Jun 2008

Chores, I thought we had escaped these. A for sale sign has sprouted in the front garden, I think it’s a weed spreading across lawns from a large Indonesian inspired house down the road. Anyway an inspection has been foretold for 14:00 so the sand that we and the dogs had been collecting must be returned to the beach. If left to ourselves within weeks we would have had brought back enough sand to build significant castles in the lounge and we wouldn’t need to go to the beach. By two all of the sand had been packed into the van and off to Gantheaume point we go to release it to the wild and have lots of drinks and watch the sunset.

it also appears to be a great life for horses up here too! They all appear to get an early morning trot along the beach and a swim. What a great life!

As we pull into the driveway we get a call from Terry, there has been cancellations at Café Carlotta (was she a transvestite or a stripper?). Would we like to go? Yes! Within half an hour weave packed enough cash and mosquito repellent for dinner, Terry drives the tank around the block a few times to ensure we could never find the place by ourselves and we arrive at a very nicely lit jungle café next to a not so nicely lit drop in centre.

Dinner at Carlotta’s Italian restaurant; try the pearl meat, apparently the oyster muscle is $70 a kilo here and $400 kilo overseas. Thought to be an aphrodisiac (it’s not) probably because of some kind of comparison to oysters. I’m not sure if oysters got there reputation because of the physiological response to the high zinc content along with lots of poisonous heavy metals or because the tasty flesh of oysters are mostly swollen oversized gonads. Whatever the legend, cheap wine and pearl meat is preferable and more effective the oysters. At some stage the food and drink ran out so we must leave our secret restaurant which must remain a secret because it’s a local restaurant for locals only. Sleep.

Big Kevs last day, and it’s too cold to laze around on Cable beach so we use tickets to the Pearl Luggers Tour originally given to Angela’ daughter Phillipa or ‘Flip’ as she goes by when writing for “the West”. The tour is a commentary by a local historian and a short film, it culminates in the fondling of a 21 millimetre pearl worth $100,000 and then even better yet, eating some pearl meat.

The history of pearling is interesting; only one in 15,000 oysters naturally have quality pearls so they were taken only for their shells until the advent of polymers in the 1950’s which caused the industry to collapse. Oysters as a pearl industry only started in the 1980’s. The local ‘pintata’ shells are the biggest in the world making the biggest pearls and the short 150 year local history is full of murder and intrigue set against a background of racial extremes. For example, initially aboriginal families were enslaved and worked to death, fearless feudal Japanese divers ruled Broome for a while during the time of the ‘white Australia policy’ at the turn of the twentieth century, the second world war saw them interned and the fleet burned, then scuba proved cheaper than Japanese ‘Bushido’ courage in dive suits so work went to the lowest paid worker and industrialization now rules.

It took Kev a matter of seconds to pack his overnight bag and only minutes to travel the two hundred metres to the airport, then the departure lounge made up for the suddenness of it all by being as uninspired as any other departure lounge, but it at least gave us fair time to say our goodbyes.

Today we joined Kev, Glen & Sandy to breakfast at their Renzendevous apartments, only to be seated next to Kiran Pekins and his family. That was the best part about the breakfast. They made the worst coffee I've ever tasted!

Terry and Angela working makes us sad, but it does mean they don’t need their car at work which makes us happy. Borrowing the 7.2 litre F250 for the 40km dirt road to Willie Creek Pearl Farm did mean we needed to top up the tank, the cost of fuel roughly equalled the same as a bus ride to the farm with commentary, but Glen had a need to try out the beast, unfortunately for him Sandy had a need to feel safe so the trip was uneventful.

