I reckon Broome has a certain mystique. Might be the pearling history, the isolation, the fabled Cable Beach (sorry, didn’t mean to make it rhyme) or even the dry heat and the wet heat.
But whatever, it’s one whopping big town. The population is 15,000 and they’re spread far and wide, with the airport bang in the middle of town – just like Darwin, the airstrip was once well outside the township. The main shopping area, Chinatown, has been well preserved with matching facades to all the buildings.
We started our Broome visit with one of my favourite pastimes: having breakfast out! Right here at Cable Beach.

The beach seems to go forever. The water is the bluest blue and the sand is white as can be. You can drive on the beach north of a certain point, most of the time, except round high tide.
The boys spotted a wave, much to their surprise, so they dusted the red dust off the board covers and pulled out the wetsuits.

I went “pearling” but the shops were mainly closed – it was Sunday. The local market was a relaxed affair in the shade of the big trees near the court house. The usual mix of crap you find at every market, but still worth a browse.
In the late afternoon, John and the boys went for a paddle in the Mango from just near the jetty, rounding the point with the outgoing tide. After that it was a bit of a slog, round the Lighthouse point and meeting their Taxi Driver (me) at the southern end of Cable Beach.
It was Sunday evening at low tide, and this is clearly where the locals like to hang out. There’s also no beach police, as you can see in the photo below, everyone drives onto the beach, pulls out the chairs, beers and barbies. They seem to move forward as the tide goes out. Otherwise it can be a bit of a hike for a swim. There would easily have been over 50 cars that evening.

We like to pack a lot in a day – you’ve probably noticed. So right after the trip to Horizontal Falls, we went to the Rodeo!

It’s a great peek at the life they live here in the outback. Kind of like the outback version of a Nipper Carnival for us. Everyone gets together from far and wide and has fun doing what they’re good at. Riders came from stations all over the Kimberley. Sort of like everywhere between Melbourne and Sydney.
Here’s a gallery of some of the action.

I like the country way of doing things: one rider had a bad kick to the head, lots of blood. Had to be taken to the hospital by the ambulance. So everything stops while we wait till the ambulance gets back, maybe 15 minutes – they might be needed for the next ride!
After the bucking broncos, it was time for the bucking bulls. That’s a lot of bucking in one afternoon.

After the Rodeo, we headed back to Broome. It was getting dark along the way, and with another thick cloud of smoke in the air, the sunset was another beauty. John took this one on the way home.

We indulged ourselves on an outing to Horizontal Falls in the far north, seeing as you don’t get to pass this way too often.

On the map below you can see there are no roads to Horizontal Falls (in green font at the top of the hatched area), it’s a long way in a boat from Derby, so flying in and landing on the water is the way to go!

We’d heard great reports about this day out, and couldn’t resist the opportunity to go. We booked it when we were way back in Derby on Monday. The first available trip was on the Saturday, so having been up the Dampier Peninsula and down to Broome, we left at stupid o’clock to drive the 220km back to Derby from Broome (not using any of John’s short cuts this time) and met our sea plane pilot at the Derby Airport at 8.30am.
After a short briefing and donning the lifejackets, it was up and away over Derby, across the mudflats, the amazing river systems, and finally to land on the water right next to a massive pontoon of floating houseboats.

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Arriving in Broome late afternoon, we headed to one of the six caravan parks. Full. Then the next. Full. And so it went, for the rest. We ended up at the overflow camping at the YMCA. It’s just a yard, and no shade to speak of. But they have dust, much like the others.
Having seen very few of van fraternity across the Gibb River Road – we found them. Broome is where the Nomads congregate. They head north from Perth, and stop here for the winter. Just like our eastern states Nomads head to Queensland. Thing is, Queensland has plenty more places to spread them out. Over here in the west, it’s Broome – with nothing much for hundreds of kilometres. So here they are – filling all the caravan parks. We’ve even seen one who puts a cover over his pristine Ford Falcon each night.
Plus! It’s Broome Cup week. Ladies day on Tuesday. Knew I should have packed my fascinator. Then on Friday, the Rodeo that was in Derby moves on to Broome.

We came across the school bus in Beagle Bay. Not your average bus, hey? You need good clearance, a couple of spares (including crane to get them off the back), and some chunky tyres.

Not quite the same as the Coles Coaches model that does the country roads for our school.