Kununurra to Broome
We departed Kununurra just in time – at our goodbye happy hour the night before we left, a huge thunderstorm rolled in. This was the official start of the wet season, when the northern part of Australia get a massive amount of rain over the next few months until the autumn (April-ish). Kununurra as an example of a town impact by “the wet” receives about 844mm of rain per year, nearly all of which falls from December to March: usual rainfall in January is 210mm, in July it’s 0mm.
The annual rains roll in to much celebration and joy among the locals, as it signifies the end of the “build up” season where it’s just too hot and humid for words. The whole pub cheered and took videos and photos of the storm that night. It was amazing to experience and we’re happy to have seen it! But, since Nick and I had always said that our biggest deadline on this whole trip was that we needed to be out of the North before the wet, it was definitely time for us to roll.
Our next stop was Broome, about 1100km southwest of Kununurra, and on the west coast of Australia. Our original intention was to get to Broome via the Gibb River Road, a remote dirt track with lots of amazing sights and side tracks, but with the start of the wet / end of the build up it was too risky (due to both heat and flooding), plus our brand new axle and associated bits required 1,000km of bitumen at 80km/h as a break-in period. So, National Highway 1 was our fate.
There’s not much along Highway 1 between Kununurra and Broome that we hadn’t already seen. We had already checked out Purnululu (Bungles) and Wolfe Creek – you can see that part in the green/red combo line on the maps above – and beyond that it’s pretty much just roadhouses and small Aboriginal communities and mining towns the whole way. Perhaps one could drive the entire 1100km in a single day if one left early and wasn’t driving an already-slow petrol-hungry Jeep requiring a break-in period, but we planned to break the drive up into two days. Our stop for the night, at a simple roadside rest stop, made us briefly miss our air conditioning in the cabin we rented in Kununurra, because it was around 35 degrees and very humid the whole night, meaning we didn’t get a very good sleep as we laid in the tent soaking in our own sweat (yeah, it’s not all glamour and fun out here on the road).
Still, when we rolled into Broome the next afternoon, our spirits were very high – it was “only” 33 degrees there, with a cooling breeze, and we were so looking forward to an ocean beach where it was safe (well, “less dangerous”) to swim.
The thing to do in Broome is basically anything related to Cable Beach, Broome’s 22km stretch of gorgeous white sand and turquoise water on the Indian Ocean. You can have a cocktail while watching the sunset at the beach, you can go to the beach and swim and relax, you can drive on the beach, and you can even ride camels on the beach (or if you’re not willing to spend $80 per person, just take photos of the camels on the beach). Naturally, we checked off all of the above.
There’s also a fantastic brewery in Broome called Matso’s, which we of course checked out and sampled their delicious delicious beers. My favourites are the Ginger Beer and the Mango Beer. I’m always so happy when a brewery’s offerings include beers that aren’t OMG HOPS or crazy heavy alcoholic IPA’s. More easy drinking fruit beers, sours, and milk stouts please brewers!
We moved on after a couple of nights, but Broome really stole our hearts. Possibly because it was the first time we’d slept comfortably in the tent in weeks and the first time we’d swam in the ocean since Sydney (!), but there did seem to be something special about the place and we’ll be happy to return again next year to see what else Matso’s is brewing up!
From Broome, we plan to spend three or four weeks getting to Perth, stopping to see lots along the way, and sticking to the coast as much as possible. We sure missed that big blue ocean….
