Broome-time

We were planning to leave Broome several days ago but are still here due to car difficulties...the poor thing's getting new "shockies" right now and after this, we hope, will be ready to get back on the road again.

It was a bit of a shock to find out that we needed to have this work done on the car at great expense AND that as they had to order the parts in, we would have to wait here for 5 days...however, Broome is a fantastic place to be stranded in and as it turns out, it's been a very interesting week.

As the car keeps draining our wallets, and staying in a town is always expensive, once we realised we were here for a few days we commenced looking for some kind of work. That didn't really come to fruition, but whilst scanning the noticeboards in town we came across an advert offering free camping in exchange for helping out with some gardening, so we responded...and have been living for free with Charles, an extremely eccentric English guy who runs "Broome Trike Flights", taking people up in his tiny microlight aeroplane. He's had a really crazy life - he's travelled all round the world and was the first person to cross the Sahara desert on a motorbike - took about a month, apparently.

He lives in a double decker bus on a property in the middle of an Aboriginal block near Cable Beach...it's a 15 minute walk to the beach with bars, cafes, hostels etc, but where we are is all dirt tracks and bush - it really feels like we're camping in the wilderness at times.

Charles has got electricity and he's plumbed in a toilet and shower...but hasn't bothered with a building around them, so the toilet just sits in the middle of some trees and bushes, making peeing a much more ambient experience!


We're camping in a corner of the property where he's build a treehouse for the little girl on the next lot - it's a really cute little camping area.

He's currently building an extension on his aircraft hangar so Laura and I have spent the last few mornings holding spirit levels, measuring posts and levelling concrete to earn our keep! The hangar backs onto Broome airport, and we can watch the planes - commercial flights and tiny private jets - taking off and landing from a distance of about 100 metres...it's noisy but exciting.



We're close to Cable Beach which is, according to tourist literature, rated one of the top three beaches in the world. It's certainly very beautiful, and we've been spending most of our time there when not doing building work for Charles. Last night was spent drinking on the beach with a group of other backpackers...we all wanted to go out but agreed that we were too poor, and resorted to a very teenage but enjoyable evening. It was beautifully dark and I saw my first shooting star. Mind you, the drinking was hampered by the liquor restrictions in Broome - our usual beverage of choice, 4 litre casks of, um, "wine" at the very affordable price of $8, is not available here: the maximum cask size on sale is 2 litres, at $14...this is apparently because there's a huge problem with street drinking and antisocial behaviour, due in part to the fact that there's a much higher proportion of aboriginal residents here than in the east coast and southern cities. It's awful that alcoholism is so rife, but I have to say that Broome is the first place where I've seen signs of indigenous people actually functioning within mainstream society: when all the parents drive up in their monstrous 4x4s to drop the kids off at school (it's just like being back in Dulwich Village) there are a few aboriginal children hopping out of cars just as huge and shiny as everybody else's, and for the first time I've seen a few aboriginal people around the place.

Laura and I are also looking for a new person to travel with as David is going to stay and work in Broome...I did enjoy travelling with him (and we are parting amicably!) but it's quite exciting to meet someone new. We think we've found the right person - another long-haired German boy with a guitar. Seems to be a theme...