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Broome
Paradise! We are recipients of a generous offer from Chris's nephew to stay at their house in the outside units, which are just beautiful, in a fantastic garden with a wonderful swimming pool. We are in awe. The comparison to Port Hedland is just indescribable.
A pretty small town with an interesting history with the pearling industry at it's heart. In the early 20th century the industry was very viable though there were many fatalities for the pearlers as they were made to spend too long under water and didn't really understand the effects of the bends. Japanese were ultimately found to be the best at it and there were many hundreds working there at the time the second world war broke out. They were interned and ultimately the town was bombed several times by the Japanese aircraft with several hundred people killed.
Tourism is now taking over as they have a fabulous climate and many older people from Perth come up to spend their winters as it's too cold (!!!!) for them in Perth. They are part of the group known as grey nomads.
We go to watch the film "The Great Budapest Hotel" in the old open air cinema sitting in deck chairs and having a picnic. The film is bizarre and farcical, though film critics will probably call it a classic, we didn't really enjoy it. The best bit was when a couple of planes flew in to the airport over the top of the screen making us all jump. Fun to watch a film outside.
Ron, the local caravan maintenance expert fixes C&J's trailer at a very reasonable price so we also ask him to look at the many outstanding little issues we have..loose taps, drip from water tank, broken roof light, disappeared side light etc. Seems to have done a great job.
We go to the top of the Cape Leveque, partly so Chris can see the catholic school he helped establish thirty years previously at the aboriginal community at Beagle Bay. Also there, is a significant white church where the altar and much decoration is made with pearl shells. Jenny also has some links with another local aboriginal community and her involvement in health issues, but we decide we don't really have time to visit as we are not looking forward to the 2 hours of battering bumpiness on the way home. The trip is over 400k in total with 180k of very very rough gravel/sand track. The small campsite at the end of the cape has a beach where the white sands meet the red cliff sands, but you can't swim there. However there is another beautiful beach on the other side the headland which is flat and calm and to be our last dip in the Indian Ocean. The day is very interesting though a long tough journey.
We plan a final day of general lazing about before setting off, but I decide to check the work done on the trailer to discover that the inside lights are now blowing fuses all the time. Despite a brief attempt to fix it which helps to prevent the connector coming apart, we manage to go through 5 fuses before calling out Ron again. We spend the day in the museum, at a catholic exhibition in which we discover there are some photos of Chris in his early days whilst assisting up there, and the library where they supply free wifi ! I manage to upload many photos to the blog site which takes some time, but not the forever that it takes over our phone link and which has made it impractical. We are giving up on Ron so start to look for a new electric cable connector for me to fit. Can we find one anywhere..no, but we eventually get something that might work if we could find something to use as a crimper. As sunset is arriving we go to watch the sunset where there is a rather touristic camel train set up for people to ride on the beach at sunset. The sunset is lovely, but we miss the camels as they only walk on the beach just around the other side of the rocks ! We are in a fed up mood because on the way to the beach, we discover our van indicators have stopped working! However, Ron eventually arrives at the house at about 7pm, completely re-wires the light switch and apologises that his young apprentice didn't spot the problem the first time. He's a gent and doesn't charge us further.
Now for the car to be fixed as I discover the fuses for both the hazard lights and the indicators have blown. A late night dash to a garage with fuses, also shows that our tyres have been running at a pressure of over 50 psi! We can only put that down to a faulty pressure gauge at the last garage we checked our tyres. I decide to buy a little hand held pressure gauge for the future. Replacing fuses seems to work, but no idea why they blew in the first place.
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