Day 40: Birdwood Downs to Broome

 

It is an easier drive today, around 230 km over fully sealed roads, but pretty boring as there is not much to see and 2 roadhouses on the route. The first, Willare Bridge Roadhouse, is only about 30 mins into our trip, so we plan to stop at Roebuck Pliains Roadhouse for our morning cup of coffee. It is about 40 km out of Broome.

Larger than we expected, there is abig bar and beer garden area, a caravan park, and a store that had a surprising amount of prepared meals, and sandwiches. We ordered oour coffee and drank it in the beer garden.

The decor was very Northern WA

Our plan from here is to go straight to a caravan carwash in Broome to get rid of some red dirt.

Located in an industrial area not far from our caravan park, the carwash had 4 bays, all capable of coping with the height of a caravan, and all were occupied, so we waited in line. There was a coin change machine so I converted $20 into coins whilst we waited for our turn to feed the machine. The wait was not too long, and we entered the bay with the intention of doing the car first and would then move on to get the caravan in position to wash.

Alas, the coin operated console did not work, but it would also accept credit cards. We now have an additional $20 in coins for future trips tpo caravan paerk laundries.

Expert caravan washer at work

It was pretty awkward working your way around the van, and access to the roof was just a wild spray in that direction. I climbed up on the drawbar to try to get better angle. 

With a clean car and van we were ready to venture off to the Broome Caravan Park where we will be for the next 3 nights. There was quite a line up when we arrived, so we joined the check in queue allong the road outside the park. The 3 vans in front of us were very slow to process, but when our turn came it took only a few minutes.

Our site is in a good spot, but space for parking your car is tight

The park is large and busy. It is the beginning of school holidays somewhere, as the kids are out in force. The occupation of this park is higher than we have seen so far, maybe it is the school holiday boost that is helping them. As usual, we are one of the rare visitors from NSW.

All settled in, we went for a drive out towards Cable Beach and the port. We got a bit distracted by a sign to the Golf Course, so decided to go and have a look. We were very pleasantly surprised.

The very substantial golf clubhouse has elevated views over Roebuck Bay on one side and the golf course on the other. It is also an impressive clubhouse and the bar was being well supported as it is Wednesday, which is probably Men's Competition day.

We had a good discussion with the young lady in this photo who turned out to be a backpacker from Marseille, who had been working here since March and enjoying the obvious contrast from her4 home country. It is great to see backpackers taking on these remote area jobs which tourism depends on. We asked about the golf course said we were from NSW. It was then she revealed that the current golf pro is from Sydney. We couldn't help ourselves, we went into the pro shop to meet him. He was from St Michael's Golf Club, didn't see an immediate future there, and through a bit of an elongated process including a potential posting in Canada (where the timing of getting a visa closed off that option), here he is in Broome enjoying life.

Back to the views from the clubhouse.

Looking back over the golf course from the clubhouse, please note that both fairways and greens have grass on them and it is an 18 hole golf course, something that has been quite rare in recent times.

Looking from the clubhouse over Roebuck Bay towards the Port.

A few new plants / weeds were discovered but as of now are unidentified.

Tomorrow's plans are evolving. The Thursday night markets are on. It is one of the rare dates where Staircase to the moon illusion is viewable, if the skies are clear, so we we see how it develops.