8th - 14th November
Broome, Coral Bay, Exmouth & ride to Moneky Mia
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Seen en-route, from our experiences down-under, the hair'stylist' sign was meant to be read as it appears....!
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This is the entrance to Malcom Douglas's second wild life park-we stopped at it on the way into Broome.
The following morning we were graced by two passing Wallabies on the other side of the perimeter fence of the campground. Despite Sylvia’s protests we quickly discovered that they liked Weet-Bix(a Colonial variation on the English Weetabix) and we fed them to their delight.
We weren’t sure of all that Broome had to offer so we visited the Tourist information centre which had already closed at 4pm…..4pm ! This is a strange fact of Australia that these places often close at 4:00 and that you can’t get dinner after 7/8pm and most places(read bars) are completely shut by 9/10pm. Again and again we’d fallen foul of these crazy (to us) closing times.
Malcolm Douglas is a bit of a legend in Australia. He’s another Steve Irwin type character whom the Ozzies seem to either love or hate. When he makes his documentaries about the wild he shows them, ‘warts ’n all’ so if something goes wrong it’s right there before the public on TV which one guy I spoke to thought was terrible. Personally I think its great he’s so candid-He is, after-all, in the wild where little is predictable. I don’t expect Sir David Attenborough gets the best shot first time on each of his adventures. Malcolm Douglas has two crocodile farms in Broome and we decided to visit his newer one where he had a number of other species as well.
We were looking forward to seeing his collection of crocodiles fed in a swamp he had simulated to living in the wild and hadn’t expected much more after that. What an annoying mistake. Whilst the feeding was great, as was an extra crocodile tour I was given by one of his handlers, there was so much to see there and we hadn’t allowed ourselves enough time to take it all in. In the end we had to rush to the exit and were so disappointed to have to leave having had a taste for just how large a wild-life park he had made.
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Feeding time which basically consisted of throwing pretty well whole dead chickens into the pen and letting the croc's fight it out.
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If you haven't seen it yet, look a little closer at the back of this Croc's jaw !!
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This was our man for the Tour-if I remember rightly he was called David and used to be a salesman in a department store-TRUE !
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If Crocodiles had hair, I reckon this one would have it it parted !! .... come in here and give me a pat......
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....or perhaps join me for a swim......never could get over Johnny Morris's Animal Magic !!
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Crocodiles are very territorial and so if a keeper needs to distract a Croc, they rattle a big ball around on a chain and the croc instinctively attacks and 'drowns' it whilst the keeper does whatever they need to do.
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The 'ferocious' Dingos !!
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Look at the muscles in the shoulders of this boy !!
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Mum with Joey in pouch.
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Now you can see where the 'No worries' expression came from !!
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When comparing these this one with 'Muscles' you can see why your own Mum says how cute you used to look (i.e. by comparison to now !!
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Another Wallaby species- I can't remember its proper name.
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Australias famous Black Swanns.
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Used for one of Malcom Douglas's big 'Safaris' from 1964(I think )- there is a bullet hole in the wind-screen !!
The following day I spent updating the web-diary and finished it with a swim with Sylvia in the Ocean at Cable beach which was lovely. We’d taken a few drinks down and we had these whilst we watched the sun-set….hmmmmm Bundies !! Bundies !!
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Cable beach, Oh how we suffer for you !
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A man on a mission - I was trying to keep 4 cans of cold Bundies 'cold' in my towel.
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Ahh, this is what we came for.
The day after we spent a mentally numbing period on the Internet arranging our flights to Tasmania & New Zealand along with the necessary car hire for whilst the bike was in transit between Australia & New Zealand.
Later we visited the locally famous Japanese grave yard which is home to a number of pearl divers who died as a result of the bends. We didn’t find their graves in the end but it was interesting anyway.
We were to leave the following day and so decided to round our time off at Broome with a visit to the Worlds oldest open air cinema. The cinema still has many souvenirs in it to commemorate its origins. The particularly humorous part of the cinema is its location just off the flight path to the local airport. Right in the middle of an adventure/thriller type movie we went to see, a jet came in to land, and most people were doing a double take as to wether the plane was in the film or for real !! Very funny !
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The Worlds oldest open air cinema.
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As we were leaving the cinema I saw a man in the projection room rewinding a huge spool of film(around 1.5m across) and asked if they had genuinely used it-they had. Unbelievable !
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This photo really doesn't do their size any justice.
We returned to the campsite, downed a tea and retired to bed as we had an early start the following day.
