We are in Broome this month.
We first visited this town, that sits on a 15km long peninsula protruding into
the Indian Ocean in July 2006. It was winter and peak season with the world and
his friends trying to squeeze into around six massive caravan parks. There
wasn’t room for us or a long string of others. Emergency campgrounds were set
up at a shooting range, a church site, and the Police Citizens Youth Club. We were sent to the PCYC. Police directed us
onto basketball courts in rows, back to back without inches to spare. We had
Paula Baxter, who’d taught our daughters in Natal, doing this leg from
Carnarvon to Broome in our new rig. We dashed about with the crowds seeing the
sights and could hardly wait to be out of there, swearing we’d never visit in
peak season again. Over the years, we
have popped into Broome and stayed in most of the parks during quiet periods.
COVID19 made 2020 a perfect year to wander up north, along the coast in winter!
Closed borders prevented other states from northern visits to escape southern
cold and wet. We have enjoyed the freedom to travel in the sun with fellow West
Australians generally maintaining the precautions required by this virus. We
have popped into Broome over a couple of nights or more to see to problem
batteries and ‘dead’ fridge or to replenish food stores. Happily staying out on the edge of town at
Broome Caravan Park. We know the general layout of Broome and its basic
history. We hadn’t been to Discovery
Park on Town Beach and learned about it from a man on Barn Hill Station beach,
who to our astonishment, rated it above Barn Hill and Cable Beach. Almost a travesty to our way of
thinking! And, as we mentioned last
month – drawn by a very favourable tide, we came to check out Discovery Park.
Were favourably impressed and stayed.
The Kimberley is home to large
tides. A Broome lifestyle is dictated by the rise and fall of these exceptional
wide-ranging tides (up to 10metres). We coincided our arrival in Broome, with a
Spring Tide when a remarkably low and high tide occur at the time of a new or
full moon. This occurs when the sun, moon and earth are approximately aligned,
and their gravitational pulls reinforce each other. In August, we booked to go
and see Waterfall Reef in the mouth of King Sound for the optimal vision on a
Spring Tide Low. In September, the Spring Tides at Barn Hill allowed us to walk
beyond the heads of North and South Beaches opening new vistas and enabled us
to explore below the normal inter-tidal zones. Discovery Park, sited on the
edge of Roebuck Bay’s Simpsons beach would give us a perfect vantage point to a
natural phenomenon - Staircase to the Moon, on the October Spring Low
Tide.
Humans are drawn to a ritual
of the setting sun – ‘Sunsets are proof that no matter what happens, every day
can end beautifully’. The moon also has a magic. There was a marked increase in
the number of people occupying the caravan park to await the rise of a full
moon rise over Roebuck Bay at 18.59 on the 3 October which coincided with a low
tide of 1.33m above chart datum. Our dismay to awaken to a sky ‘sheeted’ in
cloud had us hoping it would blow off. Instead it shuffled about teasing for
the rest of the day. A quarter of an hour before moonrise we walked up to the
barbeque area above Mangrove Point, midway in Discovery Park. This lookout
would give us an unobstructed view over the fringing mangroves and Town Beach
itself. A free picnic table drew us to a little nook, George leading the way
when Lea’s ears detected a strange rustling. In faint light she spotted a
“button spider” haring across the slate floor. Immediately requested George
shine his torch at her feet … in and out of the garden edging the slated garden
floor were dozens of large hermit crabs crawling about. George unable to hear
the scritch-scratching sounds of Hermits as they appeared to play the childish
game of “I walk straight, and you better get out of my way”. Later, as we departed for the beach,
carefully stepped to avoid crushing a Hermit crab, we were told locals were in
the habit of having ‘’hermit crab races’’ … each person placing a hermit crab
on the picnic table until a winner was declared as it fell over the edge!
Close by, on another level to
us, a group of Aboriginals chatted away, leading us to believe we had chosen a
good place for moon watching. Despite our concern for the low bank of cloud on
the horizon, obscuring the moon, it rose on schedule with a steadily increasing
glow. The red planet Mars shone brightly, directly above… An Aboriginal came
and borrowed a guitar from a young man sitting back from us. He willingly
handed it over and as the moon put in its full appearance, the Aborigines began
to sing which enhanced the occasion. For the next half hour, we watched, and
photographed, the spectacle of the moon as it slowly rose casting its orange,
rippled pathway across the mudflat floor of Roebuck Bay. A most special event
On our first walk along the narrow rock defended beach towards the Port; immediately below our side of the caravan park, George was delighted to find hundreds of hermit crabs. They scuttled about furiously, toppling down rocks in their rush to escape our footfall. In patches of sand, clusters of little crabs dug small pits and above the HWM, the ground was thickly covered in their tracks. So small and numerous, it was difficult to avoid standing on them. We had found a hermit crab nursery, seemingly enriched by the availability of a wide variety of small shells.
