Our Aussie Adventures

A tragedy of dire consequences befell us late last night. Consequences more dire even than our continued lack of television. Our washing machine gave up the ghost. We had put a load on when we got home yesterday evening, to wash while we comfortably relaxed watching some more episodes of ‘The Wire’. It was in a particularly quiet scene of the show that I realised that there was a distinct lack of the whizzing and whirring the likes of which we have become all too well acquainted with, coming from the other end of the van. Gone too was the gentle rocking of the van that the spinning drum of the washing machine generally causes. On closer inspection, there it was, all too clear to see. Lights were flashing, but not the ones that were meant to be flashing, and the drum was an inert barrel of soggy, half washed clothes. As you would all know, this machine is like our lifeblood. Without this machine, life as we know it is over. In fact, the sad loss of our little washing machine could well jeopardise the rest of the trip. Like I said, dire consequences.

We spent the next hour trying everything we could to revive our little buddy, almost flooding the van in the process when it released a rivulet of water as we opened the door. It was like a final gusher of blood from a severed artery as the life faded away from the machine.

A search on Google educated me in the art of reading the morse code like error messages depicted by the flashing of the front panel lights. This made things no better, when I decrypted the code to mean one of two things, both possibly fatal. It could either be a fault in the circuit board, or an electricity frequency issue. Without the diagnostic tools to check either, we up the creek without a washing machine.

Getting up this morning, I was about ready to ring the washing machine company, to see if they could shed any light on our problems, when Bec exclaimed: “Is that the time already?” I followed her eyes to the microwave, where I noticed the apparently late hour. I checked my watch to confirm, and before Bec knew it, I had grabbed her up in a big bear hug, smiling and laughing with glee. I think she thought I had finally gone mad, but then I explained that the time on the microwave was about 2 hours fast. That was a good thing, because it indicated that the 240 volt supply with which the park is being supplied most likely comes courtesy of a giant generator out by the roadhouse. I am assuming that overnight, when demand for power is low, the frequency increases, enough at least to cause the microwave clock to run fast, and possibly screw with the internal workings of the washing machine.

With baited breath and fingers crossed, we loaded up the tub with a pile of laundy, spun the dial and prodded the buttons. It sprung to life, brought back from the dead, whizzing and whirring like nothing was wrong. With a huge sigh of relief, we sat blessedly watching our clothing being tossed about as the machine did its thing and life, as we know it, returned once again to a serene state of normality.

With our journey now back on track, we loaded up ‘The Beast’ for an afternoon of adventure in Broome. Naturally, I couldn’t pass up a quick visit to Matsos to stock up on a couple of more takeaways to enjoy down by the beach. Todays drinks of choice was a ginger beer and a mango beer, which we will keep on ice until we hit the soft sands of Cable Beach.

Day Three, Visit Three.

From Matsos, we managed to find the veterinarian hospital, which was tucked down a little back street that ‘Shazza’ didn’t even know existed. I am getting seriously concerned about her status as our lead navigator, but we don’t have any other options. At the vets, Bec produced the crushed almost beyond recognition tick carcass, to have it confirmed as being a harmless brown tick. It was as we had imagined, but an audible sigh of relief was still released at the good news.

Cable Beach was next, where we again steered ‘The Beast’ out onto the sand and barreled along at the 15Km/h speed limit. We had learned something yesterday and that was that the 4WD friendly section of the beach is also dog friendly and clothing optional. So, today we had brought the dogs along for the ride, and I had made a pact with Bec. I would get my clobber off, if she would go topless.

We found a relatively secluded bit of sand to pull up along and jumped out. I was standing out behind ‘The Beast’, resplendent in my white and tanned brown, zebra striped birthday suit, when Bec emerged from the other side, still fully clothed and snapping away with the camera like a crazed paparazzi photographer getting a scoop shot of a naked celebrity. My white and tanned suit suddenly included a liberal dose of vivid red as I rushed to get my shorts back on. So much for our pact.

Well, that was how I imagined the whole getting naked on the beach thing going down, as I jumped from ‘The Beast, so I kept my shorts on, and was relieved when Bec emerged from her side of ‘The Beast’, still modestly covered. She was however gripping the camera exactly like in my vision, so maybe she had thought I would go through with it after all.

So, with skinny dipping off the table, we hooked the dogs up to their leashes and took them for a run along the beach and a paddle in the cool, refreshing waters of the Indian Ocean. They both had a ball in the water, scooting up and down, playing a game of catch me if you can with the gently breaking wavelets.

The not even close to Full Monty.