The alarm went off at 04:45 and we left Broome hoping to get to Exmouth today, 1400km’s away. In the end it was too much, as we’d been kept awake by a noisy Swiss & English group until 02:00am, (which I had to ask to be quiet), and finally the tiredness and distance took their toll. We managed 1170km in the end and stopped at a roadhouse.
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A before photo just before we leave-encouraging eh-especially as I'm the rider...still, only 1170k's to go !!
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I put this picture in ' just for the record'.
The following morning, the 9th, we finished our ride to Exmouth to investigate where was the best place on this part of the coast to stay. After chatting with the woman in the Information office we decided to ride down to Coral Bay(where Sylvia had fantastic memories of the Coral and wildlife 16 years ago.) We also booked ourselves on what is known as the ’Navy pier’ dive for 2days time. The dive is proclaimed to be one of the top best 10 dives in the world(along with the 20 others !!).
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Another new animal warning sign for the record books - this time Emu's...we thought it might be a bit over-the-top.......
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....BUT they were all over town !!
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Ah Bless, I didn't have the heart to tell them about Sir issac Newton....news sure does travel slow down here !!
We rode back down about 130k’s we’d already covered getting to Exmouth on our ride to Coral Bay. The wind was still high when we arrived and not that warm-I was beginning to wonder if we’d done the right thing. We were allocated a camping spot near the kitchen and bathroom facilities. We ate at a highly proclaimed local restaurant and retired to bed around 22:00. At 23:00a large group of predominantly Uk-er's arrived back from a bar somewhere and started their own private(read
ublic) party on the camp ground which lasted until after 3am ! They were running in and out of the toilets and just making a real nuisance of themselves.
The following morning we met up with an American Mother & Daughter ‘team’ and spend a few hours talking to them. At around 10:30 somebody from the camp site came around to check everybody was leaving who should be. I told her about the previous nights noise and she said she would advise the security guard to keep his eyes and ears open that night.
We went snorkelling in the afternoon and were disappointed to find so much coral dead and the sea so cold, especially after Sylvia’s experiences of 16 years ago. Despite encouragements(from the fin & mask hire company) to swim further out to see the colourful coral, we’d got to about 500m out and that was far enough as it was largely all dead. I asked Sylvia if she was enjoying it-she wasn’t & so I said let’s get out and warmed up again.
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Coral Bay in name only from our experience, however we understand the Ningaloo reef not so far away is still good.
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There's always one joker isn't there !-this Smiley had been put in the side of a Termite mound !
We had noise again until 2 am this morning- I eventually told a group of young men(read early -mid 20’s) to keep it down. They were all very sorry and then one cheeky Irish lad took the micky out of my accent-His Mammy can’t have brought him up properly ! They did quieten down afterwards but we had to be up at around 06:30 and so it was just small consolation. We complained on the way out to the duty manager and repeated the story of having a similar experience the previous night. We also told her we were glad we were leaving. She was very sorry. Apparently this site has a reputation for noise.
We rode back up to Exmouth, and despite thinking we’d planned our day well, ended up running around trying to get lunch together, finding a new campsite, getting the tent erected, eating lunch, riding back into town to pick up a prescription mask for Sylvia and finally get to the dive-shop and get changed out of our bike gear and into our cossies.
The dive brief was extensive as the Navy insist that all divers are properly aware of the dangers of this particular dive- this part of the brief lasted around 30 mins and we were all left a bit shell-shocked as to the dangers and the amount of information. Kitted up in nearly new gear we set off to the pier. We all had to show photo-id to gain access to this restricted area and were soon on the end of the pier examining the water/structure and fish life. The fish life was large and extensive, the water clear and we were all chomping at the bit to get in but the current was still too rough and so we had to wait until it calmed.
Finally we get the ok and jump in from a 2m high platform. Unfortunately it was chaos as soon as we were all in the water. Initially we had to be very aware of so much structure around us (and divers !) as there was still a current and we all seemed to get bumped into the structure at one point or another. After a while we settled down a bit and started to take in the huge variety and quantity of marine life down there. Amongst which were a few Shark species, a moray eel and an abundance of Giant Trevali.
We were all busy taking this in when, one by one, out of the corners of our eyes we caught sight of something that looked like it belonged to Stingray(or another Science fiction film). It was around 2m long, 1m high and apparently weighed around 345kg !!!, yes, 345kg !! It looked at us and a fish that size also has a big eye !!! So we felt looked at, but also mainly safe-ish. This one we hadn’t been briefed about and so thought it must be ok. We were all gob-smacked as we studied it. It stayed with us for about 2 mins which was long enough to take it in. Upon surfacing, and listening to us all wowing, we learnt that it was a Queensland Groper Cod which can grow in weight up to 500kg.
After the dive we took dinner at a local Chinese and stay at the fly-ridden lighthouse camp site.