Afterwards, we followed a red dirt road along edge of cliffs that lay above Reddell Beach to Gantheaume Point. We last visited the Lighthouse and Anastasia’s Pool, in 2006. This time we didn’t find the pool, distracted by young fellows as they leapt into the sea from the rocky cliffs. We had forgotten how dramatic yet similar, these rock formations along this stretch of coast were, to Barn Hill. In days to come we learned that Anastasia’s Pool had been destroyed during a storm in January 2014. It had been built by a Pearler, Patrick Percy with the aid of his Chinese crewmen, for his wife Anastasia crippled with arthritis, in 1922. The year he bought the Lightkeeper’s cottage.
The Lighthouse Keepers house was built in 1905 and was in use until 1922. Returning to the truck, Lea became aware of the insistent cry of a hungry bird. She spotted the baby osprey sitting upon its nest on the framework of the lighthouse tower. A parent below trying to ignore the cry!
After weeks of high heat and
gentle sea breezes we were startled awake, above the sound of aircon, to a
southerly wind blowing up in the early hours of Sunday. It steadily grew worse
as dawn approached, threatening to shred the awning as debris struck the
caravan bodywork and wind shook the caravan in bouts denying us any sleep. We
didn’t dare step out and put the awning away- that had to wait until a lull in
the strength of the wind, allowed George to seize an opportunity to roll it up.
The usually calm Bay was covered in white horses, with a kite surfer making the
most of this strong wind. The wind, continued to pump away noisily day and night,
through to Wednesday with odd pauses particularly towards evening, allowing us
to get out and walk.
Knowing the tide was nearing its lowest stage, we drove back to Entrance Point to search for the dinosaur tracks said to be there. We scarcely recognised the place, from our previous day’s visit … A large beach exposed of fine, well compacted red sand had cars parked across it, families swimming, dogs exercised, and folk socially settled to ‘happy hour’. George searched the rocks alongside the slipway and Lea wandered down to the water’s edge and checked rock clumps. Eventually she asked a local with kids and a dog who eagerly showed us where they were. Totally opposite to where we’d hunted and close to the car park. They didn’t require a low tide to be seen! Tracks of more than twenty different types of dinosaur occur in track sites spread out across 100 km of coastline around Broome.
Sauropod (back foot) track at Entrance Point
The dinosaur prints were quite
shallow, about 45cm in diameter and looked like the tracks an adult elephant.
Nowhere as large as those described in the museum. Many other slabs of rock in
the intertidal area contained similar water filled depressions, that George
felt a little dubious about their pre-historic origins.
On arrival at the Park Office,
George’s accent had led a lady in the office to tell the manager, George
sounded like he came from Zimbabwe! Ex
Zimbabweans run this Park. When George went to the office to pay for our second
week, in chatting to manager Jenny, George discovered her mother was Anne
Moore, who’d worked for National Parks and Wildlife Head Office in Salisbury/
Harare. George promptly took her, his copy of the newly published book Kariba
– celebrating its first 50-year history,
Excited count down began with
our move to the end site in the front row with a lawned front, overlooking
Roebuck Bay. Omens were good! A kookaburra sounded for the first time, the
winds finally died and during the afternoon seven pelicans had a paddle below
us. The lawn around our caravan had taken a battering by the previous inmates
so we began watering to revive and recolour the yellowed dying patches. This
brought regular visits from a masked lapwing (plover) and a white Ibis. Two
sleeps later our Perth family flew into Broome and George collected them from
the airport. They were to spend nine special days using SKV to get between our
site and their resort, as we explored beaches together .
Fish and chips down on Cable
Beach
The first weekend passed
enjoying the many beaches and views around the peninsular and the cool pleasure
of our breezy site easily became the best place to enjoy dinners together.
The family and George attended
Broome’s legendary, long bearded, charismatic astronomer Greg Quicke’s ‘’Astro
Tour’’. Lea had preferred to do a boat
trip at the end of the week with the family.
