We fuelled and watered up early and travelled quickly to get to Broome at a reasonable hour. We found a spot in the caravan park where the Bettisons, the Duncans and the Prestons are staying and settled in.
We drove into town to check out the geography. We found the shopping centres, the laundromats, the internet centre and, eventually the sea. It was low tide so the sea was quite a long way away but even so, the town is pretty inland for a port. Cable Beach was an eye opener, I can't imagine why people would travel so very far from anywhere to lie on a beach however white it is. The whole place is just a tourist development with some nice green grass but not much else.
By the time we got back to the caravan park, the others had returned from their outing up towards Cape Leveque and were already into happy hour so we joined them and chatted until dusk.
We had an unusual experience this morning. As often happens while we are cooking toast, the smoke akarm went off. Immediately is was echoed by a bird which was perched in a tree outside the window of the Motley and which had a call similar to the alarm. The thought of interaction between the Motley and the wildlife is pretty odd.
After happy hour, Jean went on a girls night out to see Rabbitproof Fence at the outdoor cinema.
I needed to find a phone line to connect to Ozemail and the local Telecentre was happy to charge me full rate to let me use their spare telephone line for ten minutes at no cost to them (I used my telecard to charge the call to Darwin to Sarah's home phone account).
We did a bit of shopping and had a cup of tea before going out to the Wharf at the deep water port. This is not really a social centre like the Stokes Hill Wharf in Darwin though there is an expensive restaurant and kiosk there. The walk out along the pier was pleasant. The water is very, very clean and the fish are easily seen. I also saw a group of Lesser Frigatebirds perched on a light out in the bay. The water comes fairly close to the shore here even at low tide and the rocks and beaches are very pretty. This is probably the nicest part of Broome given the commercialisation of Cable Beach.
We went back into town at five to pick up Jean's photos. On the way back to the caravan park we by passed the airport and saw the most amazing, extraordinary, crazy thing. The road runs right past the end of the runway and as we came upon it there was an ultralight at the threshold cranking up its tiny engine, rolling down the runway and off up into the air right there in what I think of as controlled airspace. I suppose it doesn't seem in any way odd to the locals but to me it characterised the nature of life out here thousands of miles from any other kind of civilization. Whatever other people do, in the bush you do what you have to do however incongruous it might seem to city folk.