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The following morning the outside of the Tent was soaking wet and at first we thought it had rained in the night but we found this tree to be the culprit-it looked like it had trapped the moisture in the air & then 'rained-it' on our tent afterwards.
The following morning, the 11th, the alarm went off and neither of us wanted to get up. I knew Sylvia wasn’t going to get us up and I really didn’t have the energy to get us up either so I ‘let’ us have a 25 minute lie-in which led to us having both a shower and breakfast we hadn’t initially planned to do, hence we left about 75 mins later than we’d aimed for on a 710km day.
Even when we got into town to return Sylvia’s hire prescription dive mask, we managed to waste a further 10 mins looking for somewhere to get a coffee…which, even when we did, turned out to be horrible and expensive anyway. Finally we left and rode down the same road we’d been up and down three times already on our way to Coral Bay, back to Exmouth and down to Coral Bay again !!
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Another animal warning sign, although on this occasion we didn't see any. Now, where's that repetative thumping/quacking noise coming from ?
The ride was largely hot and straight, the boredom only being relieved by fuel & coffee stops and the discovery that my new back tyre fitted only 5000km’s ago had largely worn out/melted down to the last 1mm or so and that the rear indicator housing had melted as a result of being in the passage of the exhaust. The later caused the lens to fall off as it no longer had anything to be secured too !!! - the innerds I held in place with some cello tape !! What a great day so far !!!
As we got closer to the turn-off for Monkey Mia the clouds in front of us were dark grey and raining over a few towns ahead. We really didn’t want to be rained on today and were grateful when the turn-off arrived and we were both still dry. We pitched the tent and were worried about noise again as there were quite a few tents about and a few groups of lads in campervans. (In the end it turned out not too bad with just a few campervan doors banging and glass bottle chinkings at around 2-3am.)
Before we went to bed though, we went down to the end of a short pier on the beach and got to see about 4 or 5 turtles of varying sizes swimming around us-They were beautifully marked and the bigger ones were very large. I’d left my camera on the bike, and whilst excited to see such beautiful creatures, didn’t have the energy to go back and get it. Sylvia however had her Sony and so captured a few shots with that.
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Our welcoming Turtle.
We had a beer or two at Monkey Mia’s restaurant, along with a very nice fish dinner, and said our farewells for the night.
Mike
Broome, Coral Bay, Exmouth & ride to Moneky Mia
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Seen en-route, from our experiences down-under, the hair'stylist' sign was meant to be read as it appears....!
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This is the entrance to Malcom Douglas's second wild life park-we stopped at it on the way into Broome.
The following morning we were graced by two passing Wallabies on the other side of the perimeter fence of the campground. Despite Sylvia’s protests we quickly discovered that they liked Weet-Bix(a Colonial variation on the English Weetabix) and we fed them to their delight.
We weren’t sure of all that Broome had to offer so we visited the Tourist information centre which had already closed at 4pm…..4pm ! This is a strange fact of Australia that these places often close at 4:00 and that you can’t get dinner after 7/8pm and most places(read bars) are completely shut by 9/10pm. Again and again we’d fallen foul of these crazy (to us) closing times.
Malcolm Douglas is a bit of a legend in Australia. He’s another Steve Irwin type character whom the Ozzies seem to either love or hate. When he makes his documentaries about the wild he shows them, ‘warts ’n all’ so if something goes wrong it’s right there before the public on TV which one guy I spoke to thought was terrible. Personally I think its great he’s so candid-He is, after-all, in the wild where little is predictable. I don’t expect Sir David Attenborough gets the best shot first time on each of his adventures. Malcolm Douglas has two crocodile farms in Broome and we decided to visit his newer one where he had a number of other species as well.
We were looking forward to seeing his collection of crocodiles fed in a swamp he had simulated to living in the wild and hadn’t expected much more after that. What an annoying mistake. Whilst the feeding was great, as was an extra crocodile tour I was given by one of his handlers, there was so much to see there and we hadn’t allowed ourselves enough time to take it all in. In the end we had to rush to the exit and were so disappointed to have to leave having had a taste for just how large a wild-life park he had made.
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Feeding time which basically consisted of throwing pretty well whole dead chickens into the pen and letting the croc's fight it out.
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If you haven't seen it yet, look a little closer at the back of this Croc's jaw !!
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This was our man for the Tour-if I remember rightly he was called David and used to be a salesman in a department store-TRUE !
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If Crocodiles had hair, I reckon this one would have it it parted !! .... come in here and give me a pat......
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....or perhaps join me for a swim......never could get over Johnny Morris's Animal Magic !!