Just as well, as instead of a quiet night with the TV, Lea received an
unexpected message from Di Godson saying she’d be in Broome that night prior to
a snorkelling trip to Rowley Shoals Marine Park – Perfecto! It was an easy walk from the caravan park to
the Oaks Resort, where Lea joined Di late afternoon for dinner.
Meanwhile, just outside town
the family gathered with 60-70 people to listen to Greg’s Cosmic Tune-up under the
gradually intensifying star-lit skies of the Kimberley. He began with a memorable
statement re the evening ritual of ‘’watching the sun go down’’. That is a fallacy!
The Earth rotates at a speed
of approximately 1 000mph so in reality one is really ‘’watching the Earth
turn away from the sun’’. We will
never watch another sun set without being reminded of Quicke’s lesson learnt.
Greg Quicke, a former pearl diver / mechanic, has developed his ‘’lecture theatre’’ out in the bush equipped with over a dozen huge telescopes, seating, parking, toilets, even a kitchen providing hot chocolate towards the end of the show. With the aid of laser torches, Greg covers a lot of ground. Astrology bring that kind of subject. A field of science beyond the comprehension of most people, George included, making it all too easy for the complexities of the subject to go over the top of one’s head … Hearing Greg rattle off the names of stars, constellations and galaxies in view; the distances they are away in light years and how their position in the sky constantly changes left George both impressed and unimpressed at the same time. It was a bit like listening to a botanist rattling off all the scientific names of the plants in a forest, describing their growth form, medicinal values and height to which they grow … yet left totally bewildered in the process.
When it came time for the audience
to interact with the telescopes, George found, of all the sights to see - the
gas giant Saturn, with its rings of ice around it, was undoubtedly the most spectacular
… but just as significant, was the view of the heavens obtainable with an
ordinary pair of binoculars. His Atlas of Space produced by National
Geographic has attained deeper meaning! Talia was ignited by a new passion from
the whole experience. She literally bubbled with newfound information when the
family collected Lea from the Oaks. Delightful to see; more so knowing Justy’s
last outing in a very weakened state was to Professor Brian Cox’s riveting
show, with her beloved sister-in-law Sue, her friend Emma English, and niece
Tashie. Greg Quicke joined Prof Brian
Cox for the last four sessions of the BBC’s and ABC’s series ‘Stargazing Live’,
dubbed Space Gandalf by the audience.
The basketball championship was
over by the Monday. The resort, noticeably quieter became our ‘go to’ place for
a midday escape from the heat. We were all happy to retire in and around the
pool until it became bearable to go adventuring. Chinatown was a big focus for an afternoon of
activities …It is the name of the main shopping area in Broome contrary to its
confusing name! In the early 1900’s all
the Asians lived around there amongst the pearling sheds and laneways with
boarding houses, opium dens and noodle shops. We began our visit at the newly
constructed Roebuck Bay Lookout before strolling down the historic Dampier
Terrace to Streeter’s Jetty. This is where everything began to unravel …
Instead of a vibrant street it was deserted … Virtually everything had closed
at 2 p.m. Even the jetty was closed off and under repair – Chinatown was a wash
out; humidity required a beer garden to collect ourselves but they too were
closed. Broome had seemingly closed for the approaching Wet Season. The thought
of hanging about for over two hours to find dinner was a miserable thought. It
seemed we’d missed the 2018 Chinatown Revitalisation Project, thanks in part,
to Covid19? We nipped into a supermarket and came back to our personal and
beautiful spot for a sausage sizzle instead.
Midweek highlight was the
family’s camel ride on Cable Beach
Roebuck Bay is home to the largest permanent group of Snubfin Dolphins. A new species recently recognised in 2005 by scientists, it is endemic to northern Australia. Lea was very keen to see these big, boofy-headed dolphins and dugongs close-up. She joined the family for a catamaran boat trip out into the bay. Sharky, our captain took us out to the boat on ‘sealegs’ – apparently it was the first one in Broome ten years ago with everyone scoffing at this ‘clever boat. Now tourism everywhere uses them. They are ideally suited to this macro tidal environment. We were out on a Spring tide of 9 metres and as we moved towards the back of the bay, we had a few bottlenose dolphins frolic and play around the boat.
Turtles also ducked and dived on seeing the boat.
