Broome

We left Windjana Gorge and headed up the rough road to meet the Gibb River Road and head towards Broome. Some of the Gibb was sealed but only a middle bit, like East of Alice Springs so if someone was coming towards you, you had to move off the bitumen, and the guide posts were very close to the edge!
We called into Derby, a fishing town, and filled up with diesel, then kept going to Broome. We were told everything was expensive in Broome, even the caravan parks, but we headed to Cable Beach Caravan Park, reccommended to us, and got the last powered site of the day - $43 a night, which is the most we have paid. The park has 500 spots and they are mostly filled every night, so it's a good money earner for someone!
Broome is not what we expected. It is divided in two - Cable Beach area, and town centre area. The town centre has all the touristy shops, and pearl shops of course, and restaurants. The Cable Beach area has not many shops, a cafe of two, a pearl shop and some resorts. None of the resorts can see the beach - there are sand dunes in front of them. We decided to stay a while here, as a last ditch relax before we head home.
We decided to go and look at a camping place north of Broome as we had heard it was very nice. It was called Willie Creek, so we turned off onto yet another rough road for about 27kms. You can see what I'm talking about with the corrugations - we have experienced a lot of this!, and the road is really wide!

We actually went too far and had to turn back into Willie Creek. The campsites were just ok, but surprise surprise, there is a pearl farm here, so had a lovely look around and Randall bought me a beautiful pearl ring.

We drove along Cable Beach - a lot of people drive their cars along the beach and do their nudie sunbathing! We saw a man throwing a boomerang which did come back to him!

That evening we came back and drove along the beach to watch the sunset. It really was beautiful. We saw the camels too, but neither of us were inclined to have a ride on one.

We had a lovely relaxing time in Broome, just hanging about the campsite, going for a swim at the beach and at the park pool. Here is Randall playing poker by the pool:

We went and looked at the lighthouse, but couldn't see any dinosaur footprints - the tide was too high :(
We did see some fake ones in cement, so I took a photo of them anyway!!

Election night was very important, and of course, we had the dish up so we could watch all the action as it unfolded. We sat outside watching the telly and munching on a few treats - a Smith tradition:

After watching the washup of the election the next day, and enjoying another swim in the ocean, we packed up and headed south on Monday 22nd with plans to see Ningaloo Reef and Monkey Mia before getting to Perth.