Broome

Katie and I visited the old courthouse markets this morning while Grant took the others to Cable Beach.  Dominic read the sign that designated the north of the beach a nudist beach and thought it was pretty funny.  They got a bit nervous when they noticed a big group of tourists coming towards them from that direction, and they wondered what sort of a sight they were in for.  As they drew closer, however, the group of tourists shifted into a train of camels....nudist camels of course.

The old Courthouse markets were very nice.  Not too crowded at this time of year, which is essential to the enjoyment of markets!  There were a lot of stalls selling pearls, which Broome is known for (at one stage in it's history, Broome was supplying 65% of the world's natural pearls), and the frozen mango smoothie stall was very busy all day.

the wildlife protection group had a stall, and there was a lady there holding a couple of baby kangaroos and a baby fruit bat.  they were very cute.  the man beside her had a couple of plastic boxes with snakes, including an olive python, which looked just like the snake we saw at Winjana Gorge a few days ago.  He said it grows very big, but isn't poisonous.  There was another fat snake striped like a zebra with a black head.  The stall holder said it would stay hidden in it's hole and just stick it's head out into the sun to soak up the warmth that it would then transfer to the rest of it's body.  Very clever design for a snake!

Mid morning we all went to the historical museum which gave us a bit of history of  Broome and the big part pearling played.  The Japanese and Chinese were great pearl divers and when Australia introduced it's white Australia policy in 1901 (it was abolished in about 1950) Broome had to get special dispensation for employing 'Asiatics' in their operations.  Consequently Broome has a very different cultural history to the rest of Australia.

There is a very old 'China Town' in  Broome (it's not very big) and a Chinese cemetery where lots of the divers who died swimming down to the oyster shells are buried.

The Japanese bombed Broome as well, killing at least 40 people, many Dutch who were in 14 flying boats on Roebuck bay, ready to be shipped to safety after escaping from the Japanese in Java. A lot of people were taken to safety through Broome.

On their way home, the Japanese also bombed another plane bringing civilians from Java and several people lost their lives.  What was also lost in that plane crash was a packet containing £600,000 of diamonds.  It's believed a beachcomber found the packet and shared most of the diamonds with his aboriginal friends.  They have recovered about £34,000 worth of the diamonds but the rest are still missing, possibly thrown away by scared aborigines when the police went searching their camps. They'd be worth tens of millions of dollars today.

I'm sitting beside the  pool writing this blog.   Everyone  else is swimming except for Grant and Cooper who are having a sleep.  They are having a great time swimming.  Joseph, Oskar and Dominic are blowing up their sun shirts and are floating around the pool like something out of Willie wonker's chocolate factory.

The rest of the day was equally restful - Grant and the boys cooked hamburgers for dinner with ice creams for after, then everyone watched a movie and went to bed.  Only a little more time and Katie will be leaving, boo hoo.