Broome

At the end of last month we went on a family holiday to Broome.  The 2.5-hour flight was refreshingly short compared to the 5- (east coast of Aus) or 13.5- (east coast of Aus to west coast of US) hour trips we're used to for holidays!  

About 3.5 years ago we moved here to see WA and we've done precious little getting around. We decided to take advantage of the mid-week ANZAC day public holiday on Weds 25 April and have a little under a week in Broome.  We arrived on Tuesday 24 April and left on Sunday 29 April.  It wasn't part of the planning but somehow my birthday (27 April), our 2nd wedding anniversary (1 May) and Mothers Day (13 May) all happily stacked up on or within a couple of weeks of our family holiday to the South Sea Pearl capitol of Australia!  More on that later... For now, some pic's of our holiday.

a seaside boab tree

Broome Water Playground

Augie at the Broome Water Playground moments after a bucket of water unexpectedly dumped on his head - not so happy about this element of surprise!

checking out the spinning tower, conveniently out of any cold water

Augie's favourite thing about the water playground was tightrope walking along the top of this retaining wall.  He far preferred this to running around or being carried around in the cold water

Streeters Jetty

looking for 'shish'  (fish)

really getting into the fish-hunting with Dad

sunset on Cable Beach (just as the plague of mosquitoes was descending - we ate quickly)

the famed Cable Beach sunset (which was lovely but not all that spectacular on the one day we were able to see it - the perils of travelling with a 17-month-old)

looking for "shaos" (shells) - a favourite seaside pastime of Augie's

Augie with a rock he'd found on the beach.  The theme of this trip for Augie was rock collecting.  The landscaping around our hotel utilised a lot of rocks, which were conveniently just large enough for Augie to get his little hand around.  At one point I removed about 8 rocks from the car and about 10 from our room.  We took rocks with us everywhere we went - always had a rock in the hand!

happy and running at sunset

looking for shells

side profile

Cable Beach moonrise

Gantheaume Point at a very low tide - one of the few times the dinosaur footprints are exposed.  We went to see the dinosaur tracks but getting to them was a bit challenging with Augie so we settled for a nice hike around. 

no dinosaur footprints but we did find a dead crab which was very interesting

Augie was right into the hiking and rock-hopping and was determined not to be carried

but was happy to have a helping hand from Dad every now and then

long shadow of the morning

and, yes!, this place has rocks too

Willie Creek Pearl Farm - ready to take our boat ride tour of the estuary called Willie Creek

after our boat ride, we treated ourselves to a helicopter ride.  Augie did extremely well - just tucked into Mick and was nearly asleep by the end of it

we have liftoff!

aerial view of the estuary

aerial view of the coastline at the mouth of the estuary, looking north 

helicopter rides and pearl farm tours can be very tiring and make a fellow a bit grumpy

a few short minutes after the previous picture, here's what happened

on the veranda at Matso's Brewery, and very happy!

Cable Beach - headed for our camel ride

giving Kashanna a good pat before our ride

another camel train 

our shadow

Kashanna (the kid-friendly camel that we were allowed to pat in the beginning), ended up being the camel behind ours and she kept sneaking up to get some pats from Mick and Augie.  This was fantastic as it helped calm Augie, who wasn't too sure about the camel ride in the beginning but was bouncing along to the camel's lurching gait and laughing by the end of it.

our camel train

it is a longer way up than we thought!

making tracks

camel-prints in the sand

Thanks to the camel's bellowing when they got up, Augie now responds with a funny little bellow to the question 'what sound does a camel make?'.  I'll try to get it on video.  During this trip he referred (and still does) to camels as 'humps'.  In one of our Dr. Seuss books, which Augie loves, there is a part of the story where they say 'our camel has a hump, how we bump on that hump!'.  So now all camels are 'humps'.  

We had an outdoor shower at our place in Broome.  Since Augie was going to bed a little later everynight, he had a great chance to stargaze during his pre-bedtime shower.  Hence an obsession with 'stahs' was born.  He'd already started pointing them out in his books but the real ones were just that much better.  He started asking about 'stahs' all the time and was perplexed as to why he couldn't see them during the daytime.  The fact that we could see the moon in the afternoons while we were in Broome just added to his confusion.  He would look at the sky, point out the moon ('moo') (which he's also been identifying for a while now both in his books and in the daytime sky when it's available) and then turn his little palms upward and exclaim 'stahs??'.  Try explaining basic astronomy to a 16-month-old!  Finally we seemed to get the explanation through that when the sun is up, it's so bright you can't see the stars.  So now if he asks where the stars are during the daytime and I say no stars and ask him why, his response is 'up'.  But he still asks a LOT.  Especially when he's just woken up from a nap.  He obviously thinks he's sleeping a lot longer than he does!

And about that perfect trifecta of birthday-anniversary-mothers day, I did end up getting a single beautiful baroque South Sea Pearl on a necklace ;)