BROOME

Butter wouldn't melt in that toothless mouth!!!

This boy just loves doing his Maths on holidays!  Need to buy him an extra book!

My beautiful girls with their new earrings!!!  They are so proud!

The amazing colour of the water at Roebuck Bay!

Day 56 – BROOME                                                             Saturday, 27^th August

Did some schoolwork this morning and then went for a drive to see the Japanese Cemetery and the Chinese Cemetery.  It is incredible how many Japanese died on the pearl luggers last century.  The most horrific stories were those told about the ships which were caught in storms off the coast whilst divers were on the bottom of the ocean.  If a storm approached, and there was insufficient time to bring the diver up from the ocean floor, they just cut the rope and the oxygen to the diver and left him there in order to save the ship, the catch and the other crew (in that order, I think!).  Of course, many died of the bends as well.  In the year 1914, 33 died of this paralysis alone.

After that, we took a drive down to Town Beach which is very pretty.  The water colour is just an amazing aqua and so clear.   There is a pioneer cemetery on the hill at Town Beach and people were still being buried there up until 1995 (presumably because husbands/wives had already been buried there). 

Again, off to the beach in the afternoon, but (shock/horror!!) we had to CARRY all our accessories down to the beach because Opera Under the Stars was on at Cable Beach and the vehicular access was closed for the evening!  It didn’t stop us staying there until well after dark, having our barbie and watching the sunset and the kids play in the sand.

You can’t imagine how exhausting these days are!!  David and I desperately wanted to go down with a bottle of wine and a blanket and sit on the beach and listen to the opera but just could not convince any of you to come up and babysit!!  So David went for a walk down to have a look.  Even though the black plastic was all around, so many people had brought their chairs and wine down to the dunes to listen!