It’s so nice….

To have a bed to sleep in! After 18 days on the road sleeping in the roof tent, we have a hotel suite (at a very reasonable price!) that is extremely comfortable. The reason we are in here is because our friends, David and Mildred Hutton, are also staying here for a few days,along with a friend from Carlisle, and we arranged to meet them.

The Hotel is superb, with a pool overlooking Moonlight Bay in Broome, and a pub just across the road which serves very nice food. So as you can imagine, writing the blog has taken second place to enjoying ourselves, and I have neglected you for a few days.

David and I attended Rotary on Wednesday morning, and it so happened that I met again the immediate past president of Yamba club, which we visited when he was president, and by coincidence he was at Darwin South when I gave my Tall Ships Presentation a few weeks ago. He has a broken arm, which happened when he fell from a tree into a creek when he was looking for crocodiles. As he says, it is the first time he has ever ran on water!

The few days there were filled with preparing for a trip up to Cape Leveque, some 200kms north of Broome. We have decided to change our lighting for the awning and rear of the car for yellow LED lights, it seems that flies and mossies are not attracted to yellow, we’ll have to see. Whether I’ll get it done up here I don’t know- we may be too busy. And of course there was all the shopping to do- it is surprising how much food and stuff we have to buy just for three days.

Anyway, after 5 days in Broome enjoying ourselves we took off for the Cape, named after a French sailor of the 17^th Cent, and which lies at the top of the Dampier Peninsular, also named after a member of the same expedition.

Over 100 kms of the journey is off road, on sand, and if you have ever driven on that medium you will know that even with four wheel drive it tends to steer for you, and not necessarily in the direction you want to go. So it was a bit of a fight. 

But worth it- we have been here before but it was still a pleasant surprise to see the clear blue sea.We have the cabin next door to the one we had last year, but it has a slightly better view of the Indian ocean, raised up about 50ft with a view to die for.

The cabin is very basic, toilet and shower shared with the cabin next door, no windows just shutters, which we just leave open all the time, including at night. We do have a mossie net though, but there isn’t much biting round here as there is a breeze. Outside on the veranda is a table and chairs, an excellent BBQ, indeed an outdoor kitchen. We want for nothing, there are even two fans within, and a fridge, and we secretly imported our electric kettle and toaster.(Strictly against the rules- on pain of banishment!) All mod cons- and a view to boot!

The second day we took off up to One Arm Point, home of the Bardi Jawi people, who were the original inhabitants of the area. They hunt the seas around for Turtle, Dugong and fish. The also take Trochus shells, which they polish, cut and carve to make jewelry and decorative shells.

As we arrived, we had to register and pay a small fee to enter the community, after which we drove to Jologo beach, a superb place to swim. The sea was almost perfectly still, no waves, just right for youngsters to paddle and play in, we have rarely seen a better beach than this. However the locals do not like people wandering about the dunes, they are traditional lore ground and sacred to the Bardi Jawi people.

A few kms along the beach is a hatchery, where fish, turtles and other marine life are bred and released back to nature. Just behind was King Sound, a stretch of sea trapped between islands and the mainland, and we happened to be there as the tide was coming in, at a rate of 14 kts, around 20kms an hour. It is impossible to do justice to it on a photo, but it looked like a river with rapids! Here they have a tidal range of up to 11 mtrs, about 36ft. That is a hell of a lot of water rushing through four times a day.

Most beaches in the north of Oz are not swimmable- lots of sharks, crocs, sea snakes and stingers, which in themselves can be fatal to children, and nasty to adults, but it so happens that both here in One Arm Point and immediately outside our cabin are beaches free from those curses. Don’t ask me why- maybe something to do with the currents offshore, I don’t know. So- for the first time since we have been here, Anne and I took a dip in the sea. Beautiful and warm, clear as the day, a real pleasure to spend time in.

Life gets tedious don’t it?