Broome Bird Observatory

Broome is on the shores of Roebuck Bay, seen here from where I’ve been staying. It has one of the largest tidal variations of anywhere on earth. All the sands you can see in the picture are under metres of water at high tide. This means that there are many small aquatic creatures that are available as food for terrestrial creatures twice a day. So it’s one of the most important resources for migratory shorebirds.

Today I drove along the roughest road I’ve ever managed to visit the internationally renowned Broome Bird Observatory. I’m pretty sure part of the problem was that the 4wd I hired had a narrow wheelbase, so it didn’t fit into the ruts. You can see that this is red earth country.

The bird observatory was officially closed, but people are still allowed to go there and walk along the tracks. It has both a campground and accommodation that anyone can rent. The place was very busy, as they had a group of researchers visiting, so I wasn’t able to go to the lookout across the bay. 

However, I did walk one of the tracks. 

It was far too hot to walk the others (one of which was blocked off due to the researchers). The observatory lands cover several different types of biospheres - the woodlands trail that I walked, swamps and mud flats, and savannah. Shorebirds from the northern hemisphere, including the Arctic, come here on their migratory flights.

After I’d visited, I went back to Broome, caught the ship, and took a picture as we departed Broome. There’s a cyclone (or the remnants of one - it depends on how much it strengthens in the coming days) coming that could mean we’ll spend the trip being drenched. However, it could always go elsewhere. Western Australia is an enormous state with a long coastline - you can fit Texas into it 3.6 times.