| "Bound for Broometime & the Bungles!!" - part 1 |
| 25 August 2004 |
| Well, hope this finds you all well and happy. Left you all last time arriving into the sunny city of Perth. Not much of interest to report from there, as had been there before and had already done alot of the sightseeing stuff. So spent the week just chilling out, realxing after our recent epic journeys and having a wander around a few places hadn't been to before, like the West Australian Art Gallery, some funky little suburbs, & King's Park, for a beautiful view over the whole city. Also paid my favourites from last time another visit, Fremantle, one of Perth's suburbs. The hostel we stayed at was pretty cool, very sociable, and one of those places where people intend on staying for a few days and are still there for weeks on end...thus far too much time spent partying and checking out Perth's nightlife with the good people we met!! Thanks to all you guys who we got to spend various evenings with!! After Perth, me and Sharon split up, and as I had already done the West Coast before, she joined an organised tour up to Exmouth with the "Easyrider" tour group. And I settled myself in for a long 14-hour Greyhound journey up the coast to stop and see a friend for a few days in beautiful Shark Bay, being treated to deserted beaches, sunset BBQ's and sightseeing, before another gruelling Greyhound epic up to Exmouth to rejoin Sharon. Exmouth is the point for jumping onto a boat to get out onto the Ningaloo Reef, reputed to be even better marine life than the Great Barrier Reef. So, with my scuba dive ticket now in hand I joined a local dive boat and did 2 boat dives down to about 18 metres...the coral was not as brightly coloured as the east coast, but was amazed at the marine life!! I saw things I'd had never even imagined before, plus fluro sea slugs, reef sharks(not really dangerous!), sea snakes (very dangerous!), lion fish (dangerous also!), and stackloads of other fish!! It was beautiful and was so glad I did the dives! What I hadn't realised beforehand was that I had never done 2 dives that long before (about 50 minutes each), so it made me soooo tired, could hardly move the rest of the day!! The next day it was now my turn to be introduced to the "Easyrider" tours, as we jumped onto the bus bound for Broome. Our driver was a completely crazy lass, and managed to keep us entertained with "bus games", drive the bus, play cards and talk to us all at the same time?! No idea how!! Our first stop for the night was Tom Price, a small, rather strange mining town North-west of Exmouth. We were all a little bit surprised when we got to our "hostel", which was actually a campsite and our rooms were pretty much portakabins!! Looked really claustrophobic from outside and really wasn't looking forward to it, but were quite surprised when we went inside...really spacious and comfortable!! Have since found out they're the huts the miners used to live in, called "dongers"?! After our Tom Price experience, we headed out the next day to Karijini National Park, an area I probably wouldn't have considered going to, but was included on the tour, and was so glad I went there, it's stunning. The weather wasn't up to much, and we were afraid we weren't gonna be able to do the Gorge walk our tour guide had planned, as someone had been killed there a few months back from flash flooding in the gorge catchment area 30 miles or so away. But a check with the Park Ranger enabled us to go in, which was a relief!! We walked around the edge of the gorge, then down into the bottom, littered with huge angular pieces of rock, made for some interesting photos. We arrived at "Circular Pool", which I hadn't planned on swimming in, but looking at it, it was so beautiful I just couldn't resist, even though it was freezing cold!! A brief swim across, and out the other side onto a rock ledge, where the small waterfalls were really warm...was like taking a warn shower! Back on the path, we continued our walk, to "Fortescue Falls", climbed up the side of the waterfall, past some sleeping fruit bats in the trees, and around to another pool, which was equally beautiful, but no swim this time! We left Karijini, continuing out journey up to Broome, heading for our next stop, Port Hedland...or "Port Shitland" as our tour guide nicknamed it...it's not the nicest town in this country! It's another mining town, with a men to women ratio of 10:1!? Once at the hostel, the gates were locked behind us and we were advised not to leave unless we had to?! Apparently it's not the safest place around?! So needless to say, we didn't exactly do much that evening! Up for another early start, and our final day on the road before we hit Broome. We arrived there early afternoon, and visited a few local sights on our way into town. Broome is a big area for the pearl trade, and historically, it's been a place where alot of asian men and boys were "recruited" to dive for pearls. Unfortunately the dive technology was not as great as it is now, and these people were diving to huge depths with no air tanks, or knowledge of the effects of nitrogen bubbles in the blood, the "bends", so many perished at sea. So visiting the Japanese Cemetary, where many of the ones found are buried was a very haunting experience, but an important one in understanding the history of the area. On a lighter note, we then went even further back in history to the time of the dinosaurs, and visited some casts of dinosaur footprints beside the ocean...the originals are under water for most of the time, so the casts had to suffice!! We then headed over to one of the world's most famous beaches, and voted the world's most beautiful beach a while back...Cable Beach, for a champagne sunset! Beautiful!! ..... |