Right place, wrong time

Day 12

"This is who I am
Escapist, paradise seeker
Farewell, now time to fly
Out of sight, out of time, away from all lies"

What can I say about Broome? I do understand what the fuzz is about this place. Cable Beach is truly gorgeous, absolutely magnificient. There is certain appealing "frontier" town feeling here, place is also very tropical with palm trees and all. So what is wrong with this paradise at the moment? Well, problem is that from 5th to 22nd July entire Australia is spending their winter holiday and Broome is in a nutshell, holiday town.

Because of this, the town is completely booked up till 22nd. This also means prices are insanely high and what is worse, there are hardly any foreign backpackers. Only australian families, couples or huge groups who have all booked place here months in advance. So no backpackers means its hard as hell to get to know people cause everyone is just mingling with their own group. Nothing like in Perth where everyone were backpackers and eager to know one another. So essentially I am in right place but at the wrong time. I think late May/early June or late August would be much better timeslots to visit this place.

What is going on then? Well, mostly I have been spending my days at the Cable Beach working on my tan and practising surfing with bodyboard(my knees just cant handle real surfing). I am living in 5-bed dorm with 4 girls...which didnt turn out to be such a great thing. All of them are british and regular workers here for 2 months which means they dont even like to chat much with new people.

Because everyone here at the moment are on holiday it means they also have money to spend, I dont. It can annoy a bit when you are on a backpacker budget cooking your own meals while everyone else is eating out, drinking out, buying stuff, etc. If you have lot of money to spare, then Broome is great holiday destination, otherwise dont come mid-July.

What else? I have been having tons of difficulty arranging my trip to Darwin. It turned out most of Darwin is completely booked as well(wtf really?). Finally I have now managed to get 6 nights there starting from 21st. I will be taking long way there as well, which means 14h bus ride to Kununurra, 3 nights there and then another 12h bus ride to Darwin. That means I will be leaving Broome on 17th. It really annoys me to plan so far ahead but what some of the locals here have told me, traveling north Australia during high season is like that. I just hope east coast wont be like this cause now I have to stress way too much about these travel arrangements.

Tomorrow I booked a standby-tour to Cape Leveque, northernmost point of the Dampier Peninsula about 220km from Broome. Hopefully it will be a good day to unwind a bit. Lastly some pictures from Broome.

The Magnificient Cable Beach