What a difference a day makes when all goes swimmingly, even after a stifling night in tropical humidity. This niggle will be remedied tonight by keeping the air-conditioner running all night as did our neighbours last night. Problem solved!
We set
off into the town centre this morning, parked up and wandered down Dampier Terrace,
drawn in to a gallery exhibiting Aboriginal Art. There we engaged in a
fascinating conversation about art; the finances, history and politics of art,
with the gallery manager. All these subjects end up with the Great Australian
Question of what to do with the aboriginal problems.
He told
us about the success story of the Utopia community north east of Alice Springs,
whose art work fills the gallery. The undertaking of such work was one of the
conditions of the native title settlement as it is in many such cases, or so I understood.
The fabulous work hanging in this gallery, established in 1983 by Fred Torres
and his mother Barbara Weir, is all done by the one family, including Barbara,
her mother and her aunts. But in regard to solving the problems nationwide, we were as usual, totally
unsuccessful and ineffectual.
We had
called into a medical center on our way into town and made an appointment, so
had to hasten away from this fascinating discussion. We could easily have stayed all morning but life goes on.
At the surgery both Chris and I bared our shoulders for our annual ‘flu
vaccination and spent more time chatting with the intern, a chap of a similar age
to ourselves whose last stint before this was on an island in the Carpentaria
Gulf where his only successful legacy was to implant contraceptive patches in a
group of thirteen year old sexually active aboriginal girls, in the hope that
pregnancy might be delayed, if nothing else. He also told us about a disease
that is rampant through huge sections of the population, one having crept down
from South East Asia centuries ago, with devastating effect. The only hope for
these sufferers or those yet to develop symptoms is the development of genetic
modification in the future. Such stories certainly put life into perspective.
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| Broome's Town Beach |
The Town
Beach proved to be an excellent location for lunch; we sat in the middle of the
children’s water playground at a brand new picnic table, under brand new shade
clothes enjoying the southerly sea breeze. Here the
low cliffs down to the mangrove shore north of the lovely sandy beach are of
the same very bright red earth as are the berms bordering the wide streets of
Broome. The sea free of the mudflat trees is a superb aqua, so much so, that it
would not be believed if not seen for one’s self.
There
were a couple of local children playing out in the small bay however the
notices about stingers would put any cautious bather off. Instead the many
people there, both locals and backpackers, were enjoying the space as a place
to prepare their lunch or simply sit about in the shade and cool breeze,
something the locals are particularly good at.
Had the
tide been out, we may have been able to glimpse some of the sixteen flying boat
wrecks; evidence of the Japanese bombardment of Broome in March 1942.
As we
were quite close to the museum, we decided to call there but found it was to
close in about twenty minutes. Tomorrow would do for that.
We
returned to the centre of town and wandered through the shopping centre. Apart
from the Coles supermarket, a Best & Less, a pharmacy, bakery and a few
more regular services, the majority of the commercial operations are tourist
aimed; pearl jeweler tour operators, swimwear retailers, souvenir shops and
cafes. Chinatown these days is represented by the Johnny Chi Lane which houses
a tasteful and modestly sized tourist market. All these shops and enterprises are poised for
the masses due to arrive in about a fortnight. For us, we found the town just
perfect as it was, with less consumers than business would want; I do not like
crowds.
Sun
Pictures is the world’s oldest operating open-air picture gardens and is open
to the public to poke their nose in when a film is not showing. Even a quick
visit takes one back to a time before even we were around.
We
crossed the common where a fairground is in the process of being erected, and
bought icecream cones from the Scottish restaurant. These were the best we have
had all around the country; cones full to the base and deliciously cold on such
a hot day.
Returning
to the Information Centre, we called into the Pearl Shop and Information Centre
adjacent to the booking office and spent half an hour or so drooling over the
beautiful jewellery and absorbing the excellent interpretative panels. Imagine
if I were a bling girl! Actually I already own some lovely pearls, which I rarely
wear and which are all currently deep in storage, so I have no need for more.
Broome
is home to the world’s finest cultured pearls. It started its life as the
centre of real pearl harvesting after the early pastoralists of the mid-1800s discovered
beds of the giant silver-lip pearl oysters, Pinctada Maxima, otherwise known as
Mother-of-Pearl shell on the Eighty Mile Beach at low spring tides. As the beds
were depleted, diving had to be carried out in deeper waters, principally using
the local indigenous people as free divers in depths up to about ten metres.
The town
was gazetted in 1883 and named after the Governor of Western Australia. In 1889
an undersea telegraph cable linking Australia to Java and the rest of the world
came ashore at Broome, hence the naming of Cable Beach.
In the
late 19th and the early months
of the 20th century, Japanese divers were recruited, using
cumbersome full dive suits, copper helmets and lead weighted boots to dive in
much deeper waters. Deckhands were brought in from Malaysia, the Philippines
and the Indonesian island of Koepang. Many of these people intermarried with
the locals and today Broome is a melting pot of races.
The pearl
industry was virtually abandoned with the arrival of World War I, and then struggled
with a semi-revival until the Second World War. In the early 1950s polyester
superceded pearls as buttons and pearling looked like it was at an end. But
at about the same time, pearls were cultivated in the unpolluted waters at Kuri
Bay, near Broome. And so began the next stage of the industry.
Next
door at the booking office we learned that our timing was off for another of
Broome’s top attractions, Staircase of
the Moon, the reflection of the rising full moon on the exposed tidal flats
of Roebuck Bay creating an illusion of stairs reaching up to the moon. The next
scheduled event is 26 April; we will have left by then and as you will
understand, the exhibition cannot be rescheduled.
We
detoured from the route back to camp, pulling into the Boulevard Shopping
Centre where the Woolworths supermarket is situated along with a string of
other nationally familiar outlets including a Target store. We shopped for a
couple of items, returned to camp and retreated to the swimming pool along with
a couple of other dozen inmates. I do not like crowds as I have already stated,
nor do I like happy fun loving children in swimming pools, even if they are
otherwise well behaved Germans. Sometimes I guess I am a bit of a stuff-shirt.
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