Lea missed seeing a dugong slip below the water. Seeing bait balls of fish like cloud shadows – as they clustered together for safety with seabirds hovering above before they would dive and grab a fish too close to the surface. Great excitement when a smallish hammerhead shark struck through the bait ball to stun fish with his tail. Long-tom fish skittered across the top of the water in fright as other sharks materialised in the gloom of the milky waters. All very exciting and scenically interesting as we followed a channel alongside a sandbar, well under water in this benthos rich bay stretching 550 km.² The boat seemed to disturb massive flock of godwits, who rose from the shore and flew low across the water in swooping movements. These dull plumaged birds appeared to reflect the glorious green or blue of the sea as they sought new margins. Amongst rocks near the shore, turtles took refuge in the recesses to avoid being taken by the sharks that have a field day on the spring tide.
Boof-heads? Not a sign. Delicious homemade scones with jam, cream, and fresh strawberries; tasty savoury muffins and fresh fruit kebabs were served up as Captain Sharky searched high and low for the elusive snubbies. One hundred and thirty snubfin dolphins live in this Marine Park and we could not find one. Finally, Sharky decided the snubbies had taken advantage of the king tide and disappeared into the ocean for a brief spell. We went over the sandbar too – nothing. The unusual Roebuck Bay wildlife had proved unpredictable today and we missed out.
Snubfin dolphins (snubbies)
that supposedly live in Roebuck Bay look like this!
While we were out, George went up to the office to collect his Kariba book from Jenny (Moore) and spent a good hour chatting to her. The memories, the book had evoked for her which in turn led to the crocodiles sighted on Cable and Town beach closing them until Parks are able to capture and put them in the Malcolm Douglas Sanctuary. George also learned that once the Covid19 crisis is over, the caravan park (leased from the Broome Shire by Discovery Parks) is destined to undergo a $9 million upgrade.
That afternoon, with the spring
tide steadily developing to its peak, more and more of the muddy flats opposite
the caravan park became exposed at low tide. George walked out to get a feel for what the
texture of the bay floor was like once he was 200 - 300m offshore.
Come evening, we all walked up
through the Town Beach Park. It had its ceremonial Official opening at 4pm. And
celebrations were well underway by the time we arrived. A market with food
stalls and live bands at each end made for a very festive atmosphere.
A couple of skeleton dinosaurs with sound effects terrorised some children as they wandered among the crowds.
We continued round to the William Dampier Park overlooking an extensive band of mangroves to await the dusk.
We sat below the statue of a
pregnant pearl diver. During the early years of the Pearl Industry in Broome,
Aboriginal women were captured and sold through a trade called ‘blackbirding’
and forced to dive for pearls, even if pregnant. This practice of kidnapping
for forced labour also took place on South Sea Islands to keep sugar and cotton
plantations around Australia running.
Blackbirding only died out in 1904 because of a law against it.
At the very moment of
darkness, a black cloud of flying foxes emerged from the dark green ‘black
mangroves’- the taller of two species growing out there and took off in their
thousands for their nightly feeding grounds. Unfortunately, these large fruit
bats did not fly straight in over our heads, as we had expected. They circled
around the far edge of the mangroves closer to Town Beach before heading
inland.
We rushed down to intercept them mindful of David Quammen’s book, ‘Spillover’. The bats are, nevertheless, a splendid and silent spectacle considering the quarrelsome sounds heard when they are feeding or preparing to roost for the day. En route home we enjoyed a bit more of the Night Market before heading on home.
The penultimate day with our
family had arrived. With a low tide coinciding with sunset we decided to spend
it at Entrance Point. The desk manager at their resort had told them this was
the season to find the egg sacks of octopus beneath overhangs in the rocks to
the right of the slipway. Warning to leave the blue tinged sacs – Were these
the dangerous blue ringed octopi? We searched
long and hard, up, and down Reddell Beach. We asked obvious locals, no one
seemed to know what we were talking about and we found no red or blue sacs or
any markings on rocks. We eventually gave up and went to see the dinosaur
prints before settling on a shady rock to enjoy sundowners and snacks for the
last time on the beach.
There was a flurry of excitement when we got back to the caravan. Everyone started taking photos, with and without aids in the form of torches, zoom lenses and flashes …
A tawny frogmouth sat in the tree, next to our caravan. We have had many glimpses of the frogmouth as it made nightly flights up and down the caravan park even had it land briefly on our caravan roof. This was a delightful sighting.
