Willie Creek and Cable Beach

Sunday 28th June 2009
Another early start - by 7:45 we were on our way to Willie Creek Pearl Farm about 40km out of Broome. The road is partly red dirt with corrugations so the going was fairly slow in parts, but the last few kilomters lead across some tidal flats which are fairly smooth. At the pearl farm we added to our knowledge about pearls and pearl farming. One of the more interesting facts was not so much about the pearls but that the Oysters which don't produce pearls anymore (>5yrs old) are processed for their Mother of Pearl. These days buttons are not longer made from this stuff but I was surprised to hear that Mother of Pearl is used in holograms on credit cards, metallic car paint and to produce the lustre in lipstick. Of course this is nowhere near enough to drive pearl farming so the fashion industry, where pearls demand a very high price, is just what they need to keep the money rolling in
As you can see from the photograph, the people at the pearl farm immediately sensed my immense talent and put me to the test - my job was to remove a real Keshi pearl (no, not the $100,000 variety) from the Oyster. Sadly I failed the test as I took far to long and killed the Oyster in the process - and I was so looking forward to spending my working life in Broome playing with pearls!
Morning tea was part of the tour and we were served very nice "Beer Damper" - I have got the recipe, anyone interested please email me.
By the time we got back to Broome we were ready for lunch and some shopping at the local Woolworths. During our stay at Broome we have learnt that when buying Squid, which is bait of choice for the local fish population, is cheaper to buy the stuff for human consumption at the supermarket than to buy the stuff which is packed and sold as fish bait.
Strange as it might seem, even at the wholesale level squid for humans is cheaper than fish bait squid.
In Woolworths I ran into a bloke from Rutherglen whom I've known for a number of years - how strange, this is the other end of Oz and neither of us knew that the other was going on a trip and they are going anti clockwise, whereas were are going clockwise. The chances of meeting on this trip are extremely slim yet we just happen to bump into each other.
As we were driving out of Woolies Louise and Bill (with kids) were driving past, with their boat in tow, returning from their Sunday fishing trip - we followed them home to check out the catch and it was very pleasing to see the three Bluefin Tuna and one Emperor they caught.
Today was the day where we went to see the famous sunset on cable beach. To our surprise cable beach was busier than Burke street and that's not an exaggeration - there were people everywhere and anyone with a 4WD or even a "pretend" 4WD was driving their car onto the beach to watch the sunset. Every man and his dog was taking a photograph of the sunset and mixed in with that were some motor scooters, 4WD buses with more tourists and a heap of camels.
The sunset wasn't that spectacular (missing the high cloud) but that didn't stop the snapping of cameras. Once the sun was down it was on for young and old to get of the beach via the only access road. For me this was the first time that I have seen a traffic jam on a beach. We had to make sure our kids didn't get run over by cars or trampled by camels. In fact, the hive of activity at cable beach was far more interesting than the fairly ordinary sunset.
In fact, we had much better sunsets at other places where we didn't have to put up with such a mass of people (and cars and camels).
Ever since we have been on our fishing charter we've been cooking fish every night and tonight was no exception. Javelin Fish for dinner ended another excellent day, but I'm afraid tomorrow will be our last day in Broome.