Fitzroy Crossing and Broome

On the way to Broome we spent the night at the Fitzroy River Lodge as they have very good camping there and a good swimming pool. Fitzroy River Lodge is 2.5kms out of town (a long way from the town) so there's no chance of interaction with the locals. So we rode our bikes into town the next morning as it was quite cool, certainly cooler than Kununurra.

We were amazed to see the local School Bus is a 4WD truck. The town has all new hospital, high school, police station, council chambers and kindergarten. So they have been spending some money around here.

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We were going to stop in Derby on the way to Broome, but we really like Broome so we decided to skip Derby and just head to Broome. We arrived one day earlier than what we planned back in Sydney. Not bad considering the distances we’ve travelled. We've travelled more than 6,500 kms this trip. The Cruiser, despite it's crappy gearbox, hasn't missed a beat.

We’ve had to get an Auto Electrician to get the Rear View Camera working again. He charged us $120/hour! For an Auto Electrician! Crazy. But he got it going in 1.5 hours so it was a cool $180. I was really struggling to tow our van without the rear camera. It’s just too big to see around. The camera stopped following stone damage to the video cable.

We’re getting rear coil spring airbags fitted to the Cruiser today, another cool $700 so you can see we are contributing to the Broome economy. The Cruiser has very soft rear suspension and hopefully this will stop us rocking down the road after the tiniest dip. Toyota said yesterday the airbags will make the cruise control work better and give us better fuel economy. I think their dreaming, but if it helps these as well as stopping the rocking (front to back rocking, not side to side) I'm all for it.

One of the highlights of Broome is of course the Cable Beach sunset. Our first afternoon/night down there was as amazing as always and we reflected on our last time here with Roy and Marg and I am still bamboozled at how I managed to drive home that night after all those Harvey Wallbangers.

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The “Staircase to the Moon” is on tonight so we’ll head down to the markets to see this event. Hopefully it will be a good staircase tonight.

On Sunday we’re heading north from Broome up the Dampier Peninsular to Middle Lagoon. We’ll camp there for about a week before heading back to Broome. We’ll then have a week here before our kids arrive.

We’re looking forward to them being here. 2 weeks to go kids! Great and we can't wait until they are here!

Our trip home will be via the Tanami Road, which goes past Wolfe Creek. I'm looking forward to that. There's a warning out for users of the Tanami Road between October & March, due to the severe heat in the Tanami Dessert during these months. We'll be going down it around the end of October, so hopefully it won't be too hot for us. It'll be quite the adventure and I'm looking forward to it. There's a push on to tar seal this road in the future, so we have to do it whilst it's still dirt.

Australia is an amazing country to travel around. We're at the furthest point from Sydney, diagonally opposite the country. The whole way, people are friendly, helpful & we all speak the same. Some a little slower than others! Accommodation is cheap, some travellers only free camp. But we stay at the best places, whether they cost or not! Some of the best places are free. Some people we've meet are "on the road" permanently, that's where they live. In their caravan/motor home. There are whole families with kids that do this for years at a time, quite a few families do it for 3-4 months.

There's lots of work out here as well, most well paid. Many overseas backpackers do free work for their visa extension. The Auto Electrician we used was from Canberra. We used him last trip as well, he was based in Wyndham then. He is a one man band, so he pockets the $120/hour & has more work than he can handle and is always knocking work back.

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