At Sea

Today we spent a day at sea, so there are no photos. We’re being chased down the coast by a tropical low, which was cyclone Lincoln, but got downgraded as it passed over northern Australia. It’s now reached the Indian Ocean, so it’s predicted to turn back into a cyclone again. 

The plan is to visit our first destination tomorrow, and then sail northward the next day so that we circle around behind it. It’s travelling faster than us. If we do this, we expect to get behind it before it becomes a cyclone again.

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.

Midden

This morning at sunrise I visited the midden that’s the highest part of central Broome. Broome itself is very flat, with a grid of streets facing Roebuck Bay. However, then there’s this substantial hill.

It’s quite flat on top, and completely covered in shells. In fact it’s a 60,000 year old midden. Most of the other middens close by are at Cable Beach. All of them show the tremendous marine abundance that the local indigenous people used for tens of thousands of years. 

This part of Roebuck Bay has a lot of mangroves, which also provided many different foodstuffs. 

It was interesting to see the animal tracks in the sand at the top of the midden.

Interlude

To get to the Cocos (Keeling) Islands and Christmas Island, you catch a plane from Perth on either Tuesday or Friday. The plane travels in one direction on Friday and the other on Tuesday, so you have a choice between staying a week at each, a few days at each, or some longer term. Since my cruise starts from Broome on Tuesday, I had to come back to Perth on Friday, and spend a couple of days in either Perth or Broome. As it’s the wet season, I thought it prudent to get to Broome on the first available plane. Anyway, Perth is having severe heat, so there isn’t much difference in the climate - it’s too hot in both places! I managed to visit Perth on the coldest night for several weeks, so the temperature was nice (it was 40C the previous day and the next one - Broome was 37C today, and is going to get one degree warmer each day).

The flight to Broome was uninteresting since there were clouds all the way.

As I saw a lot of Broome itself last time, I had decided to hire a car and visit Beagle Bay today. It’s a remote aboriginal community in the Dampier Peninsula (very close to the place where Dampier described aborigines as “the most miserable race in the world”). The church there, built by aborigines and a few monks, is one of the most beautiful in the world. The Catholic Trappist monks had a mission here from the late 1800s, but they were replaced with the Pallottines and St. John of God sisters also arrived after the mission started to receive children. Initially they served the local aboriginal community, but later the mission received children from the stolen generations. During the First World War, the monks (being German) were under house arrest. Until then, the church had been made from teatree and bamboo, and had been remade whenever it was destroyed by termites or cyclones. They decided to build a new church from mud bricks, then the aboriginal women decorated the inside including the altar with pearl shells (mother of pearl) and other shells that they collected from the beach. It was built between 1915 and 1918.

Originally the ceiling was decorated the same way, with aboriginal star constellations. They didn’t have proper mortar to build the church with, so they crushed shells and burnt them to make lime. Unfortunately, because it was weakened by cyclones and time, the bell tower collapsed in the early 2000s. The church has been restored, but the ceiling is no longer there. The stations of the cross were painted by a German artist and framed in mother of pearl.

After I came back, I went to Cable Beach to see the sunset. The northern part of Cable Beach is where you can drive on the sand and the camel trains walk along the beach.

Only people and dogs are allowed in the southern part.

Leaving the Indian Ocean

Yesterday was my last day in Christmas Island and on the Indian Ocean Territories. I decided to visit Ethel Beach. It was high tide, so there wasn’t much beach.

It’s typical for Christmas Island, white sand, fringed by verdant jungle, coral within a few metres with wonderful snorkelling. 

As I flew out, I saw a bit of the coast - quintessential Christmas Island!

A walk in the Rainforest

Today I started by trying to find the sunrise. I thought that if I walked to the point near where I’m staying, I could possibly see sunrise. It wasn’t as good as I thought it might be.

While I’ve shown you some of the workers accomodations, at the point there are a lot of older houses that were built for the white people who worked at various supervisory positions.

Then I went for a walk along boulder track. As the track goes along the coast where the blowholes are, I was expecting it to include a lot of coastal scenery, and blowholes making noise. Instead, I entered a rainforest track, with enormous numbers of red crabs.

It was difficult to avoid standing on the crabs, and as they burrow, it was also difficult to avoid the soil below my feet disintegrating from time to time. I guess this was why it took a lot longer to walk it than I had planned. In fact, I turned around when I finished my first bottle of water.

The track was beautiful, and I could see boulders and cliffs amongst the rainforest. There was a lot of noise, from the different endemic birds, the blowholes nearby, the cicadas and the crabs shuffling away from me. The way back was much faster as most of the red crabs had gone into their burrows for the day.

There were some other animals on the trail besides the red crabs.

This evening I saw the last sunset I’ll see at Christmas Island, as I’m leaving tomorrow. It’s been a wonderful time seeing a lot of what the island has to offer.

Temples, Birds and Bats

One thing I’ve noticed about Christmas Island is that Taoist traditions still persist in the Chinese community here. I haven’t taken any photos of the Chinese cemetery, but people are still buried in distinctive Chinese graves. There are places in the street with replicas of the terracotta warriors outside.

There are quite a few Chinese temples on the island,

Including one dedicated to the Muslim members of the Christmas Island community.

There is a Christian cemetery and a Muslim cemetery as well, but the vast majority of the population is Chinese who’ve been here five or more generations.

I went to Margaret Knoll - one of the main lookouts on the island. The sea was calm, and I could see the Abbotts boobies far down sitting in the trees.

Then I tried to go to the highest part of the island - Jacks Hill - but the road was shut after you reached the water tanks, and no wonder, since it overlooks the detention centre (which is currently mothballed). Before I came, many people asked me what was at Christmas Island apart from the detention centre. I said that there were lots of things, and I think you’ll agree.

I saw lots of birds that are native to the island. I only got decent pictures of the red footed booby

And the native bat.

I also thought this photo might give you an idea of the size of the robber crabs.