Broome Travel Guide
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2,389km (1,481 miles) N of Perth; 1,859km (1,152 miles) SW of Darwin
Part rough Outback town, part glam seaside resort, the pearling port of Broome (pop. 11,000) is a hybrid of Australia and Asia you won't see anywhere else. Chinese and Japanese pearl divers worked the pearling luggers in this isolated little town in the old days, and as the Chinese settled here, they affixed their distinctive architecture to typical Australian buildings. The result is a main street so cute it could be a movie set, with neat rows of Australian corrugated iron stores wrapped by verandas and trimmed with Chinese peaked roofs.
The people are unique, too, because Anglo-Saxon and Irish Aussies and Chinese, Filipino, and Malayan pearl workers often married Aboriginal women. The Japanese tended to return home, but not all of them made it -- cyclones, the "bends," sharks, and crocodiles all took their toll. The Japanese legacy in the town is a divers' cemetery with Asian inscriptions on 900 rough-hewn headstones.
For such a small and remote place, Broome is surprisingly sophisticated. Walk the streets of Chinatown and you'll rub shoulders with Aussie tourists, itinerant workers, Asian food-store proprietors, tough-as-nails cattle hands, and well-heeled visitors from Europe and America who down good coffee at a couple of trendy cafes. Broome's South Sea pearls are still its bread and butter, but the timber pearling luggers have been replaced with gleaming high-tech vessels equipped with helipads and stainless steel security doors.
To be honest, it's kind of hard to explain Broome's appeal. There is not much to do, but it's a nice place to be. You can shop for pearls, and it's a good base for exploring the Kimberley. But most people simply come to laze by the jade-green Indian Ocean on Cable Beach, ride camels along the sand as the sun plops into the sea, fish the unplundered seas, mosey around the art galleries and jewelry stores, and soak up the gorgeous reds, blues, and greens of the Kimberley coast.
