Broome

Soon after Kununurra, we joined the Great Northern Highway which skirts south of the North Kimberley where the roads are unsealed.
After very little sleep, dawn arrived at about 05.30. There were a few wallabies, some being road-kill, plus an increasing number of cattle, some Brahmin. We were told to put our seat-belts on in case the bus hit cattle, there being a grill on the front of the bus.
Some of the petrol stations we passed were BP. One of them had a row of boababs along the road in front of the station.
The bus delivered and collected parcels at some of the stops.
After Halls Creek,, the country was very flat all the way to Broome except for a few sandstone outcrops and ridges. The land may have been an inland sea. There were big horizons with millions of termite mounds. The bush was dense in places but there were more trees and grassland as we ventured towards the west. The roads became very straight.
There was some water in the Fitzroy River at Fitzroy Crossing, and more in the Willare River further on.
I wondered whether other countries had a similar word for "countryside" which describes much of the British landscape but it couldn't describe the big landscapes in this region.
There was few solar panels in the few settlements we passed by or through. You would have thought that Australia would be an ideal place for the panels, having so much sunshine.
After stopping at Derby where more passengers left and joined, we finally arrived at Broome in mid-afternoon, about 25 hours after leaving Darwin, allowing for the time-difference, and having covered almost 1900km; 320km from Darwin to Katherine, 513km from Katherine to Kununurra; 1044km from Kununurra to Broome.
I checked into the very smart Courthouse B&B.
The private bus company had ceased operating a few days before and there were no taxis so I didn't get to Cable Beach for the sunset. Instead, I walked to the Town Beach, a break in the mangroves lining the shore, which also had a new jetty for fisherman. The sea was aquamarine.
I had breaded barramundi for dinner and then walked back to the B&B. It had got dark by 18.00.Baca lagi