the fish got off!! And unfortunately this is as close as anyone got to spearing a fish or mud crab which was a little disappointing but in Bundys defense, it was shit weather and the water was really murky!

Back to the fire with nothing to cook except pippies and oysters we had collected earlier. While they were cooking Bundy showed us how to straighten a piece of wood for your spear and make one from scratch. We then ate some pippies and oysters which were actually really good! Nice smoked flavour!

The tour concluded with a bit more history and Bundy sent us on our way.

After the tour we were off to Middle Lagoon to camp the night as we had been told to check this out by a couple of people. Again it is a aboriginal community and its nothing flash but was nice bush camping and you could have a fire which we haven't been able to do for a while!

Bundy had taken it out of us so set up camp and fell into the tent for a good nights rest.

Carly & Joel

 

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Day 151

27 June 2013

Last night we had more rain which was pelting in on one of the walls of the tent and inevitably we started to feel drips on our heads and pillows... so in the middle of the rains we had to get out of the tent and drag it further under the car awning. This solved the problem and we were able to get some rest! My question is...is there such a thing as a waterproof tent?

Bacon and eggs for brekky and we headed off to One Arm Point which is about 13km from Cape Leveque on an all bitumen road. Something I didn't realise is that every community you want to go into you have to pay a day fee to enter. One Arm Point has an office where you can purchase the permits from and they are $10 per person. They give you a little map of where you can go and what's around....One Arm Point is most famous for their aquaculture hatchery, they do tours of the centre but we would have had to wait 40 mins, so we just had a look around ourselves. It is pretty much a shed with lots of tanks housing fish species as well as trochus, there was barramundi, clown fish, mangrove jack etc. the tour would have been good to learn a bit more but wasn't the right time. We checked out the other sites of the community - round rock which has a nice outlook of the water, the water is very clear and looks like a reef under the water. We then had a look at the swimming beach and beach shelters you can hang out in, interesting. And that pretty much sums up One Arm Point!

Off to Cygnet Bay Pearl Farm which is on the way back to Cape Leveque, they have a cafe there so decided even though we had been to the pearl farm in Broome we could get something to eat and have a look around. Glad we did, while driving in it looks like a bit of a dive but the actual cafe and showroom etc was really nice bush style setting and nice tables to sit at to eat. They of course tried to encourage us to go on a tour but as we had already been on the one in Broome it would be a bit of a pearl overkill. However if you are trying to choose whether to tour this one or Broome's, this one is half the price! Just saying!

Sat down for a nice piece of strawberry shortcake and mango frappe! The glass was ridiculously huge!!

Checked out the showroom, nice pearl rings in there! No prices and too afraid to ask! Haha back on the road to a sign that said Hunters Creek, we decided to have a look down this dirt road. We thought we may be able to access the creek and do some fishing, however if you want to get access to the creek you need to pay a local so we turned around and headed back out. Next stop is Lombadina, which is another community just before Cape Leveque. This is another touristy type community, they have an art and craft shop, bakery and workshops with artefacts etc that you can have a look at. They also have a church that was built from local timbers and a paperbark roof which is till in use today. From here you can also access their beach, they also do tours from here and they have accommodation. It's $10 a vehicle for a day pass so reasonable for what you get access to.

We then headed back to Cape Leveque for some food and rest. Pizza from the cafe for lunch! really good! Back to camp and we had just pulled up stumps for an afternoon of beers and views and a staff member from Kooljaman advised us that the local rangers were having a talk about the area in the next hour and it was a dollar coin donation if you wanted to go along. We decided that we may as well go and check it out so headed to the rangers little hut and inside was set up with chairs and projector. They handed around some books with photos of their program's and what they do on a daily basis. They ran through things about the local area, their culture including what they call their family members, aboriginal words, who they can marry etc. They then ran through equipment they used back in the day and the current ranger program they are involved in which tags and monitors dugongs and turtles. It was really interesting and well worth the effort for us to head there! At the end of the talk which actually went for 2.5 hours! they gave us these beautiful books with stories of the tribes in the kimberleys and a ranger patch!! All for a dollar coin donation, I felt bad! But they were such nice blokes and we learnt a lot about aboriginal ways, they also revealed at the end that we were their first session for this talk, they were just trialling it to see how it went so we all encouraged them to keep doing it as I'm sure everyone would find it interesting!

Aboriginal culture day over, sun going down, early night ready for our big tour tomorrow!

Carly & Joel

 

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Day 150

26 June 2013

Rained a little last night which made the tent experience that much more enjoyable! Haha it actually wasn't too bad, nice to do something a bit different! We were a little worried about the road to Cape Leveque at least half of it is good old dirt road but thank god it was still open so we set off.

