Greg and Deb's Travel Blog

We started our day early, 7am breakfast, I mean, come on we are on holidays! But when you have to work with the tides, I guess that what it takes. And it was definitely worth it.

This morning we went for an 8 nautical mile cruise in one of the Explorers and then swimming in Crocodile Creek! Now who ever thought of that! We passed the Iron Islands and Nares Point (visiting the point a bit later in the day and having a closer look at one of the Iron islands).

We got to Crocodile Creek around 8:30am ships time, about 30 mins after a low tide of 2.91m. One of the expedition crew went to the waterhole we were going to swim in to check for crocs…… seriously. At high tide crocs can get into the area, but usually leave due to the fresh water. We were given the all clear, walked up about 8 steps and then about 15m along, a rocky trail to a small waterhole with a waterfall gently cascading into the pool. There was one of the expedition team stationed above the waterfall keeping an eye out for unwanted visitors of the salty kind! Continue reading →

The thing about expedition cruising is you have to be flexible, things don’t always go to plan, but you adapt.

• Today’s schedule was all about The Lacepede Islands at the right time of day for the tides. The first Expedition Explorer cruise was due to leave at 9:30am, BUT, the seas and winds had other plans. Rather than the 15 knot winds forecast we had 30 knot winds. The crew tried a test run of the Explorer, launch and cruise around, and found there were too many risks involved, so the plans changed. An afternoon expedition was planned and our afternoon lecture became a morning one.

We did get a distant glimpse of the Lacepede Islands, and the gap between them, from our balcony and saw a few Brown Boobies and Frigates fly around the boat.

The lecture was by Ray Andrews, the guest Geographer for our voyage. The lecture was a very broad introduction to The Kimberley (not to be confused with The Kimberleys in South Africa). His lecture covered a broad range from geography to history to geology to first inhabitants to exploration and uses.

The Kimberley : Fact File:
It covers about 6.6% of the land mass of Australia, about the same as Victoria
Population of 40,000, swollen by 300,000 a year. The aboriginals represent about 45% of the normal population and have 15 language groups.
Weather is Tropical Monsoon with temps 12-30 in the Dry and 24-33 in the Wet.
Geology is up to 1.8 billion years old, most around 400 million years.
Aboriginal settlement was said to occur around 60,000 years ago.
Two main aboriginal art types – Wangjira (the current style)and Gwion gwion (the oldest style)
Western explorers date from around 1606, with English, Dutch and French explorers visiting.
Asian travellers had been travelling to and trading in the area for much longer.
The Kimberley has over 2100 flora species including 15 mangrove species, 140 species of birds, including 3 of raptors, over 70 land mammal species and at least 3 marine mammal species and many species of reptiles. Continue reading →

Yup, you guessed it, another lazy morning.

We really didn’t do anything much other than finish packing and laze around.

The porter came by at about 11:10am, picked up our bags and us and drove us to reception. We picked our forgotten hats off the hat hooks as we left our room. He asked if we were going to the airport, we said no, going on a cruise. He asked if we would like a lift to the Cruise start hotel, we gladly said yes, another “job” taken care of. He said, there were about 15 of us. We leave from here at 2:30pm, so a bit over a 3hr wait. Continue reading →

The lazy days keep rolling on.

Happy birthday to E, Deb’s mum, we gave her a call and she sounded full of the joys of life.

We had a very lazy morning, we just laid around and read.

At 8.30am Deb lit a candle for S. Vale, to a beautiful soul.

I had a swim after lunch and then we started getting ready for our next adventure. Did our washing and repacked our bags. It just so happened that as we were doing this an artist started playing guitar and singing around our pool area. Great layback, familiar music. Continue reading →

The start of our second week away and we managed to wind things back another notch.

An easy day with a mix of lying around reading, punctuated with an occasional swim. I even spent a little Ingress time under a Sausage Tree watching a few Wallabies do what Wallabies do – eat, scratch look around and sleep, all within a few metres of me. Beautiful animals.
Continue reading →

Another tough day in Broome. We planned on doing very little, and I’d call it mission accomplished.

I spent most of the morning out on our deck relaxing, doing not much at all besides soaking up the warmth.

Our big thing for the morning was eventually letting housekeeping in to make-up our room. I had to go from the deck to the front door to make it happen!

We had an eventful afternoon.
Continue reading →

We woke to a beautiful day in Broome.

I took an early walk to the local shop, about a km away, to get some provisions, followed by a quick swim in the pool near our villa. We had breakfast out on our deck overlooking the pool, and inadvertently locked ourselves out of our room. With only our tablets, no phones, Deb decided to email reception to ask them to let us back in. In the meantime we spotted a maintenance guy, so I asked him for help. He let us in, in no time, it happens alot, even to them. A person from reception knocked on our door about 5 mins later, responding to Deb’s email, such warm, friendly, efficient service.

While we’re pondering our fate, dramatic huh, one of the local Agile Wallabies came by to see what was going on. Such good looking creatures. Continue reading →

We were out of our bnb at 7:45am and on the way to Perth Airport, Terminals 3 & 4. The terminal numbers matter, it’s about a 30min drive from Terminals 3 & 4(Qantas and Jetstar) to Terminals 1 & 2 (Virgin).

We dropped our bags off, got through security ok and headed to the Qantas Club to wait for our flight. Too early for anything from the bar!

Our flight was delayed 15mins, and we got away at about 10:50am and arrived in Broome a bit after 1.30pm. We collected our luggage and were on the transfer bus in a reasonable time. It was about a 10 min drive to The Cable Beach Club (the resort that Lord McAlpine established wayback in the day, 1988, lol).

Checking in was super easy, and accompanied by a glass of questionable Rose. We have a ground floor room in the Corella Villa. It opens out onto an adults only pool area. The room is very comfortable.

We had a quiet afternoon taking our time to settle in. Dinner tonight was at the Sunset Bar. With sunset at around 5:30pm, it was an early dinner. And it was delicious, I had slow roasted lamb and Deb had a chicken salad. We had a magnificent sunset to accompany dinner, it started at 5:20 and finished around 6:10.

Tomorrow we head into town!

Happy Mothers Day to our mums and all the other mothers out there.

Today also marks 10 years since we moved into our home in Adelaide City.

Last night, after the blog was posted, P sent us a text with photos of the Aurora he had taken from his back yard. So at about 10:20pm, we were out in the street in front of our bnb taking photos of the southern sky. The Aurora isn’t visible to the naked eye (in suburlit streets), but we both got some photos of it, Deb’s were much better than mine, as you can see. Continue reading →

We had a lazy start to our day, relaxing at our bnb, so comfortable.

Late in the morning we headed over to P and A’s place, and were immediately grabbed by H to go and play trains with him. He has a wooden train track set up on his bedroom floor, and we spent lots of time driving the train around, knocking down wooden block Towers that magically appeared on the tracks. And then using toy diggers and cranes to make everything right again, until the Towers were knocked down again, on repeat. 🙂
J came in to add to the fun. H set limits on what J could and couldn’t do, and J was “mostly” compliant. Deb tried to distract J from the trains by reading him a book while she built Towers and rescued trains from the devastation. So much fun. Continue reading →