We had a lazy start to the morning. Stayed in bed and enjoyed having internet,
morning television and a coffee.
Eventually got up and did some washing and then we hopped in the car and
headed round to Ash's parents' place where Tom and Ash (the couple we met at Manning
Gorge and Tom with whom Larry used to work at Murrin) are staying presently. Tom was there and he and Larry did some work
on the car putting the new Ctek charger into the car. It replaces the one that Ben had to keep
manually charging whilst he was in the back seat. The new one will do it automatically - we are
going to call it ''Ben Mark 2"!
Jenny sat in the car whilst the boys 'played' electronics and finished
her book - luckily there is a book exchange back at the caravan park so I'll
see what I can find to next read when we get back there later.
Once the boys were done, Tom made us a cup of coffee and not
long afterwards Ash and her dad Alan returned from their walk and joined
us. Alan and Larry did a bit of
reminiscing about Wyndham (he and Sue ran a takeaway store in Wyndham when Larry was
there) and the good old days when Wyndham was on the up. The Wharfe's later moved to Kununurra and
Alan worked for Bow River and Argyle Diamond mines for many years and now has
his own little business called Kimberley Rough Diamonds (you can check out
their website at kroughdiamonds.com.au).
Alan obligingly opened up the safe and showed us some of his collection
of rough diamonds - just gorgeous and I was amazed at how brilliant they are
without having been cut at all - they have only been cleaned in an caustic soda
solution to wash off all the dirt. We
were also interested to see all the triangular shaped diamonds - at first I
assumed they were cut that way but Alan explained it is a natural shape
diamonds form called macle diamonds.
Although I threw lots of knowing looks Larry's way he failed (or
deliberately chose) not to see them and we left the room rough
diamond-less. I blame those bloody new
batteries in Broome for costing me one!
Said our goodbyes until later today and headed into town for
some lunch and then a wander through the touristy shops. Went to the Kimberley fine diamond shop to
see some sparkly cut diamonds - they had some pink Argyle diamonds which are
very pretty. Knowing that the Argyle
mine will close down in a few years and that pink diamonds will then become a
more valuable commodity it would be tempting to buy one as an investment - but
not having a spare $300,000 or so, we'll have to leave that canny thinking to
someone else. Instead we invested in a
metal boat tree decoration for a blank wall at home and a sparkly boab tree
pendant for Jenny. We then did a big
grocery shop and headed back to the caravan park to sit by the lake and relax
for the rest of the afternoon.
About 5.30pm we headed back into town and met up with Ash
and Tom for a drink (or two or three) and dinner at Gulliver's Tavern. Just a lovely couple and it is so nice to
have made new friends on our trip. We
will be interested to keep in touch with them as they continue their road trip
around Australia and hopefully once we are all back in Perth we can catch up
for drinks and dinner again.
No comments:
Post a Comment