The Reason I Went to Broome

Where's your favorite place?

I've asked a few people that since moving here, each time having to rearrange my prioritized list of the places I have to visit before I leave and those I want to visit. In two separate conversations, two well-trusted Perth-ites, have said with little hesitation, Karijini. That was all I needed. Karinjini is why I booked the trip to Broome. I didn't look it up first. Hadn't seen any pictures. Didn't really know what was there besides some waterfalls. But I was going.

Karijini is a national park in the Pilbara region of northern Western Australia. The country side is red dirt (because of the iron) hills with yellow grass. We camped in eco-tents that provided a base for sunrise jogs down the dirt road.

 

This region is covered with thousands of these termite mounds.

But what Karijini is really known for are the gorges.

You can look at the gorges from above, or you can go down in the gorge. Guess what we did? This was no Disney World or typical, park ranger covered American National Park.

We climbed down rocks.

We scooted across ledges.

We spider climb between crevices...

 And then the fun started...

We waded through water...

That got deeper...

And deeper....

And then we were swimming.

I must say that hiking and swimming in a bikini and hiking shoes was a new experience for me, but the views were worth it.

Joffre Gorge

 Kermit's Pool in Hancock Gorge

 Handrail Pool in Weano Gorge

 And the serene Fortescue Falls and Fern Pool in Dales Gorge, which was perfect for a relaxing swim.

Down in the gorges and on top of the hills, there was plenty of time for reflection.

Many thanks to Catherine and Bryanna for sharing pictures from their waterproof cameras as we swam to the bottom of the gorges.

Under the Sea

The trip north wasn't all sand and dirt. Or at least dry sand and dirt. We detoured off the coastal highway and connected the dots between Western Australia's northern beaches.

Shark Bay

Shark Bay is a World Heritage Site satisfying all four criteria: Natural beauty, biological diversity, earth history, evolutionary processes.

There's no doubt the area is beautiful. Especially when you arrive at Shell Beach at sunset. Australians are really good at naming things. My favorite road name of all time, "Useless Loop Road" was out near Shark Bay as well. 

Shark Bay is one of the few places you can see the world's oldest living thing, stromatolites. These are cyanobacteria that were the first living things on earth, and created the oxygen needed to sustain life. Sure, they just look like rocks, but we owe those rocks a lot.

The extremely salty waters of Shark Bay create a unique ecosystem (hello stromatolites), which happens to have a lot of sharks (don't worry mom, we didn't see any mean ones). However, there is also a family of dolphins at Monkey Mia that have become a tourist attraction. While you can no longer swim with them and there are strict regulations on feeding them (as there should be), it's still pretty neat to see them come in each morning.

Coral Bay

Coral Bay also has yet another remarkably lovely beach, where low tide met the sunrise to create the backdrop for a tranquil morning jog. But we weren't there for the beach. We were there to snorkel.

We took a high speed boat just off the coast to the Ningaloo Reef. It's about 260 kilometers long, making it Australia's largest reef. I've heard some say it's better than the Great Barrier Reef, for it's preserved, untouched status (Perth is isolated enough, and it's still over 1000 kilometers form Perth), but I've also heard the Great Barrier is still better. Maybe some day I'll be able to settle the argument for myself. All I know is that the turtles, reef sharks, coral fish, rays, and rainbow wrasse were spectacular. Though my favorites were probably the octopus I saw crawling along the bottom and a humongous blue starfish.

I stole these pictures too :)

Exmouth

Exmouth is on a pennisula that was a communication station in World War II (and was attacked). On the north eastern side is the "town", while the entire western coast is a national park. Exmouth is known for whale sharks, but unfortunately (for some, as you may know I'm not the biggest animal person) the whale shark tours had been booked for months. So instead, we had to spend the whole day in Turquoise Bay, where you can swim right out to the Ningaloo Reef and be back with the sharks, coral, and Nemos. What a bummer.

We had two nights in Exmouth, and Damo, our very romantic tour guide took us all up to the lighthouse for a surprise sunset champagne toast.

Eighty Mile Beach

The miles to Broome were getting fewer and fewer, we made a stop at Eighty Mile Beach to look at some shells and see the expanse of white sand for the four wheel drives and fishermen. Now here's a question. Everyone here mocks me when I refer to distances in miles as opposed to metric kilometers. But I say, how come it's not named 128.7 Kilometer Beach?

Broome

We finally made it to Broome, where it was no longer the cool autumn of Perth but the humid tropics of northern Australia. Broome is known as a tourist destination, but it wasn't what I had expected. There was a tiny town where you could buy world famous Broome (and not from Broome) pearls, and then 6k away was the world famous camel rides on Cable Beach.

Cable Beach

The mangroves of Broome where the crocodiles live.

I couldn't leave Broome without paying a visit to Matso's Brewery, home of WA's famous ginger, mango, and chili beers. The ginger beer was very gingery, the lychee beer was just a little sweet, the chili beer was HOT, and the mango cider was cool and refreshing. Sipping beer at 10 am by the beach is acceptable when you're on vacation, right?

I was only in Broome for 24 hours before I had to head to the airport. But the airport was an experience in itself. It's in the middle of town, and a 5 minute walk from our hostel. I have never been able to walk to an airport, let alone in only 5 minutes. As I saw families saying goodbye to their college students headed back after Easter break, I realized you didn't need a boarding pass to get through "Security", remembering that no one had checked mine.

As it seems to be everywhere in WA, everything is a little smaller, a little quainter, a little clearer, and a little more beautiful. And even with just a short stop in Broome, I was still able to leave my tracks into the sunset over Cable Beach.

Western Australia's Sand Box

Though most of our drive was up the western coastline with many stops along sandy beaches, we did head "inland". And even in the Australian sunburned bush, away from the ocean, we found plenty of sand.

The first stop on the tour was in Lancelin. A little coastline town, but we weren't there for the ocean. Our first day of driving saw many mobile sand dunes along the wind blown  highway, even though the ocean was nowhere in sight. And in Lanceline, there's an oasis of white sand when people go four wheel driving and sandboarding. It's snowboarding for the freezing temperature challenged. Our boards were just ones you sit on, but we waxed up our boards and scooted down, ending up with sand filled pockets and sand filled everything.

Next stop was the pinnacles. Scientists still don't agree on the origin of these strangely shaped rock formations. Some say they are calcified tree roots from ancient forests, they were cracks caused by vegetation that were filled with quartz, or the aboriginal story that they are the fingers of little girls who wandered into this forbidden area and were lost.

Damo and his sophisticated writing tool he used to draw the story of the creation of the Pinnacles in the sand.

Kalbarri National Park was also one of our inland adventures. We drove in on the dirt road, revealing a blanket of fog beneath the Easter sunrise.

Kalbarri National Park features the Murtchison River gorge. The Murtchison River is the longest river in WA, and the red sandstone makes this one of the hottest places in WA. As we headed north, the sand kept getting redder and redder, from the white sand of lancelin, to the yellow-orange of the pinnacles and the iron red of the pilbarra.

The contrast of the red rock and white gum.

Nature's Window

We spent Easter morning hiking and fueled by hot cross buns. Hot cross buns are an Easter thing, and I learned everything I know about them from Kyla, who makes an annual hot cross bun pilgrimage across Perth.

 

Turns out that Kalbarri was only a teaser for the gorges yet to come...