Broome

After leaving Exmouth we headed North again, destination Broome. On the way though the car started making some funny noises and when Rich tried to reverse, it wouldn't! Bugger, something was not right with the car. We stopped at Karratha to get it checked out and sure enough something was wrong, the gearbox was fooked! We had no reverse and no third gear. The mechanic said to get it fixed he'd have to remove the gearbox and sent it to Perth (as nowhere locally can fix automatic gearboxes!) to be repaired and then sent back and refitted. This would cost aroun $3000 and take over a week!!!! Bollox! He did say however that so long as the car is going forward it'll be fine to continue our journey as the damaged part won't damage anywhere else and if we could live without reverse and a lot of noise when the car tries to get into 3rd gear we should be OK. Well, we couldn't afford the cost or the time to get it repaired so decided to carry on regardless. Fingers crossed it'll all be alright and we'll get back to Melbourne and sell it back to the place we bought it from!! So, on with our journey, we stopped at Port Hedland for the night en-route to Broome and there was a massive lightening storm going off nearby! Lightening storms are also common around these parts as this time of year.

The following day we made our final leg of our trip to Broome, and man what a day that was. It was sooooooo hot. Only about 37 degrees but with 80% humidity it felt like 50 degrees and the air con in our car just couldn't cope. So we spent about 7 hours in the car sweating buckets quite literaly all the way. Wasn't a pleasant journey and to cap it off, Rich got pulled for speeding again! Bastards, those forward facing radars are a nightmare. Granted he was speeding (131 on a 110 road) but Jesus, there was no-one on this road, we saw about 4 other cars all day and it was a big long straight road, but Rich didn't fancy arguing with him about it as he had a gun! So $100 fine, nice.

Finally arrived in Broome around 4 ish and found a place to camp near Cable beach. That evening we went on a sunset camel ride along sunset beach, which was really good and the lady that ran it was very interesting and informative, check out the photo's too, they're great! Next we went to Australias oldest outdoor cinema and saw the Producers, so that was cool too, and then we went back to the beach with a bottle of wine to watch a spectacular lightening storm!

We had to get our car serviced whilst in Broome, and as usual our timing was all wrong. We arrived on a Saturday evening and it was Labour Day weekend which meant no where would be open till the following tuesday so we had to hang around in Broome for a bit longer than we'd thought. Hey-ho, it's a pretty nice place. However, when we did get it serviced we were told the gearbox was on it's way out and could just fook up at anytime. Considering we still had about 7000 km still to do and a lot of that in the outback, we decided we should get it fixed. So, $3000 and 4 days later it's all good. So in all we spent a week in Broome. We did all the touristy stuff we could that was cheap or free! One of those was checking out the dinosaur footprints which you can only see at very low tide, and for once our timing was right and we did get to see them, although it was a bit of a search, but they were pretty cool! We met a british couple (Alan and Elaine) at the campsite and spent an evening with them, drinking wine, chatting then going for a midnight dip in the pool there, nice. There was also an Aussie chap staying there who we chatted to most nights. He was a big lad and he had the tiniest tent, looked like the sort of thing kids have in their gardens! He was a fun bloke though and we had a laugh with him. We visited a crocodile farm too, they had some enormous 5m + salties, they look like dinosaurs and are very scary.

The rest of our time in Broome was pretty much spent just lounging around by the pool, was so hot you needed to be near water to keep going for a dip. We were close to the beach but there were stingers (jellyfish) about at this time of year so didn't really want to risk going for a dip in the sea!

So, car fixed and touristy things done, we leave Broome and head East.