A late night after a day of serendipitous meetings. We walked into town this morning and sampled the shopping. Broome is famous for its pearls and has more pearl shops per head of population than Berrima has pottery shops. Although the vast majority of the shops are catering for tourists, it doesn’t seem touristy and presents itself in a more upmarket and less tacky way than somewhere like Cairns.

Having the luxury of staying several nights we decided to relax and spent several hours reading books by the swimming pool. At around 4 o’clock we caught the bus to the other side of town to the Sunset Bar at Cable Beach to, you guessed it, watch the sunset. We had a few beers and cocktails and as the sun approached the horizon I ducked down to the beach with my camera and tripod to capture the light show.

While taking photos I got talking to ‘Des’ a very healthy looking 82 year old who told me that when he was 64 he married a 36 year old and that had helped him to stay young, along with (apparently) generous amounts of cigarettes and alcohol. He saved his introduction for when he was leaving and when I said my name was ‘AJ” he said ‘Good work son, when you’re travelling never tell anyone your real name.’ I am still not sure of the reason for this sage advise,

I continued taking photos after the sun had gone down and when I returned to the bar, Sue had been joined by two men. John was someone Sue works with at BT and his friend Terry was a local Broome celebrity who everyone in the bar seemed to know. He also introduced us to Lionel who is a big mover and shaker in the WA radio business and we were later joined by Chris and Cameron. By the end of the night I was left wondering if Sue and I were the only straight couple in Broome.

After another drink or two we bid our farewells and wandered off in the general direction of our motel, although it was too far to walk and the bus service had stopped. We spied a nice looking cafe and stopped for a lovely dinner before getting a taxi home, which at 10 o’clock was the latest night of our holiday so far. (Camping generally leads to early nights)