Returning to the hotel each night, the family would stop to see a tree frog, they named ‘Freggie’. He lived in the hollow gate post to the pool and every night of their stay, he would wait for them to say ‘’goodnight’’. Have his photo taken in a different pose and sent to us with a nightly wish. In one way or another the wildlife of Broome brought all of us much enjoyment.
Lots of history around Broome
and we found the World War 2 attack on Broome most interesting. George had
looked at the tide table and decided our optimal opportunity to visit the
relics that stand as a memorial to the event would be Tuesday the 20th
after the family’s visit to Broome. Both George and Paul had visited Broome
Museum and as each had an uncle, who had served in the Bomber Command during
the Second World War, they were all the keener to get out into Roebuck Bay. Again, the tide table was perused, and Paul
decided it was worth taking the only opportunity given him… a walk before dawn,
on the day of his departure.
A background to the attack on
Broome … At the beginning of 1942
Australia was only just recovering from the attack on Hawaii’s Pearl Harbour, 7
December 1941 when Singapore fell to the Japanese on January 31st.
Two weeks later, February 18th, Darwin was bombed. Thereafter, the Japanese invaded Timor on
February 20th and the Dutch East Indies (Java) on February 28th.
At
the time, Broome was a centre for the pearling industry and despite a Japanese population making up a good proportion
of the town’s inhabitants, anyone Japanese had been sent off to internment
camps and Japanese owned pearl luggers were destroyed. Dutch nationals in Java
began sending their wives and children on any available aircraft to Australia
for safety. Broome’s port on Roebuck Bay
steadily filled with seaplanes carrying fleeing Dutch. The town was also a significant Allied military base. During
a two-week period in February–March 1942, more than a thousand refugees came
from the Dutch East Indies, many of them in flying boats which served as
airliners at the time, passed through Broome evacuation centre.
At
09.20 on 3 March 1942, the flying boat anchorage at Roebuck Bay and the RAAF base at
Broome Airfield was attacked by nine Japanese fighter planes of
the Imperial Japanese Navy. In the space of twenty minutes at least 88
civilians and Allied military personnel were killed and at least 22 aircraft
destroyed. 48 of the people killed were Dutch civilians. The attack had been
perfectly timed with the tide. Many of
the flying boats, at anchorage in the Bay did not have enough water below them
at low tide to carry out a safe take off. Some had not even been re-fueled. For
want of a better term, the flying boats were proverbial ‘’sitting ducks’’.
The
Japanese Zeros strafed the bombers and transport planes on the Broome airfield
and by 10.30 they had been destroyed. On the way back to their base in
Java, the Zeros shot down a KLM Douglas DC-3 airliner carrying refugees from
Bandung, 80 km north of Broome which crash landed on a beach at Carnot Bay
on the Dampier Peninsula, with the loss of four lives.
Six flying boat wrecks
(protected under the ‘’Heritage of Western Australia Act 1990’’) are visible in
Roebuck Bay when the tide depth is at least 0.4m above chart datum. Another
nine flying boat wreck sites occur in the deep-water channel, south of the
exposed wreck sites, but these have yet to be located and identified.
When Sunday’s dawn broke Paul and George walked out onto the mud flats in front of Town Beach shortly before 5am to meet the tide as it reached its lowest point (0.38m) and the Earth ‘’turned towards the sun’’ with flocks of waders taking flight on their approach the two men arrived to stand beside the remains of a plane wreck in an atmosphere that not only reinforced the drama that occurred 78 years ago, but in conditions perfect for photographic purposes.
Dawn at low tide in Roebuck Bay
The remains of 2 Dornier Flying boats and four Catalinas are visible on the floor of Roebuck Bay
Site 1 BBY-5 Catalina FV-N
Site 2 – Dornier X-1
Site 5 Unknown Catalina
Site 6 Dornier Flying boat X-23
No other place in the world
has such a sunken armada of rare and historically significant flying boats from
the Second World War and they felt privileged to pay their respects to the
place, the people killed and learn something more about Australia’s aviation
history from it.
As a biologist, the exposed
floor of the bay and the clusters of marine organisms growing on the wrecks
added yet another dimension to the whole experience. George hadn’t expected to
find so much seagrass growing everywhere in the form of a short turf. Judging
from the shape of the leaves there were three species of seagrasses present and
what looked like furrows through the plants made him wonder whether dugongs
were responsible, even though this may well have been wishful thinking. Turtles
were more likely to be responsible.
