Woodies on tour!: Broome and Barn Hill

On the road again but this time to somewhere where we had been before! we are both looking forward to seeing Broome, the Wharf and the famous Cable Beach with the camels.

We knew Broome would be very busy and that the Caravan Parks are very expensive so we decided to re-visit the Pistol Club which is classed as an overflow park for the town one of three overflow parks....lots of politics going on in town re Grey Nomads! We intend to stay for a week here. We arrived before midday and had to put the caravan on a spot near the office as there were no other places until tomorrow morning, we were quite happy. The Pistol Club hadn't changed much in 8 years. We went to visit the Wharf this afternoon and there was the same restaurant we had eaten at in 2007 the Wharf (same as Derby). This Wharf was very busy with trucks travelling down to the ships moored. We managed to cross and walked on the purpose made walkway where there were many people chancing their hand trying to catch a fish.

Back at camp Richard used the camp kitchen BBQ to cook our evening meal. It was very quiet here. Sunday morning and caravans were turning up at 8:30 a.m. we got a little worried that we might have been forgotten but no, Gail came and asked us to look at two places that we could choose from. We were once again set up for the week on a nice shady spot with some lovely people around us.
Our plan to not do much here was quite successful, we just wanted a beach holiday for a week...
There are many free camps not far out of Broome but the only way to get to them is via red dirt roads and we were very reticent in taking our big caravan, so we had a trip just with the Ute up the road to Cape Leveque. What an amazing area we travelled to a place called Quondong beach where people had tents, camper trailers, camper vans and even large caravans set up over looking the ocean, they weren't next to each other either, such an beautiful place. We had a few hours on the beach where we chatted to a number of people walking past and watched dolphins not far away from us.

Quondong Point Road

Quondong beach

Quondong beach our Ranger in the background

Wednesday the 4th August saw us rising early, heading to a Gantheaume Point to see the Dinosaur footprints at low tide. It was like Piccadilly Circus at the Point, hundreds of people at this time in the morning was quite astonishing. Helen managed to lose Rich to, as she went back to the Ute for hats and walked straight ahead instead of looking for him under an information shed thing! Helen did however, had the privilege of seeing an Osprey with large fish in tow trying to kill it by bashing it against the tower poles the Osprey's young were going frantic waiting in their nest higher up the tower to be fed.

Osprey tower

We managed to get together again and make our way down the rugged rocks to find the Dinosaur footprints...

This is a plaster cast version of the footprints

On arriving back at camp we had new neighbours who became new friends, David and Patsy who were on a 13 week holiday from Brisbane. David had a rooftop tent on his Patrol and we were interested in seeing how he puts it out etc. I have not mentioned on here, but we are interested in putting a rooftop tent on our Ranger as this will enable us to visit the outback tracks without having to take the big caravan. We spent an hour one morning with David and Patsy as they showed us their set up and how they get organised when leaving their van and going off with just the Patrol. David and Patsy went off to Cape Leveque for a few days with theirs.

A trip into town saw us visiting the Chinatown area where there are some of the world's finest pearl and jewellery showrooms, they are really worth a look in but no we didn't buy anything this time. There is also some very nice ladies clothes shops but once again Helen resisted! We did however visit a camping store to look for a cast iron camp oven but cam away with a 40ltr Engel fridge that cost quite a bit more than a camp oven ha ha!!

Because we were able to take our Ute on to the beautiful world renown Cable Beach which is named after the Cable that links Australia with the rest of the world, most days were spent here, we parked in one spot and around 3 p.m. we were surrounded by camels, ready for their job to be done taking the tourists on rides at sunset. Other days we went further afield

Away from the Camels, Cable Beach

Further down Cable Beach

Barn Hill

We had a great time in Broome and our next stop is a working station called Barn Hill about 115km away, we would have no electric hook up but can have water connection. Our stay here is only for 3 nights as we need to move to Port Hedland to catch up with our son Jonathan as he is there until Friday morning.

The road to Barn Hill is a 9km red dusty road AGAIN!!

We had a good spot and after setting up our friends Pete and Caron found us, well we were just about opposite them! Another catch up was undertaken and tonight we would all be eating the Sunday roast special down at the main lawn area. We had to take our own table, chairs, cutlery, crockery etc so Rich headed off like a donkey down to the lawn... Sunset once again was amazing.

Meal was just OK but everyone raves about it!! Whilst in the queue for our main course we were in front of a couple Greg and Pam who we had spent time with back at Lee and Jenny's bushcamp.. that was ages ago and it is seems unbelievable that we are on the same camp ground again. It was good to hear the news about Lee and Jenny they are one amazing couple.

Long walks on the fantastic beach here and photo opportunities galore as we had Dolphins and Whales going by every day but, unfortunately we didn't see any Whales only Dolphins.