Broome & Beyond: Eco Beach Resort

Tuesday 11th July, 5pm

We spend the morning relaxing, then touring round Broome.

Breakfast is some Carman cereal, not much sugar... maple syrup instead. Hmm. Tastes okay but leaves a taste in the mouth of maple syrup.

Check-out time is 10:00, we check out about quarter to. No rush, nothing much we want to do.

Leaving the caravan park we look at the road and decide, let's turn right, towards "Port". Sounds interesting, we've not been there. It's a couple of km, roughly south.

There's a visitors' car park next to government offices next to a resstaurant next to the jetty. We park and wander. The restaurant is in a beautiful location. Shaded out front -- where you can sit and eat -- by trees. It's The Wharf, just opening for the day, doesn't do coffee-and-cake. Pity.

Standing by the jetty -- which is not open to the public -- we admire the beautiful colours of the sea, the red cliffs, the curve of beach back towards town. Listen to the waves lapping on the shore. Peaceful and beautiful :-)

We drive to Cable Beach, so Deb can see where the run will start on Sunday. We stay on the grass area above the beach. Have coffee and a muffin at a place called Zanders. A bit crowded but very pleasant. The price is comparable to most in Perth.

We walk round a bit. There's a statue of Lord McAlpine; he's credited with developing Broome from a failing cattle processor into a bustling tourist town. I preferred it as a sleepy town in a terrific location. And -- in my opinion -- all the extra work & money that he has brought to the town is just going to all the extra people who have come to do the work and to make the money. No great benefits to the few people who already lived here.

Deb and I agree: McAlpine's impact may have been good, or it may have been bad.

It's a warm day -- just over 30, when we get back to the truck -- but nice for strolling. Back to the truck and we drive to the old part of town...

Towards Town Beach. It's more than forty years since I spent nearly a week camped at the Town Beach caravan park. Funny... nothing seems familiar.

It's a very pleasant area. Town Beach is more our style that Cable Beach. More "family holiday" rather than "tourist resort". We wander along the beach side of the caravan park. Agree that it's more pleasant than where we stayed (which was nice enough). There's more shade here, more interesting "caravans". I suspect that where our Village was planned, this park has grown. There are even permanent gardens... and a caravan bay with its own bar :-)

We eat lunch at the cafe near the playground at Town Beach. Sitting at the outside edge of the covered area. Next to the grass. Ten metres from the beach. Beautiful.

This beach is more family than Cable Beach. Less bikinis... sigh. Yet very pleasant.

Time to leave town. Deb forgot to pack a shower cap. We try an IGA, no luck. Then a chemist shop, no worries.

I almost run down a man on a motorbike... Not that I didn't see him... What I didn't see was the roundabout :-( I apologised, he swore. Time to leave town.

Back to Highway One. Past the Cape Leveque road. We fill up just before heading south again... Again for me, that is. I recognise the distinct vegetation areas as we drive 110km to the turn-off to the resort.

And I forgot to mention, in earlier posts... Driving north, on this stretch of road, on Monday: There were drovers driving cattle! A hundred metres off the road, a well-ordered line of cattle, a hundred or so? With three men on horses at the head and another three at the tail end of the mob. (Okay, men/women. My eyes aren't that good.) All dressed up in jackets, jeans, slouch hats, very authentic. Dawdling along on their horses, guiding the cattle.

We reach the turnoff to the Ramada Eco Resort. It's a corrugated drive in. The truck tyres are still rock hard after being serviced -- I'll need to let them down a bit before heading to Cape Leveque. Deb has to get out to open gates, twice. We see the "eco tents" in the bush... and we arrive at the resort.

My first impression is not positive. It's a bar with a great view over the ocean. Not noisy but not peaceful. People. And the setting sun shining in. There's very little shade in the main building.

The tent is... a large, square tent. Very little power. Just one light for reading. Tea and coffee only at the main building. So no settling into the isolation of our "room". And the only place to eat is at the main building.

There is a barbeque area. Not that we would have brought our own meals, even if we'd known. But it would have been nice to have known.

There are a couple of walks, along the beach and through the bush. We pick up pamphlets. They are very uninformative. And we have to walk when the tides are low, to get round some of the rocky points.

We book for dinner at 5:30 -- just on sunset -- and walk along the beach. It's a pleasant walk. It would be better if the pamphlets were clearer about where we are and what we could be seeing. We plan to try again tomorrow.

Back for dinner. It's very nice. With a great view over the ocean -- until the sun fully sets and it's all pitch black! Except for lights on the horizon: possibly the line of ships we saw anchoored off Broome.

Back to our tent. The stars are magnificent! So many more than we ever see in the city. Even the Milky Way is clear to see !

The inside of the tent is also clear to see. We drop the "curtains" to get some privacy. Not from other tents -- which are well spread out -- but privacy from people walking past on the way to their own tents.

I'm feeling a bit cold. I may need to fetch a few more jumpers from the truck. Which is parked 50m away. Deb is reading by the light of the one lamp. I'm typing by the glow of the tablet screen.

Oh well. Tomorrow is another day :-)

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Dr Nick Lethbridge / Consulting Dexitroboper
Agamedes Consulting / Problems? Solved.
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"The man who cannot visualize a horse galloping on a tomato is an idiot." ... André Breton

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