With the two dogs worn out, we hiked back up the sand to sit in the shade of ‘The Beast’, downing our cold beers, where we did spy a few people, mostly older and not so well figured guys taking full advantage of the clothing optional status of the beach. Yes, Bec was right, not such a good look after all.

Beers and beaches seem to go hand in hand.

We had to leave the beach before sunset tonight, so that we could drive across to the other side of town to witness yet another natural phenomenon for which Broome is known. The staircase to the moon, happens 3 nights a month from March to October. It is an optical illusion as the full moon rises over the mud flats of low tide. The ribbed mudflats reflect the fiery red orange of the moon in lines that look like a ladder of staircase rising up to meet it.

To get a good vantage point, you need to be early, as we were. That left us an hour long wait, at least able to sit in semi-comfort on the tailgate of ‘The Beast’ with a front row pew overlooking some low mangroves and the narrowly ridged surface of the mudflats, beyond which the moon was due to rise in all its glory.

Right on time at 6:14PM, the first glimmer of orange peeked its wide arc above the horizon, quickly continuing to become the engorged orb of a full moon. Just as advertised, a strip of orange was reflected up from the moistened mud, causing the staircase effect for which thousands of people had turned out to witness. It was indeed a spectacle, the likes of which I’ve not seen elsewhere. As shutters clicked, and inexplicably flashes fired, the full moon gently lofted itself into the night sky, trailing below it the glistening ribs of reflection.

Full…

…moon…

…rising.

And there it is, the Staircase to the Moon.

Standing proud by this stage, up upon the tailgate, I could look in either direction alongside me, where people were crushed inhumanely between the parked cars, the soft glow of digital camera screens creating an almost as unworldly sight as that of the rising moon.

Until next time, stay safe, have fun and don’t forget to write.

It was hot again today. Not the overbearing heat we have been experiencing, but hot enough that it was noticeable through the insulated, but still thin walls of the van, when we woke up. In spite of the heat, we decided that a hearty hot breakfast, and a scalding pot of strong coffee would be the perfect start to our day, along with a perusal of the Sunday paper. How very colonial of us I know, and before you mention it, I do indeed realise that today is in fact a Monday. Since we hadn’t a chance to read the paper yesterday, we had left it for today. Given that we haven’t read a paper or seen any news for days, it really wasn’t going to matter if the news was a day older or not anyway.

As our late breakfast became more of an early lunch, we munched away happily, devouring the day old news with a gusto. I dread however, returning to a world where news, along with times, days and dates actually matter. This carefree, nomadic lifestyle, where time means little, and days of the week even less, has really caught me up. I’m even starting not to miss the TV, although the caveat on that is that we have the media player, from which we digested a further few episodes of ‘The Wire’ before bed last night.

With our plan not to head into Broome until later this afternoon, we chilled out in the van, letting the current events sink in and salivating over some pretty, and pricey I might add, Perth residences in the property guide. I’ve said it before while on the west coast, that despite still being part of Australia, it is amazing how different the residential architecture is from what we have on the east coast. It is difficult to describe, but the houses in the Perth suburbs are designed to accentuate the carefree, beach lifestyle for which Perth is known. It doesn’t matter if you’re not within easy striking distance of a beach though, because the houses still have that open, airy, flowing look and feel about them.

With breakfast reduced to nothing more than a pile of dirty dishes and the paper a crumpled mass of newsprint on the floor, we cleaned up in readiness to face the day. That included taking the dogs for a walk, giving them the chance to stretch their legs and get a breath of fresh air before remaining behind in the van.

Upon returning to the van, eagle eyed Bec spotted the ominous outline of a tick between Bethanys toes. We removed it, and carefully checked both her and Alvin out for any signs of anymore. Thankfully it was just the one, and we have been reliably informed that the deadly paralysis tick isn’t evident in these parts. Even so, we were glad to be rid of it.

We then almost headed into Broome. Despite my flourishing introduction today, about how time doesn’t matter an ounce, it was time that caused us an almighty row. Funny how things turn out isn’t it? I had a firm idea of what time I wanted to leave, as did Bec. It was just that both of us had different times in mind. Somehow this lead into whether we should take the dogs with us or not. Bec has got it into her mind that they might not be so well behaved as we had thought, since a bloke in Derby mentioned that he heard them while we were out one day. In the end, it was decided that they would stay behind, but only after I set up a recorder so that we could listen in to their antics when we get back. The things we do!

In the shade of the sun.