Benthic life in the form of
molluscs, small crabs, starfish and sea anemones were all in abundance, as well
as small stalactite-like tubes protruding from the substrate, fish darting away
in the shallows, including what I suspected was a stingray moving off.
To crown it all, they then
came across a green turtle stranded in one of the depressions on the bay floor
– looking very unhappy and patiently waiting for the tide to turn. Knowing it would
probably have to wait a good couple of hours with the sun steadily rising
overhead, George carried the turtle to one of the small channels that were
still draining water coming off the flats. After much flapping of flippers as
it was carried, it immediately turned upstream into the current on being released,
instead of going downstream back to the open water.
A welcome cup of tea after
their adventure, Paul went back to the hotel to collect the family. With bags
packed, they joined us for Elevenses and pancake making. Time flew and before
we knew it was time for George to get them to the airport.
Having seen the photos of the
magnificent dawn light permeating a mystical light across Roebuck Bay, Lea was
no longer prepared to be a sloth; she wanted to see that vision for herself and
not wait for the more convenient hour planned for the 20th October.
Next day the spring tide about to reach its lowest point of 0.17m above chart
datum at 06.09am – an ideal opportunity to see the plane wrecks for herself
and, we deliberately set off into the bay at first light to be able to watch
the sun rise over the wreck sites.
Although we were the first
people to set off across the empty
flats and reach site 2 by the
time the sun rose, we were aware of a build-up of voices drifting across this
vast space and it didn’t take long for people
to arrive, some with their dogs bounding through the channels of water. Soon,
we were surrounded by 25 people standing around the one wreck in knee deep
water waiting for the tide to subside. As more people arrived – groups began
wading out to site six, even carrying a dog over the deepest point of the
waning tide. We were ahead of the tide compared to George and Paul the previous
day and, they essentially had the place to themselves. People were only
beginning to come out as they returned home. The arrival of such numbers ruined
the atmosphere of the place and we couldn’t face following the crowd out to
site 6 after witnessing such awesome emptiness. We decided to make our way home
via site 1 further west, to avoid the numbers still pouring out from jetty of
Town Beach. We crossed paths with three
nuns in their habits carefully making their way out.
The chance stranding of a
turtle yesterday was proved otherwise.
We came across three on our way home …
George picked up the wildly
flapping turtle and took it to a channel.
It went a short way with the current before pulling to the side. Lea was convinced turtles of this size did not want to go out with the tide as Sharky from the Snubfin Dolphin Cruise had made mention of sharks targeting channel entry points as they drained out into the deeper waters of the bay. The second young turtle appeared dead with its beak almost embedded in the silt. As George picked it up it barely gave a flicker of life, so he placed it within a hollow of water to give it the best chance of survival. The third was fully capable of slipping and sliding its flippers across the mud. Although George was concerned, once again, about leaving it exposed to the sun; it was strong enough to reach a shallow channel nearby. The stranding of turtles seemed commonplace, yet we could not understand why their instincts hadn’t prevented it.
It had been exciting walking
in the dark, down to the beach by torchlight, into the eerie atmospheric and
utterly beautiful expanse of Roebuck Bay on a draining tide. Lea didn’t overly
enjoy the feeling of her slipslops being sucked off her feet that she soon took
them off; glad of her walking stick, to maintain balance. That surface in poor
light, full of uneven patches, some deep enough to have her heart lurch as she
disconcertingly sank into squishy sticky mud and felt unknown things! Once light improved, Lea marvelled at the
carpets of sea grass; the multi-branched channels across the flats (fractal
development) and, the numerous semi embedded orange cucumber-like creatures.
Starfish too lay on the sand with an arm or two curled towards the sky. Lea
eventually commented on the number of starfish imprints in the sand with no
sign of a departure track. George immediately dug up the ‘imprint’ - outgoing
sediment had lightly ‘smothered’ the starfish. It had all been an enthralling
experience.
We had two more days in Broome to prepare for our return to the long and winding road south again. Yes! South… With Western Australian hard borders not expected to open until next year we decided to return to Perth and tick off another item on our bucket list for December. It therefore seemed fitting to post October blog early and incorporate the meandering days of ‘travel’ into November.
Over one hundred Black Winged Stilts,
followed by eleven Royal Spoonbill, beautiful birds with distinctive black
bills, arrived below our site to bid us farewell.
