Rowkin Rovings Blog

Up and out the door by 7.50am for another excursion. This time we boarded a catamaran and headed out into Roebuck Bay which is an area we use to fish in years ago. We went looking for the snubfin dolphin which is a close relative to the Orca. Snubfins – named for their miniature dorsal fins – were only discovered in 2005 and are one of just three dolphin species found only in Australia.

This photo is not one of ours.

The closest we got was this.

We didn’t see a lot of wild life out there but it was nice just cruising around especially with the cooling wind.

Broome actually receives cruise ships now and in the past four years the number has increased significantly. The port is very limited so no doubt they will expand this which will affect the marine life in the bay.

As it is, there is a lot of tanker traffic as pretty much all communities here function off power generated by diesel generators. It doesn’t come up by road as there is considerable quantities needed so it all comes up around the coast.

The is one of the modern pearling boats that go out to their pearl farms in the Indian Ocean.

This pearl lugger is what use to ply the waters up until the mid 1980’s. We remember seeing these tied up to the Streeter jetty, sitting on the mangrove mud when the tide was out.

At the height of the pearling industry there use to be 300 luggers working out of Roebuck Bay.

When being tendered out to and back from the catamaran, they used this amazing boat which had built in wheels. We were told it was designed here in Broome to cope with the big tides. It was certainly different.

It was then back into town to have another look around. Popped into the Pearling Museum and found this gem.

We went into one of the local boutique breweries and had a much needed drink to quench our thirsts.

Fras had a taster tray with mixtures of ginger, coconut, mango and as Fras says “all sorts of shit” – guess he didn’t really like it.

We watched a bit of wildlife around the pub and managed to get a shot of one whilst it was still. It was only small but we can assure you that there are other varieties that are much bigger!!

We wandered a bit further around the area called Chinatown and very much appreciated the covered walkways.

There was also some pearling memorabilia around the different shops and we found these boots that the original pearl divers would of worn. They weighed a substantial amount.

Broome was attacked at least four times by Japanese aircraft during World War II. The worst attack in terms of loss of life was an air raid on 3 March 1942 in which at least 86 people (mostly civilian refugees from the Dutch East Indies) were killed. Twenty-two aircraft were destroyed, most of them flying boats, the remains of which can still be seen in the harbour at low tide.

It was then back to our digs for another cooling swim where we discovered that the pool was over 30 meters in length so were able to do a few laps.

A final wander down to Cable Beach to see our final spectacular sunset. Cable Beach was named in honour of the Java-to-Australia undersea telegraph cable which reaches the shoreline here.

Our final goodbye to our camel friends.

We discovered last night that both of our Aussie credit cards had been compromised which surprised us both as we had only just reactivated them in Melbourne ten days ago. There were transactions in Las Vegas and Sydney of which we have not been near so we would say they have been skimmed or hacked. We are now penniless until our new cards arrive in seven days at our friends Gayle and Darren’s place in Perth. Meantime, we have to borrow cash off the guys until we are solvent. In Oz, your credit card also has access to all your other bank accounts which explains why we do not have a debit card to get into our savings accounts here. Bit of a bugger but with the help of our good friends Gayle and Darren we should be OK for a while.

There won’t be much to say in the next few days as just flying down to Perth tomorrow and settling in so will blog then.