It was almost 2:30PM by the time we started the ½ hour drive into town, where we headed for the main street for a quick look around. The main street has a mixture of little clothes stores, intermingled amongst cafes, gifts shops, pearl traders and not forgetting Sun Pictures, the worlds oldest operating picture garden. Still showing new release movies in the open air gallery, it’s as much of a Broome institution as is Matsos. We spent nearly an hour, ambling up and down the street, enjoying the sunshine and outback, but beachside atmosphere of Broome. It really is a strange place, where weary outback travellers in red dust covered four wheel drives mix easily with dreadlocked, barefooted, fisherman pant clad hippies. It’s like a crossroads, where the 2 cultures co-exist in a perfect sense of harmony.

Now, speaking of Matsos of course, day two in Broome today, visit two to Matsos. We stopped in to grab a few takeaways this afternoon, although Bec walked away disappointed. The cider she had so enthusiastically downed yesterday has sold out, not to be restocked in the time we have here in Broome. She instead made do with a cider of mango flavor, but found it too sweet even for her sugar loving taste buds. I came away with a ½ dozen bottles of the pale ale, to keep me happy once we leave, but I have to admit, it tastes so much better straight from the keg.

Day 2, visit 2.

From Matsos, we left it in the supposedly competent hands of ‘Shazza’ to navigate us to Gantheaume Point. We soon found ourselves driving around in circles, through the tiny streets of a new residential estate, looking for a road that ‘Shazza’ seemed to think might exist, but in actual fact looked more like an overgrown sandy walkway, the breadth of which would have seen cycling along it a challenge, let alone crashing through in ‘The Beast’.

We eventually managed to find our way back out to the main road, no thanks to ‘Shazza’, and subsequently down to the point, where we found a hoard of cars all parked at odd angles throughout the car park and along the verges of the dirt access road. All I assume are here for the same natural phenomenon that we are. Witnessed only a couple of times a month, at times of extremely low tides, you can clamber, or as we saw in some cases almost tumble down the sheer rock faces, from the top of the cliffs to the bottom, to view a series of genuine dinosaur footprints. Believed to be in the range of millions of years old, and for the most part submerged beneath water, I didn’t expect such a turnout for their viewing.

Genuinely, authentic…

…dinosaur footprints.

Such was the fervor surrounding them, a cute little queue formed along the briny wet, seaweed slicked rocks, as everyone waited patiently their turn for a photograph with the three toed prints. How ever anyone could have come across these marvels from a long dormant era is beyond me, but that have been scientifically been proven to be authentic.

After carefully scrambling back to the upper reaches of the cliff face, where we also saw the little pool that had in a time past been hewn out of the rock by a lighthouse keeper, for his wife to bathe in, we headed for what must be one of the best known beaches in Australia. Cable Beach, so named after the telegraph cable that was laid from here, that became the first telegraph link between Australia and the rest of the world, it is now renown for its magnificent sunsets and camel rides.

While we were not after a tourist priced ride on the back of a humped beast along the beach, we were hoping to catch the setting sun. So, like almost everyone else with a four wheel drive, we engaged the front hubs and drove down onto the beach. If, I’d been worried about how ‘The Beast’ would handle the sand, I shouldn’t have been. After getting across the talcum powder like sand at the entry, which was the hardest bit, the rest of our short drive along the beach was on hard packed sand that provided us with no problems.

We picked out a little patch of sand, far enough removed from everyone else that we could sit back, enjoy our cold drinks from the brewery, while the golden sun turned a vivid hue of orange as it was bisected by the horizon. A smattering of cloud off to one side gave our photos some depth and a three dimensional appearance. I would rate it up there with the sunset we witnessed in Darwin, when we went to Mindil Beach.

Going…

…going…

…gone.

Without waiting about for the pink hues of twilight, we turned for home, stopping to pick up a serve of fish and chips each for dinner. This was eaten as we raced for the van, after Bec had found at least one site on the Internet that warned that paralysis ticks could be found around here. Worried now that this is what we may have found on Bethany this afternoon, we were seriously concerned about what might be awaiting us upon our return to the van.

It was with more than a huge sigh of relief when both Alvin and Bethany happily greeted us at the door, although for our own peace of mind, we still dug through the garbage to retrieve the carcass of the long dead tick, so that we can take it to the vets for positive identification tomorrow.

With the tick issue sorted for tonight, it was time to move onto the next issue. A skim through the audio we had recorded while we were out revealed that Alvin lays about mutely all day. Bethany on the other hand, does indeed bark occasionally while we are out. We counted a whole 12 barks over the nearly 5 hours that we were out. Certainly not enough to have us worried about being kicked out of the van park. At least that’s one less thing we need worry about.

Until next time, stay safe, have fun and don’t forget to write.