To Broome

I almost take back everything I said about how lousy the Australian internet is...here I sit at a roadside stop, free camping for the night and they have a free wifi hotspot!  No toilet but free internet, we don't try to understand anymore.

The trip across the top from the Northern Territories to Western Australia was another long drive.  We were forewarned about the bordercrossing between the two states and ate all our fruit and cooked all our vegies, and with great disgust abandoned our honey.  

So back to the drive...thank goodness for the boab trees, without them we would have nothing to look at or talk about.  We were more than ready for our first stop at Lake Argyle.  Perfection!  We camped on grass, swam in the infinity pool and lived the lifestyles of the rich and famous taking a cruise on the lake, swimming and drinking a glass of wine while floating in the perfect temperature of water, watching the sun set.

Back on the road, we were a little dissappointed we didn't invest in a 4X4 because we would have liked to have driven the over 600 km on the infamous dirt "Gibb River" road through the Kimberleys.  When we arrived at the Bungle Bungles, the Purnululu NP, we found we couldn't go in to see the beehive hills and gorges with White Lightning, even the road up to Windjana Gorge NP and Tunnel Creek NP was off limits to us :(

We decided to blow the bank in Broome and take a fixed wing airplane, speedboat, and 4X4 tour!  What the heck we couldn't do the other attractions and NPs...we just drove right on by.  Our tour started at 5:30 am and included a floatplane flight out to the Horizontal Waterfalls on a Cesna 208 and ride through them in a speed boat, breakfast, a flight over the Buccaneer Archipelago, lunch, One Arm Point at the tip of Cape Leveque and rough ride back to Broome by 4X4 all done by 5:30 pm...and for only a mere $800 pp!  What a deal...we figured it was worth about half that but as I've said before "This is Australia!".  The best thing about our tour was Ken and I got to take turns sitting up front in the co-pilot seat!

The Cable Beach Caravan park in Broome was very nice, just steps from the beach, had a nice pool...what the heck we stayed a few days then started south. 

Ken enjoys the infinity pool at Lake Argyle.  What a view!

The fire coloured red rock as the sun sets at Lake Argyle.

Funkie doo!  Crested Pidgeon.

A Boab tree, green after a little rain we suspect.

It's a long, long road!  Still!

That's a big, old Boab!  In Derby Shire in Western Australia they are a sacred tree and they will build a road 'around' them.

A little flora and fauna in Geikie Gorge NP.

Horizontal Waterfalls Adventures the tour group we chose for our full day tour out of Broome.

The Horizontal Waterfalls are actually the moving tides forcing their way through a very tight crevice.

Oh, did I mention we also swam in a shark tank?

A reef amongst the Buccaneer Archipelago.

Buccaneer Archipelago...

A walk on the beach at One Arm Point, Cape Leveque.

The setup for our tour as we land on Talbot Bay.  A couple houseboats, a few floatplanes, and two boats, fueled and ready to go.

A look at the road from our drivers seat.  Yah, I know lots of pics from the tour but for that price I feel they are justified!

The sunset over Cable Beach, too bad I missed the camels. (Ya, they had camel rides on the beach at sunset...)