Off To Broome

Location: Darwin
Weather: Hot n'Humid

Well selling the car now became a priority as I only had less than 24 hours left in Perth. The main problem with flogging the car was that it had South Australia plates and therefore no dealers in Western Australia would buy it, because it wasn't licensed or something. And since my previous backpacker adverts were no success, I ended up with the radical policy of knocking the price down to $300. Just as I was about to take the thing to the Fremantle breakers yard where I would have got $60 minus a taxi fare back to Perth, some English blokes phoned up and I gave it to them for $100. It was quite a relief to get rid of it to be honest and to improve the situation as I was walking back to the town I met some blonde girl Reese Wetherspoon.
It was about 10minutes after that, that I started being inundated with phone calls wanting to buy the car! oh well.

After taking a look at King's Park - Perth's well known botannic gardens - where you got a great overhead view of the Swan River and the city itself, I spent a night in the not so good Grand Central Backpackers, in a dorm room with about 10 other blokes, a couple of them the loudest snorers in the entire universe, this is the first time in a year of backpacking where I've found it impossible to sleep due to the noise, I wish I'd had a decibel meter. Also they closed the kitchen in this joint at the ridiculous time of 8pm.

I got up at 7am and caught my penultimate Qantas flight to Broome. I was well impressed with the service on this flight, considering it was only 2 hours. Free newspaper, food, drinks and a cinema film was shown - ! You don't get that on Jetstar and Virgin Blue.

It's a shame I couldn't have stayed on the flight as upon arriving in Broome, there was literally nobody about and stepping off the plane was like walking into an oven. Perth was hot, apparently it hit 41 degrees the day before, you HAD to walk in the shadows beacuse of the burning sun, but that was dry heat, here it was extremely humid, which is very tiring, you cannot do anything much. I got a taxi about 200meters down the road to the nearest backpackers - Klub Kimberly. This place is claimed to be a resort and yes it does have a nice swimming pool, BUT - it is quite a way from town, not a good feature considering the heat. Also the room was awful, it had no air-conditioning and the 2nd worst snorers ever - only the previous night rates higher. So I checked out the next morning and went to Roebuck Bay Backpackers. This was more like it, friendly staff, right in the centre of town and because it was so empty I even got my own room and it had A/C.
After walking around Broome again, I came to the conclusion that other than a few drunken Aborigines, the entire place was dead, yes, I'd describe Broome as much like the proverbial parrot in Monty Python at this 'wet season' time of year!
To make matters worse my mobile phone decided it did not like the extreme humidity and promptly stopped working. Therefore I decided I must get out of this place, but after a bit of research it turns out that there are no tours running to Darwin during December and you can only get there on the 26 hour Greyhound bus. As luck would have it though, on the noticeboard at the Roebuck Backpackers there was an advert for a $10 a day relocation to Darwin in a Wicked van. This is where you do the rental company a favour by relocating the vehicle to a more popular location and they only charge you a very low rate. The only downside to this is that you are usually time limited. After a couple of phone calls and a bit of trouble, due to being uncontactable thanks to having no mobile phone, I managed to book the van - I would have 4 days to get to Darwin!

That night a big exciting lightning storm hit Broome - As I was walking back to the hostel I had the most amusing experience of one of the drunken local Aborigines hollering at me "THIS IS BROOME! THIS IS BROOME!". The storm only last about half an hour, but it was seriously torrential rain and more lightning strikes than I've ever seen before. Thursday night is also obviously the highlight of the week at the Roebuck, I very stupidly ended up going to the "Oasis" bar, got very drunk and went to some local's house about 5km away for some more beers. I know it was about 5km because I got bored, asked for a lift back to town, was refused it and ended up staggering back on my own. Not something I would ever choose to do again, as Broome is not big on road signs.

By JamesReed on 21.12.04 @ 06:46 AM GMT