Month: January 2004

lot’s more hanging around in broome. got to have a drive in BB’s holden hk 1969 ute. fucking ace. 3 gears on the column, drum brakes all round and all the safety features of a hole in the ground.

a new favourite pass time of mine is to find a crazy crab (hermit crab is their latin name). draw a circle on the ground, pull them off your finger, stop them attacking the hand you’ve pulled them off with, put them in the middle and race em.

tip: find big angry ones with small shells.
I call this picture ‘rocking out by the pool’.

RE: clouds, it’s wet season in broome, whats a man to do.

like real tourists we ignored the signs, naturally. this is the same area we went fishing in the water a last week. cool. the next picture wasn’t in the wild, they caught this lizard a few months ago in this area. IT’S FUCKING HUGE. fortunately this can only move at 50 mph unlike the smaller ones that can move at 60 – 70.

I’ve never really been fishing before, and the idea of fishing still doesn’t excite me, but when the opportunity to go on a one off tour in a big 4 wheel drive over some rocks and up some beaches to catch sharks i was front seat. to tell the truth someone else had front seat.

our worldly guide warned us as we were rounding a corner that we were coming up to a ‘thing’ with that the toyota was floored the next to corners were cut, the ‘thing’ turned out to be a wall of sand 20 ft high. once on top of the obstacle we were told how he usually doesn’t make it. cool.

saw this, it’s a lace monitor (‘big lizard’ in latin i believe). cool. view this picture full size (recommended). a bit more off road, then some fishing.

bei caught a shark, of course i caught 2 sharks, both were much bigger than this one. that said this shark was funny, stuffed full of squid and had black ink running down the side of it’s mouth. much like bewsher eating butter at growlers party.

but fish of the day and tasty BBQ dinner goes to little nicky and her big travely. I finding it harder to be unimpressed now – god damn.

“broome time” a phrase you are told about as you enter the town. I wasn’t impressed with such a slack tourist advertising slogan…

soon after arriving i found i had entered broome time, not an advertising slogan but a way of life. it’s not that you have to wait for anything there, it just takes longer – and everyone is happy with that arrangement.

Miles from anywhere (as usual) we stopped for a piss in a hut. there was lot’s of graffiti, one felt tip slogan read “australia makes you believe in god”. others had agreed in other coloured felt tips.
a few hours of staring out the window later, thinking how all that land used to be underwater, how the mountains were the shallow bits and it all starts to make sense. WA is the unspoiled 1st edition of earth, the oldest rock formations on the planet. it takes little knowledge of geology to see how the planet was made here.

these are the unashamedly boring stromatolites, not rocks, but single cell bacteria billions of years old, they’ve been sat on this shore line bubbling oxygen from water before other life on this planet really existed.

they should have written “australia makes you atheists”, or in hind site, maybe i should have.

it wasn’t boring being driven to broome, because i found the dull view so fascinating. i took time from looking out the window to take these pictures out of the window.

denham (600 km from perth)

carnarvon (900 km)

exmouth (1200 km)

tom price (1600 km)

port headland (1900 km)

broome (2332 km)

as you can see it got a bit more cloudy. much like driving to Raymonds Hill from Lyme Regis. (via rome)

stayed in exmouth for 3 days, which was nice, much time spent by the pool chatting to ronald, an ex disney land paris donald duck turned customs official in amsterdam. he gave me some good advice on international smuggling.

then we all hired some scooters and a yellow bug named ernie and went to find sharks. found some. sarah screamed though her snorkel.

I asked the bar man for a rum and coke, he gave me a can of bundy – it’s a sickly drink, but once mixed with coke it’s similar to the captain, so hurrah for Australia for serving rum and coke not only in cans at petrol stations, but in bottles at clubs and on draught in bars (half pint measures – no ice).

We stayed in exmouth for 3 days, which was nice, much time spent by the pool chatting to ronald, an ex disney land paris donald duck turned customs official in amsterdam. he gave me some good advice on international smuggling.

Then we all hired some scooters and a yellow bug named ernie and went to find sharks.

Found some.

Sarah screamed though her snorkel.

After some hard work relaxing at castle alder the girls talked me into getting on a mini bus tour and being driven 1500 miles north into 52 degree heat. I thought this a bad idea, but for fear of over relaxation i paid up and got on.

soon into the trip i was climbing through this gorge. Apart from it being breath takingly beautiful it was nearly 50 degrees and full of flies, to my surprise none of these things bothered me. london on a hot summer day is far worse.

onto monkey mia where we met some dolphins. a crowd of people stood at the waters edge staring blankly at the dolphins, who were staring blankly back, that’s what cows do, what’s so magic? i made friends with a pelican instead – isn’t he handsome.

beautiful beach? it’s called shell beach, it’s made entirely of uncomfortable shells and it’s too shallow to swim. who cares every other beach is perfect. though in my quest to find a nicer beach… polly joke in cornwall is still my favorite.

4 days on a bus and we’re not even half way.