Ok!

Here we go, again--I just had just begun my long overdue update when I accidently shut down my browser and lost an hour's worth of writing.  Oh dear.

The advantage of doing something over again is that you are more certain of what you're doing--like taking a beaten trail to walk down instead of offroading in the bush and blazing a new one.  That, atleast, is what I'm telling myself; I hate writing the same words over again--it's exactly like having to repeat yourself in conversation.

So, my journey takes off once again, after a stagnant pause that revolves, in narrative form, around the great northern town of Broome.  My story will work in three stages: Pre-Broome, Broome, and Post-Broome.

It is January 24th, 2005, and my last entry was from July 12th, 2004.  I love this trail--it's a long one.

Pre-Broome, July 12th, 2004, onwards.

My initial reaction to Broome was tempered by two elements: the hostel and the town.  I loved the town: small, compact, tropical, hot, heady, and steaming with excitement.  The famed Cable beach is near to town, with little surf but lots of sand, a great white stretch of beach that disappears into the distance, with few people on it, but enough bikini clad bodies browning themselves under the sun to make it fun.  Nevermind the clothing optional end of the beach, where the white people are as dark as aboriginals--although you'll rarely see any aboriginals at the beach.

There are plenty of restaurants, cafes, shops, bars, and even a few clubs.  The atmosphere is definitely laid back and the immediate impression you get from the town is that life here is chilled out.  The saturday markets are decent, not great, although fun--for its size, Broome has a relatively diverse population, mostly due to the influence of the pearling industry.  Broome exists because of pearls, and the pearl farming, pretty much since its beginnings here, has been staffed by Japanese, Malays, and others from the South-East of Asia.

It's a happening little town and it gives the newcomer a good impression from the get-go.

However, my second impression of the place was influenced greatly by where I was staying.  The Roebuck Bay Backpackers is a dingy dive of a place, with lots of beds, two stories, three buildings, a large, dirty, and poorly equipped and disorganized kitchen--but as hostels go, it's not too far below par.  As these places sometimes are, it's impersonal and hectic, with lots of people doing lots of different things, which mostly boils down to hanging out, working if you have a job, hitting the beach, seeing the sights, and getting wasted.  Sure, not too bad--like being back in university residence, including the international flavour.  Dutch, Germans, British, Scotish, Irish, Japanese, Koreans...

The funny thing is that when you travel halfway around the world to another country--albeit a very western and not-too-disimilar culture to North America--you expect to learn something about this country and it's people.  Up until Broome, I had: it had been a  very Western Australian experience, nearly exclusively all Aussies, with the exception of Patsy's two North American exchange students and the Jenners--but the Jenners are long-time residents and are part of life here, like Patsy and Peter, because it is now their home.

Coming into the backpacker circuit and culture after a near three months of travelling was a bit much for me.  It was nice to meet all these people from here and there, but I was used to doing my own thing.  Living with family and friends had also kept me out of the "where you from, where've you been, where you going" culture that is backpacking--and as backpackers go, I'm low on backpacking information capital.  I'm also not really an extrovert in the classical sense: I like people and I like talking to them, but I hate talking within a group; my personality only emerges in conversations to the individual, and funnily enough, it's pretty hard to talk to people one-on-one in a hostel.  You're constantly interrupted by nice people who want to join in and hang out... you see the basic problem.

Otherwise, things were good in Broome: I hit the beach, the cafes, the bars and clubs.  Yet, there was a lingering doubt; I was waiting in Broome for the Leeuwin, my sail training ship that was going to take me along the Kimberley coastline for Darwin, up in the Northern Territory, on a twelve day trip.  This little trip cos t a thousand dollars flat, and it would have cost AUS$1,600, if it weren't thanks to Curt Jenner's great help in securing me a Captain's Fund from the Leeuwin foundation.  I gained access to the fund through Curt's influence and then made myself eligible by writing a short letter to the foundation explaining my position and my interest in sailing with the ship.  In other words, my education paid off: so far I've 'earned' AUS$600 from my Bachelor's degree in English Literature.  Not bad for a near CDN$20,000 investment, spread over four and a half years.

It was money though that was bothering me; money is the water of the traveller--and my itch was irritated by the fact that you could smell money in the hostel, or the lack thereof.  Those who had it, those who didn't have it.  It's a palpable scent and you notice that while everyone is on a budget, they also all spend their moula with great abandon.  Everyone is looking for work, it's on the lips of all--who's got work, where, how much... are they hiring?  It gets to you in just minutes of arriving and it never goes away until you leave.  I think that this is what stock traders must experience at work each day, except that this environment is directly inverse to the stock trader's world: much less money but just as much anxiety.

