Jac, Tom, Oliver and Fletcher left us this morning. It was quite sad to see them go as we all got on so well. But they have another 3 months of adventure to be had before settling back at home in QLD. We will visit them there whenever it is that we are on the east coast again.
To clear the mind we headed to the beach for a bit of rock pooling. I also took the camera to capture the sand trees which I had wanted to do for a few days.
This morning we piled into cars and headed off for a drive south, us in the lead. We followed the track along the coast until we came to a 4ways. Prior to this the track was heavily overgrown and we received some nice scratches down the side of the car because of it. We also saw a black cat on the track. We turned right at the 4ways and arrived at Barred Creek. At the mangroves we decided this would be the perfect place to try for mud crabs so off we all headed in search. Tom, Oliver and Fletcher had made spears yesterday morning on their tour so they were armed with them, while Nath had our crab hook. Within minutes the call came out “Got a crab”. Not long after that, there was a second one caught with the hook. They opted to not spear them, just in case they weren’t size, or female with eggs, as you can’t take these.
While Jac and I were chatting on the creek edge, I looked down and something caught my attention. Then it dawned on me. The tide was coming in, and fast. We yelled out to the men that it was time to go as the tide was rushing in and started to make our way back to the cars with the children. We couldn’t see in the water even though it was still only shallow. But we are in croc country and have to mindful, so we avoided the water and walked through the mangroves.
Once safely back at the cars and not a croc in sight, we got the lads to hold the crabs for a photo. Now we have noticed that the “in” thing in all of the brochures at the info centre is to hold your crab by the claws above your head. So that is what we got them to do. Tom’s was already dead as it had received a hole in its shell, but Nath’s was very much alive. He successfully held the crab, without it biting him and returned them to the bucket for the ride home.
Seen as we were all covered in mud on our legs and feet, we headed over the remains of the fossilised forest and limestone, and down to the beach below. We washed off our feet and crocs before heading back to the car, then headed for home to deal with the muddies quickly. Once a muddie dies it goes off quickly, so we didn’t want to waste any time.
The mud crabs were chopped in half as is our normal way of killing them. We also don’t like to cook mud crabs with their guts in as we find it taints the flavour of the meat. But that is a personal preference thing and each to their own. We then cooked them on a grill above the flames of the fire. The cooking time is still pretty much the same as if we were boiling them, 8 minutes. Once cooked they are removed from the heat and chilled quickly. Another thing we don’t do is eat crab meat hot. Always cold. Then it is yummy and super sweet.
As you can imagine, the crab was super delicious. Nathan insists there is something wrong with our children as they aren’t particularly keen on crab meat. What is wrong with our children!? I just keep telling him, that’s good, more for us!
This afternoon, Tom, Oliver, Hendrix and Nath went out in the tinny. We missed it, but they informed us on their return. When they were heading out, they got the timing of the set wrong. They thought it had just come through and pushed off. The set then presented itself in front of them and the motor conked out. Nath had filled up the tank, but forgot to pump the fuel back through the line. So he remained calm, quickly pumped the fuel, and restarted the motor. By this stage there was a 5ft wave faced up and about to break on them. They were vertical enough for water to come in the back of the boat. Nath accelerated and punched them over the top of it, but backed off in an attempt to soften the landing for Tom and Oliver in the front. It would have looked similar to an IRB at a rubber ducky carnival. Oliver thought it was fantastic and was having a blast. But Hendrix was a seasoned boater with his Dad and knew something was amiss and didn’t feel right for the rest of the time they were out there.
We started the morning getting straight into the school work, with the intentions of completing the week’s work today so we could spend the rest of the time with the Friend’s when they return back to camp. You see, today is Tom’s birthday, so there will be a party.
Elokin was in one of those forgetful moods so in the 6 hours and 45 minutes that we worked today, she completed her English unit, spelling words test, handwriting and Mental Maths. So we still have a whole Maths until to do, along with her journal and travel experiences scrapbook and the sheet of English. Nowhere near was enough done today. Oh well. Just means we will have to do it on the weekend. Hendrix on the other hand smashed out his work and just has to do his journal and travel experiences scrapbook, which we usually get them to do in the evenings.
For a break we headed off to the beach for Hendrix to have a fish. He was so keen. Unfortunately he didn’t catch anything, but had fun all the same. Nath also had a flick off the rocks and lost the popper. So he jumped in the water to retrieve it. His theory was that he didn’t want to lose a brand new lure, especially when there wasn’t a fish involved.
Mid-afternoon we received a text from Jac saying that the tour they went on this morning went later than they thought and wouldn’t be back until 5.30pm. I offered to make Tom’s cake but she figured she would have enough time when they returned. 10 minutes later another text came through, “Waiting for fuel, can you please make the cake?” No worries. Check the fridge…. No butter! Oh crap. Thankfully google came to my rescue and I found a recipe for a vanilla cake made with cream instead of butter. I always have longlife cream in the cupboard, so it worked perfectly. And the cake turned out yummy. Jac iced it when they got back and we ate it after pizza’s cooked on the webers and party food. The kids had sparklers and we all had a great night. So glad Tom had a birthday!