The road is a little strange in that it starts off as bitumen, then it goes to dirt for 120+ kms and then back to bitumen for the last 80 or so km. Makes you wonder why they don't bitumen the whole thing but of course that wouldn't be as fun! This is the same road we had to travel to get to the pearl farm a few weeks ago and I think I described it then as sort of like a skate bowl, high sides and big dip in the middle, the water only seems to pool in certain parts and most of the time you can cross to the other side of the road to avoid it but sometimes we had to slip and slide in the mud as it was unavoidable!

Back on bitumen for the last leg of the trip and there are alot of little communities you can stop in on the way to Cape Leveque - Beagle Bay, Middle Lagoon, Lombadina etc you can visit these communities and most of them are on the water and have some arts and crafts or historical buildings to see. We just continued to Cape Leveque though as we wanted to get there and set up! Kooljaman is a resort owned by the local aboriginal people (you may have seen it advertised on tv) and it has been on my list of things to see since the very beginning! The resort is located 5km off the main highway on a dirt track which was a little wet from the rains but we made it through. Once you arrive the little dirt road opens up to a nice big newly built office and cafe which is set on top of a cliff overlooking the ocean! The view is amazing!

We pull into the car park, hop out and notice that either everyone else knows about some secret car wash up here or we hit those mud puddles a little too hard! Our car is covered in mud and everyone else's look like it just rolled off the car yard! Oops! Haha

Campsite is in a great spot overlooking the ocean and with toilets and wood barbecue in close proximity.

Set up, had some lunch and then went for a little wander down to the western beach which is good for fishing and watching the sunset but the current is too strong for swimming. Stunning...

Then drove over to the eastern beach which you can swim and fish at and drive on the beach here too. Joel had a bit of a fish but didn't get anything.

The resort also offers a lot of different guided tours with local people which take you to places that you may not be able to normally access on your own. So we checked out these and decided to do a spear making tour with Bundy on Friday, it's a half day tour and teaches you how to make a spear and hopefully catch something with it!

Tomorrow we are going to have a look around at some other communities and see what we can find.

Carly & Joel

 

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Day 149

25 June 2013

Up early, caravan moved to storage area (FYI it is $35 a week or $7 a day to store your van in derby) and we are off to have breakfast at the indulgence cafe (which would be the nicest one in derby and I would highly recommend it) before heading back to broome for the night. The trip to Cape Leveque is close to a 3 hr trip from Broome and its almost 3 hours from Derby to Broome so we decided to spend the night in Broome to break up the trip a bit and will probably do the same on the way back. We like broome, like our second home so we don't mind spending a bit of extra time there!

Was like coming back to something familiar driving back into broome, not quite as good as it will feel to be really home but still not a bad feeling. We had to get some groceries and Joel wanted some new clothes so we did a spot of shopping. Since the boardies he wanted were $120 (what you'd pay $70 for at home) he decided that maybe he could just keep wearing the same ones he's been wearing the whole trip! He did get new shirt and hat which I'm sure will feature in some photos in the next couple of days.

We had some lunch at the divers tavern in cable beach and a few beers. We decided to try a different caravan park this time as it was only for one night...so we went to Palm Grove which is still in cable beach, just across the road from tavern. Paid our money, got our little map to direct us to our site, drove in, nice pool on the right, looks like a nice enough park.....kept following map and came to our site.....well the only way I can think to describe it is like an asylum seeker boat crash site. There was debris everywhere, bottles, dodgy cars, and masses of backpackers hanging around in handmade huts (tarps constructed in a way that vaguely resembled a roof) with music! And smack bang in the middle of that, was the tiniest clean area which was our tent site! Now I don't know if we have turned into van snobs or something but there was no way in hell we were parking our tent in that space! So back to the office and Joel honestly just walked in there and said to the lady "Nah that's not going to work huh! That's just wrong." Luckily they gave our money back and we headed back to our old caravan park knowing we couldn't do any worse than that!!

Set up for our first night in a tent for I can't even remember how long! Early night again ready for another early start on the road to Cape Leveque!

Carly & Joel

 

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Day 148

24 June 2013

This morning I had to pick Joel up from his work once his flight came in. He is sick, sick, sick so we spent most of the day resting.

Before he headed to the mines Joel ordered some lures and fishing equipment which got delivered while he was away so he was very excited to check that out. It is weird how exciting it is to receive mail when you haven't had any for 6 months! Like Christmas! Haha. Joel had also ordered a rod but it wasn't in stock so we spent the morning in the tackle shop in derby looking for a rod to go with his new reel.

We have decided to head off tomorrow and that means we need to sort some stuff out! We can't take the van to Cape Leveque so have decided it is easier to leave it in derby as we will have to come back this way to go into the kimberleys anyway so makes sense. We had bought a tent with us in anticipation of this so we just had to go through all the stuff in the car and van and decide what we really needed to take and what we could do without! Without the boat on the roof racks it gave us a lot more space to chuck the tent and camp chairs etc up there which I am not sure how we would have fit everything in if that boat was still up there!?