I hadn't worked for roughly three month or more; I could see that living at the backpackers would drain my money.  Broome's a great place to drink; it's hot, you sweat, so you rehydrate.... with alcohol, which isn't so logical as the preceeding sentence would leave you to believe.  Broome, after all is said and done, is a small town, with a year-round population of 20,000 or so.  In the winter time, during the Dry, the population swells to nearly 60,000, for the most part touristos like myself or Aussies who have escaped the south and its relatively cold climate.  When you aren't at the beach, or working, or watching movies, or shopping for groceries, or eating out, the options for what to do in town are essentially limited to novel methods of moving liquid from hand to mouth.  It's the tropics and everyone drinks, end of story.

The town sits on the doorstep of the oft quoted 'rugged' Kimberley, most of the area is accessible only by car, and the majority of the roads are definitely only for 4WDs.  Without wheels, you are restricted to travelling the region with private operators.  If you're not so inclined to pay anywhere from one hundred to two thousand dollars for these trips, then you stick to town and hang tough.

But bad things can happen to the unemployed in Broome.

A roomate of mine at the backpackers was Paul, an eighteen year old scotsman who had come into town for a four day layover, three weeks ago.  He was at the tail-end of his trip but was stuck in the sands of Cable beach, wheels spinning happily away.  He originally was supposed to fly from Broome to Melbourne, meet up with some pals, and then fly home.  First, he spent his Melbourne flight money--no worries!--he just decided to cut out a layover in Melbourne and just change flights there on his way to Edinburgh.  Then he spent all his flight money, period, and was forced to find work.  So he started to clean the grounds at the hostel for forty-five dollars a day; eighteen went immediately to his rent, then five bucks for food, leaving the party machine twenty-some dollars to go out with at night and get plastered.  But hey, how do you save money like that?  Well, you don't; his parents sent him £400 to bail the poor boy out and that was that. 

However, Paul's lifestyle was enviably simple.  He would haul himself out of bed every morning at seven am, troup out  and then clean and sweep, toss and take away, sort and re-align, for three hours.  Immediately after this trial by fire, he'd catch the free morning shuttle from the backpackers to the beach, where he would break out his mobile and hit up the girl(s) that he had met the night before at the bar or club.  After a day at the beach, he would catch the free afternoon shuttle back to the backpackers, rest up, smoke cigarettes, and eat five dollars worth of food.  The evening would roll around and, like Lazarus, he would rise up, truly alive, and party 'til dawn, and do it all again, the same way, in every way, the next day.

My other roomates at the hostel were interesting enough, as a generous statement.  My dorm was the mixed-sex dorm, where most of the short term residents stayed, seeing that the backpackers was filled with many long-term residents who occupied the better dorms, with air conditioning, and marginally better cleanliness.  Two rooms divided my dorm, and I had the second room, furthest away from the door out.  Paul and I lived on the top half of our respective bunk beds.  Below us lived a couple who had been in those lower bunks for--get this--three months.  They were, to quote Paul, "the ugliest couple ever," and there wasn't much reason for me to disagree. 

Paul had more beef with them than I did--after all, he had been there with them for nearly a month--his real issue was the way in which they draped a sheet around one of the lower bunks for privacy when they had sex, whether or not he was up on top in his bunk.  They were nice but ultra mundane British and had worked, together, at the local McDonald's for over two months.  This line of work was apparently theirs, too, back in the UK.  If you smell money, then you can smell other things, too, although I don't think that there is a word for their vacation lifestyle scent.  No wait: Literal: Eau de toilette.

Enough, though, on the intrepid roomates.  I stayed at the backpackers for only four nights--I escaped this particular Sangri-La  for the great outdoors of the Broome Bird Observatory.  Two friends I had made in Perth were up in Broome on a short road trip vacation; Clare and Hennig had stayed at the observatory for a couple of nights and had had a great time.  Campites were limited and cheap, eleven dollars a night, seven cheaper than the less than private backpackers, and I would be close to the bush and wildlife.  On their last day in Broome, the 16th of July, they drove me into the BBO, twenty some kilometers away from Broome proper.  They drove a 1970s VW camper van, which held a steady 80km/h on the bitumen highway, and something like half that on the bush road into the observatory.  Things rattled, like the whole frame of the car, the windows inside their frames, and I wondered if they weren't being too generous in driving me to the observatory.  After all, the BBO shuttle was only fifteen bucks.

