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Broome & Cable Beach, WA

By Matt James

OK, so I work a 60+ hour week…honest! I needed to get away and relax, chill out, unwind; put my feet up, have a few cold beers and not think about spreadsheets, reports or stats. I wanted something more than the Byron Bay or Noosa, different to Fiji or Vanuatu, and closer than Bali or Koh Samui. Broome was where my lucky fiancée and I had decided to get married. Why not holiday there and take the opportunity to check the place out? Mmm, perhaps this getaway wasn’t going to be so relaxing after all.

I had heard that Broome and Cable Beach was an idyllic oasis; a place to appreciate the slower pace of life. Qantas started flying direct from Sydney once a week (Mar-Nov) so a little over 5 hours later we arrived at Broome airport. (Virgin Blue has connecting flights from Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane via Adelaide or Perth. And Skywest has flights from Perth and Darwin).

Broome is an historic small town. Situated on Roebuck Bay it was established as a pearling port in the 1880’s attracting many nationalities in search of their fortune. The Chinese and Japanese cemeteries on the road to Cable Beach are a reminder of their involvement in the pearling trade. Today, Broome is the southern gateway to the Kimberley region and is an eclectic mixture of the old and new, East and West. It still has a ‘frontier town’ feel to it; pedestrian-free streets and red dust covered 4WD utes on the road.

If you are lucky enough to be in Broome for full moon, get yourself down to Town Beach, which is a little bit out of town but still within walking distance especially if you pass by Capt’n Murphy’s Irish pub. The phenomena known as “Staircase to the Moon”, is caused by the rising full moon reflecting off the tidal flats of Roebuck Bay and only occurs in one other place in the world.

While Town Beach is the nearest beach to Broome, it is Cable Beach that really takes your breath, your stress and your tension away; twenty-odd miles of pristine sand and azure water. But the best thing… there was hardly any one there to spoil it. Forget the spreadsheets and the projections, forget the job and the commute, all I needed was a boat and a fishing rod. Oh, and to enjoy the odd cocktail watching the sun set over the Indian Ocean at the Sunset Bar on Cable Beach.

Broome is relaxing. Cable Beach is beautiful. The surrounding scenery is simply stunning. Oh, and if you rearrange the letters in the word Pearl, you CAN spell expensive - although my fiancée tells me that they are worth it. Yep, back to working those 60+hour weeks.