Around lunch time a lady came up to camp asking if we could pull them out of a bog as they were on the beach, the tide was coming in and she had 1 and 2 year old children in the car. When we arrived at the beach, Erin introduced himself and his wife Ellen. Ellen later said their boys are Bayden and Nate. They had got wedged with a rock under the side step and were digging in. A quick combo routine of backing up and winching and they were out. Nothing like having a Nissan to come to the rescue of a Landcruiser!!!!
After our excitement we had some lunch before starting the school work for the day. We didn’t start until the afternoon as the Friend’s have headed off to Cape Leveque for the night. But of course it was a struggle then as Elokin and Hendrix don’t particularly like doing school work at the best of times, but it seems to be much worse after they have played with friends all morning.
I found out that the green bulb like fruit that we have on the trees around camp are Gobin, as it says in Les Hiddins Bush Tucker Field Guide. I tried one, but I don’t think it was ripe and it wasn’t very nice. They are also known as a salty plum. The other thing I found out is that the little red berries with the black dot on them that the kids keep collecting and playing with are actually Gidgee Gidgee and are extremely poisonous. Also found in the book, it is a vine that is so poisonous that one tiny seed crushed up and swallowed is enough to kill a person. If the particles from seeds or the sap from the bark come into contact with cuts or scratches, that can cause poisoning with potentially fatal results. As you can imagine, all of the kids were told to not touch them, at all under no circumstances, as they are all running around with scratches and cuts all over them. Good thing I bought that book 4 years ago. It still comes in handy!
It was a bit windy again this morning, but it died off pretty early. Elokin and Hendrix had lots of school work to get through today. Hendrix finished quickly as he was super keen, but Elokin opted to fluff around and make it more difficult so we had to work for more than an hour longer than Hendrix and Nath.
Around lunch time Tom and Nath went out on the water in the tinny. It glassed off and was a cracker day. Jac made anzac biscuits with the boys while El and I were still in class. The kids had a great time playing when El finally finished her work. Jac took the boys to the beach for a swim mid-afternoon, but Elokin wanted to stay in camp, so I hung with her and we went down later.
The men returned just after sunset with Spanish flag for dinner, which we ate with our calamari and Jac’s chinese noodle salad. Delicious. Nath commented that there wasn’t enough wind out there for them today as they couldn’t drift – gees, there’s just no pleasing the guy!
Tonight after dinner we all hid inside our vans as it is freezing. I have pulled my dressing gown out and am wrapped in it with my ugg boots on and I am still cold. I definitely think we have become acclimatised to warmer weather and are just not used to any cold temperatures. Surely it is not as cold as I feel.
We rose with the determination to get packed up quickly. I still had groceries from yesterday to finish packing away, plus the normal pack up stuff. Later than Nath had planned, but still in good time, we were leaving the park at 9.45am. A quick top up of fuel and a drive around town to kill time and then we were off to the Mango Place at 12 Mile. Jac did the wine tasting, but after seeing that 4 out of the 5 wines on the menu were port, I decided I wasn’t that keen and stuck with the chutney and jam tasting. I quite liked the Mustard with bush honey and mango dressing, but opted to buy the Mango Jam instead as I was limiting myself to just one. At $8 for 190ml it was probably the most expensive jam I have ever bought, but home-made and delicious.
After our stop we headed back towards Broome and turned onto the Cape Leveque Road heading north. The road was in good condition as the lady in the info centre had said it was. By 3pm we had picked our camp nestled in some trees for a bit of wind protection, set up the camper and were sitting enjoying a cuppa and biscuits while the kids played with their trucks in the dirt. Boy did they get dirty!
In the late afternoon, Tom took all of the children to the rock pools as the tide was out. Nath joined him after fluffing around with whatever it was that he was doing, and they made sure the kids had a bit of a wash off. But it didn’t matter all that much as they came home and played in the grubby sand some more.
Tonight both families enjoyed a roast dinner and sat around the fire. The temperature has dropped considerably since the sun went down. We could feel the cold creep in around us from the bushes. It was a bizarre feeling. Walk to the bushes behind the van and feel that it was cool, and then walk back to the van and feel the temperature rise. The whole area was soon engulfed in cold and so now I am sitting with my Ugg Boots on. I still cannot get over how cold it is up here in winter.
It was very windy this morning. Nath and I put on 4 loads of washing @ $4/load before I had finished my morning cuppa. That was just the bedding! Tomorrow, I will wait until a bit later as it is not as busy after that first initial morning rush. Learnt the hard way and had to wait this morning. It didn’t take long for them to dry, so before we left camp we were able to take it all off, only an hour or so later. While I was hanging out the washing, Nath was schooling Hendrix and Elokin was working independently.