We got all our meat vacuum sealed at the local butcher and it was really reasonably priced and good looking meat so would def recommend heading here if you need to stock up before heading into the kimberleys.

Packed up and ready to head off early in the morning, we grabbed some fish and chips for dinner (as everything was packed!) probably would not recommend the derby fish and chip shop in town, Joel got barramundi and not only was it $14 for a piece it was also soggy and not real nice, which is disappointing since we are in barramundi country! Oh well don't know these things till you try!

Early to bed and excited about exploring again!

Carly & Joel

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Day 118 - 132

Yes I am getting slack and I have now combined a fortnight into one blog!

Another week apart, with me in Broome and Joel in Derby. I did try and do something different this week and went to a recruitment agency. While the lady was really nice she did say that there are little to no jobs around at the moment. This is mainly because Woodside was meant to be creating a huge gas project near here and a lot of people from Broome were tee'd up to work on it but a month ago Woodside pulled the plug so all the people that were going to work on the plant are back in town looking for work.

This week we also had to move sites because we had now skipped over to June and it is officially the dry season and all the grey nomads that come each year want their regular site back so we have to move! This park is really like a community all in itself...everyone knows everyone and everyone knows everyone's business. Talking to people before you have even met them they know your name, where you are from and that Joel works at Derby and I am all alone for the week...haha. Anyway Joel came home on Friday and he had been offered another weeks work at Derby so we decided that because I was just sitting in broome anyway I may as well go and sit in derby. Monday was a public holiday here so Joel had to start again on Tuesday and we managed to convince the caravan park to let us stay on the site for a few more days before we leave completely.

We decided to try and fit in as much as possible in Broome before we had to leave in case we didn't make it back here. Saturday was the first race meet for the season so we decided to go and check that out. We had lunch at Divers Tavern before heading to the races. It was a nice muddy track, with champagne and beers in hand we headed to the grandstand to watch one of the races. There was a lot of people there possibly all of broome! They had modelling of pearls and we won on the only horse we bet on so can't complain about that!

Sunday we bought a new mattress for the caravan and had to ditch the old cushions so headed to the local dump. I haven't been to a dump quite like this one, however it was free so I will give it that much but the scavengers were incredible! And the smell was far from incredible, incredibly overwhelming would be one way to put it. I threw that old cushion and jumped back in the car quicker than you could say "shit that stinks!"

With that done I think we had covered everything to do in Broome! Haha not really but we had seen enough to give us an impression of Broome and we really like it! I would def live there, it was great!

Off to Derby though for now and while Joel is not convinced, I think I am looking forward to a change of scenery! Not much between Broome and Derby but 3 hours later we make it to Derby and set up camp. Nice caravan park and quite a busy park considering the size of Derby. We spent the day driving around and checking out the sites which are pretty much limited to a jetty and hmmm that's it! Haha

Joel works during the days and comes home for lunch so my days have changed completely! I did have to drop a couple of shows this week to prepare lunch everyday and dinner each night for Joel! Haha it was nice to have someone around at night time.

On Friday Joel came home and he had been offered another 2 weeks work...but this time it was on Koolan Island on a mine site. So he couldn't give up that opportunity, this is what he has been looking for. Friday night bought another surprise.....an ice cream truck! That delivers to the caravan park and plays old school music to entice the children out! Well let me tell you, you do not have to be a child, Joel and I were out there lining up as soon as that music was played! Winning!

The weekend we spent looking around the town, which involved again going to the jetty and driving around the jetty....

Joel found a new toy to play with...

We visited the art and cultural centre on Gibb River Road! which was interesting, full of aboriginal art and they do cool things with boab nuts over here. The nuts fall off the trees that are everywhere over here and aboriginal communities carve pictures into them, they are pretty cool and I think we will have to purchase one before we leave here!

We then headed to the wetlands which hmmm was interesting, I am not actually sure what we were meant to see there but we did find the waste water and some ducks hanging around that, everything else was overgrown. On the up side there was lots of kangaroos, there was mud everywhere so Joel was sliding around in the ute and the turbo noise made about 20 kangaroos just come out of the bushes and start racing away from the noise! It was a funny site! We did notice some boab nuts on the ground and decided that maybe we could try our hand at boab carving one day when we are bored!

We then headed out to the prison boab tree which is a hollow tree with a circumference of over 14 metres. It was used as a "prison cell" in the 1890s by the local police to lock up Aboriginal prisoners over night, on their way to Derby for sentencing. There is story boards near the tree as well which give you more history on the tree and area.

Weekend over and I had to drop Joel at his work before he flew to the island this morning! Will be interesting to see if he enjoys it or not and I guess that will be the lead into our next blog.

Until then...

Carly & Joel

 

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