SATURDAY 19 AUGUST     BROOME

It was a beautiful day. Seems that at the moment it is getting to the high 20’s during the day, but cools right down at night. Very pleasant weather.

This was the last weekend of the annual Shinju Matsuri Festival, so quite a bit was happening. This event that spreads over more than a week, is a celebration of Broome – its early days as a pearling port in the late 1800’s – and the multi cultural mix that has resulted from those times.

We rode the bikes down town to the weekly Courthouse Markets, held in the gardens of that building. The stalls had a lot of hippie-type stuff – bead work, pottery and so on. There were some Asian food stalls – to be expected with the Japanese, Indonesian, Chinese influences of the past, here.

We had a good browse about. I bought some corn, tomatoes and bananas and a frog magnet for a fridge. We bought some Indonesian food for lunch – it was alright. It was really pleasant, sitting on a bench, in the shade of a huge tree, eating and watching the passing people.

John wanted to see the Art Show and prize winners, associated with the festival, so we rode around, looking for that, eventually finding it at Matso’s Broome Brewery Cafe.

En route, we found a second-hand book shop. John wanted me to buy a novel – he knows how I have been missing reading of late. I got a cheap one that he could read too. He bought an atlas – to help him with the Railroad Tycoon computer game he plays!

The art show work was only average, I thought. Mostly not to my taste.

We rode back to Coles for potatoes and meat.

Much of the day was gone by the time we got back to the van.

It was good fun, zipping about Broome on the bikes.

I was disappointed to see the numbers of derelict and semi-derelict aborigines in the park at the oval/sports area, drinking there, despite the displayed signs about no alcohol being allowed. I didn’t remember this as an issue, last time, but guess the rain then had driven them all indoors.

It was interesting and unusual that this area, which was right on the main tourist strip, had two sets of public toilets, almost adjacent. One set were open public ones, and the other were ones where the doors were coin operated.

For the remainder of the afternoon, John watched Carlton win the football game.

Tea was scotch fillet steak, mushrooms, potato. The steak was the nicest I’d ever had – so tender.