We made a mad dash at 10.50am (late) for the centre of town to Cygnet Bay Pearl Farm Showroom for the 11 O’clock pearl cultivation and harvest demonstration. We were a few minutes late, but we didn’t miss too much. It was very interesting learning how they cultivate the pearls. It makes you appreciate their value so much more when you know just how much effort goes into making a pearl. And then, there is no guarantee that it is going to a flawless perfectly round pearl, as they are quite rare. We got to hold the two pearls that the man extracted from the pearl shells, so now we can all say that we have held a real saltwater pearl, or two. The two we saw and held were not perfect specimens, one valued at $450 and the other at $385. They did discount the pearls on offer if they were purchased on the spot.
We left there without any pearls, and headed next door to the Shell House of Broome. This is one of the most extensive shell collections with over 600 shells on display. I loved that they had labelled each type with its name and where it was collected. There were quite a few that I had not seen before, and now I am on the hunt for my own collection.
We then decided it was time for lunch and headed to the grassy area near the information centre to have our picnic lunch. Elokin, Hendrix, Oliver and Fletcher loved running and rolling around on the grass. After eating Tom and I headed into the info centre for just that, some info, on Cape Leveque. When that was done we walked through Chinatown and started to make our way to Matso’s Brewery. Jac and I decided that it was still a long way there after walking for ways, and returned to get the cars and meet the boys and kids up the road. We collected the kids but the boys decided they wanted to finish the walk. Jac led the way as she thought she knew where she was going, but one block later, she drove past Matso’s and I saw it at the last second and turned quickly in. Once we all arrived we made our way out to the beer garden and Antonie was our waiter. We ordered 5 beers and a cider taster for each couple. We asked Antonie to put them in an order that we should drink them. We started with the Ginger Cider and we all really enjoyed it. Next was the Mango Beer. Jac quite enjoyed this one and said to Tom “if you want me to drink beer, this is the way to go”. Both Nath and I thought that is was nice, but left a rather funny after taste. Tom didn’t really like it. We could taste the mango and it was nice, but not nice enough for us to buy it. The third drink was Lychee Beer. Tom liked this one more than the mango. Jac didn’t like it, and neither did I. Nath thought it wasn’t as nice as the mango but left a more pleasant after taste. Next up was the alcoholic Ginger Beer. We all liked this one and it had a nice flavour and after taste. Jac and Tom had previously tried an alcoholic ginger beer and compared to that one, they thought this one was not as nice. We saved most of our ginger beer for the last one as instructed by Antonie. Second last was the Chango, which is a mix of Mango and Chilli Beer. Yep, I didn’t like this one either, and the chilli gave it a rather good burn down the throat. Jac’s face after she took a sip said it all. She didn’t like it either. Tom preferred this one to the Mango one and Nath was left to drink our as I wasn’t going to. He didn’t really like it either, but did like the kick the chilli gave him. Lastly was the Chilli Beer. We let the men cheers and start to drink this one. They were both impressed that it had a lot of burn and said they would have been disappointed if it didn’t. Jac tried it too and felt the burn. Not to be left out I thought I had better give it a go too. Yep, it burned all the way down my throat. Nath then mixed our ginger beer and chilli beer in a 70/30 mix as was suggested by Antonie. This was much better, but I still let Nath finish off both the chilli drinks. After tasting all of them, Nath came to the conclusion that none of them were nice enough to purchase. While we were taste testing the kids enjoyed colouring in and a bowl of chips and wedges.
From here we ducked home to have an early dinner before racing off to the Mangrove Resort to watch the Staircase to the Moon. We wanted to get there early to get a good spot so we aimed to arrive at 5pm. We weren’t far off and arrived with plenty of time and found a great spot on the grassy area away from all of the resort people. It was still a little light when the moon started to rise and the didgeridoo started to play. It was really quite special having the didgeridoo playing watching the moon rise over the mud flats.
Staircase to the moon
When it was far enough up to lose the visual impact we headed off in the cars to the markets. A lot of people had left so it wasn’t as busy, and certainly when we were done there were a lot less cars in the car park. We saw Camarli there (we met him on our last trip when we stayed at Parry Beach), but he was busy working his stall, so we didn’t disturb him. Elokin and Hendrix bought fairy floss with their pocket money as they really wanted it.
After cruising the market and not finding anything of interest, we said goodnight to Jac, Tom and the boys and headed home.
Hendrix holding a Pearl at Cygnet Bay Showroom
Elokin holding a Pearl at Cygnet Bay Showroom
The largest Pearl in the World
Jac inside the Shell House
Hendrix looking at the display in the Shell House
Elokin, Oliver and Tom looking at the display
The fish display in the Shell House
Queen Cassis Cornuta
Shell collection in the Shell House
Some of the Cowries on display
More cowries on display
Everyone at Matso’s
The line-up at Matso’s Broome Brewery
Nath trying the Mango Beer
Romandar trying the Mango Beer
The kids enjoying the chips at Matso’s
Nath and Tom cheers at Matso’s
The beer menu at Matso’s Broome Brewery
Nath and Elokin waiting for the staircase to the moon
