Out Of Fitzroy Crossing Yeeha

Feeling as though we had spent well and truly as much time as anyone needs to spend in Fitzroy Crossing, we were up early and heading out of the caravan park just after 7am, coffee in travel mug and bananas in hand.

It's about 400km of pretty much nothingness between Fitzroy Crossing and Broome.  You know it's a dull drive when you start counting down the kilometres to the turnoff to Tunnel Creek National Park.  We stopped for a toilet break at the Mary River 24 hour campsite - it was actually very nice and would be even nicer a bit earlier in the season when there's more water in the river.  Still, it had lots of big shady trees and plenty of nice caravan sites and hence it is very popular - according to the people in the next site to us in Broome, when they stayed there a couple of nights ago there were 84 other vans there!

We stopped again at Willare Bridge roadhouse for another toilet stop and for some hot chips but then it was straight on to Broome and we finished 'The Dog who could Fly' conveniently just as we were heading into town a little after noon.  Texted my workmate Matt  (who's come up to spend a few days with us to escape winter)  to say we'd arrived and would find him once we had set the van up so just after 1pm we drove into town and found Matt who had just about exhausted the opportunities Broome offers when you are on foot and was busy taking photos of street lights.   (Admittedly not as strange as it sounds as they are particularly stubby around the airport which sits pretty centrally in Broome).

The three of us headed to Matso's for a restorative ale or two (Jenny gladly reunited herself with a custard apple cider) and shared a seafood platter.  Afterwards, we hopped in the car and went on a bit of a tour of Broome before heading down to Cable Beach.  We quickly decided we weren't properly set up for a visit to Cable Beach so popped back to the caravan for chairs, bathers, towels, beers and nibblies and then drove back and onto the beach and 4WD'd up the sand to a nice stretch we could call our own.  We then sat back and spent the rest of the afternoon watching the water recede with the tide, the teams of camels wander past and the sun slowly sink in the west.

Back to the van to get changed and then out to Aarli's for dinner - a seafood restaurant with a strong Malaysian influence so that everything (except for dessert) we ordered  had chilli, lime and/or coriander.   They also had very yummy sounding cocktails - I tried for a mango dacquiri but they were out of mangoes (in Broome!!!) and when Matt ordered the barramundi they had to check they had any of that left (luckily there was just one serve left).   So they lost a few brownie points for not having, let's face it, the two main staples of the Kimberley but still a very nice meal was had and we couldn't resist sending Sam a photo of his empty seat to remind him what he was missing out on, having chosen to stay in wintery old Perth instead of heading north to meet up with us!

Drove Matt back to his B&B then home to bed.