BROOME

Heading off into the great unknown - Town Beach, Broome, to see the Catalina Flying Boats

Ben at the site of one of the straffed Flying Boats

All the kids at the site of the second destroyed Catalina

Beth at the water park

Tess firing a water cannon!

Ben all wet and enjoying life at 9 in the morning!

Tess and Beth

Bridget and Mama at the camels

Tess and Sarah with Kashann, the camel

Ben and Papa with Kashann

Beth and David before the camel ride

Beth and Mama are up!

Ben and Papa riding Aqaba

Bridgie and Tess riding Jemma

Can you pick us along the camel train?

David, Sarah, Tess, Bridgie, Marj and Beth on the camel train

David and Sarah aboard Zoarim

DAY 62 – BROOME                                                            Friday, 2^nd September

Up before sunrise this morning to go and inspect the Catalina Flying Boat wrecks off town beach.  These can only be seen on about 3 – 4 days a month because you need a tide lower than 0.86m.  The fog was incredible this morning.  Someone asked a local, “What is the story with the fog?”  She replied:  “I don’t know.  We have never seen it!”  It was so thick that it looks like we were walking into the great unknown as we headed off from town beach.

The Catalina Flying Boats were mainly Dutch “seaplanes” which were being used to ferry Dutch refugees from the Dutch East Indies to southern Australian cities during February and March of 1942 when the Japanese invaded Java and other areas of what we now refer to as Indonesia.  They were sitting on the water in Roebuck Bay waiting to be refuelled from drums brought out to them by pearl luggers in Broome.  However, because of the extremely low tide, the pearl luggers were unable to get to them immediately and a Japanese reconnaissance plane saw what were technically military aircraft sitting on the harbour.  On 3^rd March 1942 they straffed the entire fleet, killing 88 people, mainly Dutch, some US and some British.  The wrecks can be seen 1 km off shore.

It was quite an extraordinary experience walking out along the sea bed for a kilometre to the wrecks.  Along the way we encountered sea cucumbers, starfish, sea snails, walking starfish, and a sea turtle which seemed to have been left behind when the tide went out.  Absolutely fascinating for the kids to see.  The sea bed was amazing – a mixture of mud, and sand that felt like clay, so that in some places you sank well past your ankles.  The kids loved it.  Papa lost both soles of his sandals walking in the sticky sand – but I was happy – it felt like a pedicure!!  Delicious!

We had a coffee on town beach while the kids played in the water park there.  It was just a collection of water cannons and enormous buckets that tip over and water fountains but they had an absolutely ball!!

With Marj and Barry here (or more precisely the fridge in their cabin), David set about removing our fridge from the van, with the help of Barry and Lawrence.  Once removed, our many google searches advised us to turn it upside down for a time to recirculate the liquid and crystals inside.  The boys did a fantastic job and got it out and back in.  At the time it was put back, the temperature in the fridge was 27 degrees.  At time of going to bed it had dropped to 13 degrees – already colder than we had managed to get it the entire time we have been in Broome.  But we are not counting our chickens yet.  Beautiful Lawrence and Violet have very generously offered to loan us their Engel (electric car fridge) for the rest of the trip if we can’t get it down to 4 degrees (which is what it needs to be for milk!!)

The exciting moment the kids had been looking forward to the entire trip arrived this afternoon – our sunset camel ride!!  After much arguing, “I was picked last for the rounders team – after Mama, Papa and Daddy!  So Bridgie was going with Mama, Ben with Papa, Beth with Daddy and Tessie with me.  Unfortunately, that was all upset immediately when Alison (the camel whisperer!) decided that she needed two smaller people to ride on her littlest camel, Jemma!  So Bridgie and Tess ended up riding together on Jemma, Papa and Ben on Aqaba, Mama and Beth on Abbasim, and David and Sarah together on Zoarim.  It was a lovely hour’s ride up the beach, watching the sun set and waving to the kids on the beach.  We saw a sea snake along the way which was something new.  Apparently they are very venomous! Of course, my husband decided to complain all the way that men really weren’t meant to sit with their legs this far apart!  The kids had an absolute ball and was literally all their dreams come true.  They were able to feed a carrot to their camel at the end and all the ladies with pierced ears were given a set of pearl studs to commemorate the trip!  You can imagine how excited our newly-pierced girls were about that!

Home for dinner (with a few veges!) tonight and planning our day tomorrow.  The men are off fishing and the ladies are off to the market!