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Crocodiles are very territorial and so if a keeper needs to distract a Croc, they rattle a big ball around on a chain and the croc instinctively attacks and 'drowns' it whilst the keeper does whatever they need to do.
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The 'ferocious' Dingos !!
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Look at the muscles in the shoulders of this boy !!
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Mum with Joey in pouch.
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Now you can see where the 'No worries' expression came from !!
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When comparing these this one with 'Muscles' you can see why your own Mum says how cute you used to look (i.e. by comparison to now !!
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Another Wallaby species- I can't remember its proper name.
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Australias famous Black Swanns.
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Used for one of Malcom Douglas's big 'Safaris' from 1964(I think )- there is a bullet hole in the wind-screen !!
The following day I spent updating the web-diary and finished it with a swim with Sylvia in the Ocean at Cable beach which was lovely. We’d taken a few drinks down and we had these whilst we watched the sun-set….hmmmmm Bundies !! Bundies !!
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Cable beach, Oh how we suffer for you !
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A man on a mission - I was trying to keep 4 cans of cold Bundies 'cold' in my towel.
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Ahh, this is what we came for.
The day after we spent a mentally numbing period on the Internet arranging our flights to Tasmania & New Zealand along with the necessary car hire for whilst the bike was in transit between Australia & New Zealand.
Later we visited the locally famous Japanese grave yard which is home to a number of pearl divers who died as a result of the bends. We didn’t find their graves in the end but it was interesting anyway.
We were to leave the following day and so decided to round our time off at Broome with a visit to the Worlds oldest open air cinema. The cinema still has many souvenirs in it to commemorate its origins. The particularly humorous part of the cinema is its location just off the flight path to the local airport. Right in the middle of an adventure/thriller type movie we went to see, a jet came in to land, and most people were doing a double take as to wether the plane was in the film or for real !! Very funny !
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The Worlds oldest open air cinema.
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As we were leaving the cinema I saw a man in the projection room rewinding a huge spool of film(around 1.5m across) and asked if they had genuinely used it-they had. Unbelievable !
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This photo really doesn't do their size any justice.
We returned to the campsite, downed a tea and retired to bed as we had an early start the following day.
The alarm went off at 04:45 and we left Broome hoping to get to Exmouth today, 1400km’s away. In the end it was too much, as we’d been kept awake by a noisy Swiss & English group until 02:00am, (which I had to ask to be quiet), and finally the tiredness and distance took their toll. We managed 1170km in the end and stopped at a roadhouse.
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A before photo just before we leave-encouraging eh-especially as I'm the rider...still, only 1170k's to go !!
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I put this picture in ' just for the record'.
The following morning, the 9th, we finished our ride to Exmouth to investigate where was the best place on this part of the coast to stay. After chatting with the woman in the Information office we decided to ride down to Coral Bay(where Sylvia had fantastic memories of the Coral and wildlife 16 years ago.) We also booked ourselves on what is known as the ’Navy pier’ dive for 2days time. The dive is proclaimed to be one of the top best 10 dives in the world(along with the 20 others !!).
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Another new animal warning sign for the record books - this time Emu's...we thought it might be a bit over-the-top.......
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....BUT they were all over town !!
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Ah Bless, I didn't have the heart to tell them about Sir issac Newton....news sure does travel slow down here !!
We rode back down about 130k’s we’d already covered getting to Exmouth on our ride to Coral Bay. The wind was still high when we arrived and not that warm-I was beginning to wonder if we’d done the right thing. We were allocated a camping spot near the kitchen and bathroom facilities. We ate at a highly proclaimed local restaurant and retired to bed around 22:00. At 23:00a large group of predominantly Uk-er's arrived back from a bar somewhere and started their own private(read
ublic) party on the camp ground which lasted until after 3am ! They were running in and out of the toilets and just making a real nuisance of themselves.The following morning we met up with an American Mother & Daughter ‘team’ and spend a few hours talking to them. At around 10:30 somebody from the camp site came around to check everybody was leaving who should be. I told her about the previous nights noise and she said she would advise the security guard to keep his eyes and ears open that night.
We went snorkelling in the afternoon and were disappointed to find so much coral dead and the sea so cold, especially after Sylvia’s experiences of 16 years ago. Despite encouragements(from the fin & mask hire company) to swim further out to see the colourful coral, we’d got to about 500m out and that was far enough as it was largely all dead. I asked Sylvia if she was enjoying it-she wasn’t & so I said let’s get out and warmed up again.
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Coral Bay in name only from our experience, however we understand the Ningaloo reef not so far away is still good.
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There's always one joker isn't there !-this Smiley had been put in the side of a Termite mound !
