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After years of musing about the duty forecasters job in Broome, where daytime temperatures never seem to vary from the median of 31 degrees, today we are confronted with this…

Summary: Max 27 Shower or two.
Cloudy. Medium (50%) chance of showers, most likely during the morning and afternoon. Light winds.

But rather than blab to the King about a falling sky we will continue our Kimberley discoveries.

Autonomous airline commuters the McInnes brothers flew into Broome International Airport Sunday for a two week vacation. Adding them to the 5 o’clock happy hour we loaded the fridge with Bundaberg ginger beer and Cibai sausage, with Peperoni and French Brie for Grandpa. Guess what? The boys prefer Peperoni and Ryan scoffed a batch of Brie. (Will have to re- think the shopping list)

We’re looking forward to Cable Beach, Lugger  Museum, Gantheune Point and the dinasoar footprints, the crocodile park and heaps more.

Footnote: yesterday we bought one of those caravan outdoor mats (4mx3m) and pegged it out with a sense of accomplishment. Proudly sitting and admiring our new comforting possession I noted a small dod of gunk under my right shoe sticking to the new matting.

Ugh!  Eeh! Agh!

Lonnie Donegan’s ‘Does your chewing gum lose it flavour on the bedpost overnight’ immediately sprang to mind, along with the late Lee Kwan Yew’s banning of Mr Wrigley’s germ warfare chewing gum in  Singapore.

Bloody hell, a huge wadge of gruesome gum. A grasping grunge was invading our space.

Neighbour once again to the rescue. “My mum always said Eucalyptus Oil does the trick”he said.

Touché! my Mum always said the same I replied, “but where to find some?”

And with that he produced a bottle of the magic oil and minutes later the mucilage of the mouth was expunged in a flash.

Tonight we witnessed Broome’s famed Staircase to the Moon, joining 3,000 others for this monthly miracle of moonlight.
Right on schedule at 6.40pm the evening star shone so brightly, heralding the arrival of the man in the moon. Great excitement emanated as that evening star rose and moved so swiftly to coincide with arrival of the 6.43 QantasLink landing at the local airport.
False alarm, but it certainly edged on the anticipation.

Then exactly on cue at 6.47pm the old fella bobbed his bald pate, all fiery red, above the horizon; immediately it was as if a beacon had been lit as 3,000 iPads, iPhones and flashlight cameras flooded the night sky, a maelstrom of fierce candlepower embracing the Town Beach.
Nobody saw anything!
Blinded by the light we hurried off to exit the area before the vast crowd of welding flash affected drivers cranked up their LandBruisers, F250 Utes and various other high octane conveyances, storming the highways to home.
We arrived back at our caravan park in time to see the most vivid picture of the moon rising above the palm trees and an hour later the orb of the night is kindly looking over my shoulder, smiling as I write this post.

We are now 2200km north of Perth where for years I have always wished to be the local BOM duty forecaster. A snip of a job: 31,31,31,31,32,31,31,31,32 with an occasional 33 temperature.
Twiggy’s forebear Premier John Forrest chose the site on Roebuck Bay for this regional town and named it after Sir Frederick Broome then WA governor, who incidentally had the Governor Broome Hotel (corner of Roe and William Streets Perth) named after him. Sadly, like so many popular Perth pubs, all have simply disappeared.
This period of our trip has been nominated the driver’s fortnight; the temperature is right for a dip in the pool, the movies are only $8.50 for seniors on Wednesday, the Speedway next door is on on the 12th and I will be there with Sam and Ryan, (the tickets are also half price from the office!)
Isabel has worked out an imaginative menu plan for all meals from the time the grand kids arrive, which is next Sunday and it’s going to be a top time for all.
Savings.
Isabel has worked out that we get a miserly 6km per litre of petrol, so the driver’s fortnight is also a BBB ( Broome budget beater)

If you are not into fishing there is precious little do here but relax, read books, write a short post and tell jokes at the five o’clock happy hour. In the last several days the fishermen have been getting grumpy because the fish are not interested in getting hooked by anybody.

Broome tomorrow ( Thursday)

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As a young boy in primary school we were taught about the Ninety Mile Beach; now that we have at last come to this idyllic part of the world it has shrunk by ten miles.

This has to be one of the most popular caravan parks in Australia, especially for those folk who wile away their time fishing. Initially we thought of spending a couple of nights here but have extended by a couple extra. Ian and Ally promoted the place as a must do. Tonight the park has a roast night–twenty bucks– with dessert, so cooks’ night off!

In this region of Australia deposits in the iron ore bank are being withdrawn at a super-duper rate. Yesterday we witnessed first hand the port facilities shovelling the native mineral onto giant ships. The BHB Billiton accounting figures almost beggar belief. Within the port area there is 140kms of railway track (some 8 tracks side-by-side), most ore trains are 2.7km long with wagons carrying over 100 tonnes each or total capacity of 32,000 tonnes (one test record attempt train was actually over 7kms long), ore is stock piled everywhere, keeping local dust levels down means crushing is done at the Newman mine site and last year the mining giant handled 1300 ship movements exporting 364 million tonnes of iron ore alone.
Bloody big ships!
We counted 21 waiting off shore. It’s no wonder you can see a couple of these monsters passing the Dome while sipping just one flat white.
Isabel’s pictures tell the story.

After a week of not driving the rig, enjoying 7 days visiting with Peta, Chelsea and Aub and the many attractions of this Pilbara tourist hotspot, this morning we bid a fond farewell to the City of Karratha, with its ever-changing lights; from green, to amber, to red and back to green again!
A week off is a long time in caravanning terms.
But for this greenhorn automobilist it was a testing first, confronting the wind tunnel test, 25 kilometre an hour head winds with occasional bursts to 35 km an hour and the odd life threatening wily-wily hiding in the creek bed crossings.
Added to this I found the ‘4 on the floor’ syndrome quite exciting. An eye-popping single file row of 4 x four trailer road trains zooming past in the opposite direction, stealing my rip-roaring head winds. The only answer was to quickly duck under the dash board.
Further enhanced excitement comes with the approximate 18 litres of fuel per 100 kms and a Falcon fuel tank capacity that has the chauffeur gingerly sucking in every known bodily sphincter in the hope that all will be well in the long run.
And speaking of sphincters, today we actually passed Jason’s new iron horse rail project for Roy Hill with workers beavering away in a yard appropriately named “flash butt welding yard”.
Port Hedland is housing and shopping precincts surrounding a giant iron ore shipping plant, with coffee served at Dome, a former hospital nursing quarters ( reminiscent of Rottnest bungalows of the 1950’s) and from which you can see at least a couple of huge ships passing for every cup of flat white.