Any feeling of romance I (Steve) associated with pearls is now way gone. The pearls are formed by wedging open the chosen mollusc then slicing open the gonads and inserting a comparatively large ball of Mississippi mussel about six millimetre in diameter for starters. After a couple of years of irritation the slime excreted sets to add a couple of millimetres. The lucky mollusc is flipped monthly the whole time to (hopefully) produce a perfectly round pearl. If the pearl has exceeded expectations then the whole process is performed again with an eight millimetre irritant, and then a 10 millimetre irritant. If you stuck some bellows in it to use as lungs you would probably hear it scream. The pearls themselves only have a pearl crust of a couple of millimetres and that’s five percent water. If neglected the thin coat rots, not good for something that may have set you back tens of thousands of dollars! Some pearls are freaks having a crust more than 10 millimetres thick; these go for hundreds of thousands of dollars and may last generations before losing their lustre.

After all the knowledge had been imparted we needed to escape. Corinne and Sandy took flight, literally, a five minute buzz around the creek with views of which no photo will do justice to, then we all escaped by boat across the creek. I can’t say we learned anything but it was good to get out of the classroom. You can camp at Willie creek for up to three days at a time, just maybe not on the scenic bank as that scenery has a couple of crocodiles lurking in it. We’ll have to come back here with the van since the road didn’t really require a 4WD. We had the engine running to whisk the girls away before they pulled their credit cards out in the shop. Phew! Got away with that one!

We returned to Broome with a couple of hours to kill before Glen and Sandy were due to leave. Glen used his time to get the 50cc rental motorbike up to 62kph by using super fuel and cramming his 100kg frame down behind its tiny handlebars, Sandy said a long sad goodbye to the pearl shops, holding back tears only made her eyes puffy so she left in the same condition she arrived in. I imagine they’ll bring their children Kirsten and Bree next time. Unconvinced of the worthlessness of pearls and unsympathetic to the cruelty to molluscs and unwilling to picket or report Paspally, Kalis, Linneys and Willie Creek to the RSPCA they may even buy a pearl or two for the kids.

We dragged Glen & Sandy down to Cable Beach to drink their last drop of champers on Kimberley soil and watch the camel procession and sun setting before driving themselves off to the airport for their trip home.

Well we awoke and had breaky eager to see the reaction on Terry’s face to Kev’s arrival! As usual, Kev called up from the airport already arrived and waiting for us. Luckily its 8 minutes flat walk from the front door of Terry and Ange’s to the Departure Lounge (with luggage). We drove, ready to whisk Kev off to Terry to drag him away from his work (and on a Sunday) – this should never be in the WA public service!

After Terry pulled himself up off the floor, we dragged ourselves down to Matso’s again to sample many-a-jug of home made ginger beer, and cider. We also dragged Glen & Sandy, Ange, and Kev’s ex Licensee, Gomer, and his wife Vicki. Since this was Terry’s practice Birthday, we decided to sing happy birthday, drink lots and toast often, so we should have it in perfect form for next month!

After another windy day, and a superb lunch, we headed off to the next door gallery to catch the tail end of Emma Blyth’s latest exhibition (for those of you who don’t know Emma is an ex Mandurah icon artist who now resides in Broome. She has successfully blended her unmistakable styled art to the Broome/Kimberley icons.

We finished off the day with yet more alcohol at the Mangrove Hotel and watched the Stairway to the Moon. Although it was freezing, we managed to see a great stairway (but weren’t able to photograph it really well) but you’ll get the gist!

Matso’ brewery for lunch, where did the morning go? How did we get home last night? Does anyone remember getting off the hovercraft? It was a great lunch, the gangs all here with jugs aplenty; the food was brilliant the music was playing (around the back in the beer garden) and the climate ideal if a little windy, “what would our friends in Perth be doing right now?” We laughed and laughed until we forgot what the joke was.

Lunch ended all too soon, but then it was time for a BBQ dinner on the beach and to watch the sunset. Then wind still blowing from lunchtime got stronger and the temperature dropped and freezing to death was longer a laughably remote possibility so we headed for cover at the old Sun Theatre to see the hilarious French farce ‘The Diving Bell and the Butterfly’ about some bloke spending his time in bed having kisses blown at him by beautiful women. The movie was actually an uplifting true story but freezing to death under blankets made it a farce, why didn’t we remember that Sun now has a temperature controlled theatre complex just down the road.