We had noise again until 2 am this morning- I eventually told a group of young men(read early -mid 20’s) to keep it down. They were all very sorry and then one cheeky Irish lad took the micky out of my accent-His Mammy can’t have brought him up properly ! They did quieten down afterwards but we had to be up at around 06:30 and so it was just small consolation. We complained on the way out to the duty manager and repeated the story of having a similar experience the previous night. We also told her we were glad we were leaving. She was very sorry. Apparently this site has a reputation for noise.
We rode back up to Exmouth, and despite thinking we’d planned our day well, ended up running around trying to get lunch together, finding a new campsite, getting the tent erected, eating lunch, riding back into town to pick up a prescription mask for Sylvia and finally get to the dive-shop and get changed out of our bike gear and into our cossies.
The dive brief was extensive as the Navy insist that all divers are properly aware of the dangers of this particular dive- this part of the brief lasted around 30 mins and we were all left a bit shell-shocked as to the dangers and the amount of information. Kitted up in nearly new gear we set off to the pier. We all had to show photo-id to gain access to this restricted area and were soon on the end of the pier examining the water/structure and fish life. The fish life was large and extensive, the water clear and we were all chomping at the bit to get in but the current was still too rough and so we had to wait until it calmed.
Finally we get the ok and jump in from a 2m high platform. Unfortunately it was chaos as soon as we were all in the water. Initially we had to be very aware of so much structure around us (and divers !) as there was still a current and we all seemed to get bumped into the structure at one point or another. After a while we settled down a bit and started to take in the huge variety and quantity of marine life down there. Amongst which were a few Shark species, a moray eel and an abundance of Giant Trevali.
We were all busy taking this in when, one by one, out of the corners of our eyes we caught sight of something that looked like it belonged to Stingray(or another Science fiction film). It was around 2m long, 1m high and apparently weighed around 345kg !!!, yes, 345kg !! It looked at us and a fish that size also has a big eye !!! So we felt looked at, but also mainly safe-ish. This one we hadn’t been briefed about and so thought it must be ok. We were all gob-smacked as we studied it. It stayed with us for about 2 mins which was long enough to take it in. Upon surfacing, and listening to us all wowing, we learnt that it was a Queensland Groper Cod which can grow in weight up to 500kg.
After the dive we took dinner at a local Chinese and stay at the fly-ridden lighthouse camp site.
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The following morning the outside of the Tent was soaking wet and at first we thought it had rained in the night but we found this tree to be the culprit-it looked like it had trapped the moisture in the air & then 'rained-it' on our tent afterwards.
The following morning, the 11th, the alarm went off and neither of us wanted to get up. I knew Sylvia wasn’t going to get us up and I really didn’t have the energy to get us up either so I ‘let’ us have a 25 minute lie-in which led to us having both a shower and breakfast we hadn’t initially planned to do, hence we left about 75 mins later than we’d aimed for on a 710km day.
Even when we got into town to return Sylvia’s hire prescription dive mask, we managed to waste a further 10 mins looking for somewhere to get a coffee…which, even when we did, turned out to be horrible and expensive anyway. Finally we left and rode down the same road we’d been up and down three times already on our way to Coral Bay, back to Exmouth and down to Coral Bay again !!
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Another animal warning sign, although on this occasion we didn't see any. Now, where's that repetative thumping/quacking noise coming from ?
The ride was largely hot and straight, the boredom only being relieved by fuel & coffee stops and the discovery that my new back tyre fitted only 5000km’s ago had largely worn out/melted down to the last 1mm or so and that the rear indicator housing had melted as a result of being in the passage of the exhaust. The later caused the lens to fall off as it no longer had anything to be secured too !!! - the innerds I held in place with some cello tape !! What a great day so far !!!
As we got closer to the turn-off for Monkey Mia the clouds in front of us were dark grey and raining over a few towns ahead. We really didn’t want to be rained on today and were grateful when the turn-off arrived and we were both still dry. We pitched the tent and were worried about noise again as there were quite a few tents about and a few groups of lads in campervans. (In the end it turned out not too bad with just a few campervan doors banging and glass bottle chinkings at around 2-3am.)
Before we went to bed though, we went down to the end of a short pier on the beach and got to see about 4 or 5 turtles of varying sizes swimming around us-They were beautifully marked and the bigger ones were very large. I’d left my camera on the bike, and whilst excited to see such beautiful creatures, didn’t have the energy to go back and get it. Sylvia however had her Sony and so captured a few shots with that.
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Our welcoming Turtle.
We had a beer or two at Monkey Mia’s restaurant, along with a very nice fish dinner, and said our farewells for the night.
Mike