The BBO was a small place: a dozen drive-in sites for cars and campers, and only two walk-in camp sites, secluded by the bush and in partial shade.  I was warmly welcomed by the rangers there and was shown in person to my campsite--ah! I thought, this was a good idea--where I set up my tent and made myself ready for nine days of non-spending lifestyle.

One thing that threw me off at first at the observatory was that everyone would ask me "are you a birdo?"  What?  What's a birdo?  Well, seeing that when you camp out for nine nights consecutively at a bird observatory, people assume that you like your birds, and that you're hardcore, to boot.  Like the Dutch, for instance, who tramp around the place day in day out, identifying the local birds as if they've lived in the North West for eons.  Me, on the other hand, I look like a bird, but I rarely look at the birds themselves.  Not really a problem, because birdos are a pretty easy going lot, but it caused some of the other residents to try hard to educate me on the birds, their habits, their names, both common and latin, and the general lore of the winged species.

What I didn't know about the BBO is that it's a pretty well known place.  For birdos and ornothologists alike, the observatory occupies prime location for bird observation, with the mangrove floodways of the Roebuck plains inland and the rust red pindan lined beach of Roebuck Bay itself.  The tides in this area are immense, nearly the largest in the world (the bay of Fundy has the largest, but the Kimberley coastline is second in the world and has a considerably massive area of coast affected by these tides), coming in by eight meters or more each day, and going out the same amount.  This tidal influence exposes the large shorebed of the Roebuck plains--a grey sucking mud encrusted with barnacles and shellfish and an amazing amount of small animal life--the perfect feeding ground for shorebirds.  Shorebirds, as they turn out, fly north from their summer homes in southern australia for this bird buffet, feasting for several weeks before flying up to their northern hemisphere breeding grounds, up in Siberia and northeastern China.

Consequently, the BBO is one of the prime locations in the world for birdos--and one of the best in all of Australia, land of many bird species and observatories.  And there I was, a cheap and ignorant backpacker, which I still remain, since the birdo passion did not really rub off on me, although the binoculars and telescopes used to observe birds are great for looking at the night sky.

The community at the BBO was great; one head ranger, three deputy rangers, two volunteer cleaners who worked for free board, and the long term residents who really studied their birds.  I joined in on the regular evening identification session, where Joy, the lesbian head ranger who hailed from Melbourne, would knock back her tumblers of Canadian Club and argue with the Dutch about tertiary wing tip colour variations and the actual rarity of spotted rare birds.  These evenings took place in the well equipped shade house, a screened-in open sided building with kitchen industry standard gas stoves, several fridges, cupboards packed with cutlery, utensils, and pots and pans a-plenty.  This dining room and kitchen had apparently been donated by a lord something or other--another birdo, evidently--and so life at the observatory was not lacking.

What did I do at the observatory?  Well, I read a great deal.  'American Psycho,' 'The Diet of Worms and Leonardo's Mountain of Clams' by Stephen Jay Gould, 'Life of Pi,' and I studied the Leeuwin trainee's manual--ship terms, knots, a rough guide on how to work a three masted schooner with 15 sails.  I studied the stars, or I tried to, as I often fell asleep at 10pm, too early if you really want to see the night at its best.  I also developed a habit of getting up at dawn and running five to eight kilometers along the Roebuck plains road that ran from some trails at the observatory--mostly out of boredom and from the fact that my tent would get too hot to sleep in soon after the sun rose.  During the day I'd break the day up by staging increasingly leisurely and multi-staged meals, enhanced by the free food left in the communal fridge by departed visitors.  I'd then spend a few hours looking at the books in the small library, or in the last few days, watch a video, usually on a bird.

Alternately, I would hang out with the rangers or other residents and chat about life, birds, and more birds.  Initially, out of self-couscious reaction to all these intent and well-informed people surrounding me, I tried to observe the birds, hunting out for the little and big guys out on the beach, in the brush, under the sun, sitting in the sand, dust, dirt, and just, you know, looking at them do their thing.  Beautiful creatures, but I'm just not into this sort of thing.  I would study the books at the dinner sessions, learn some names, promptly forget or confuse them, be corrected by several voices at once concerning a bird I couldn't have possibly seen.

I even went out on the third day at the observatory for something called canon-netting.  This entails trapping birds under a large rope net cast out by the force of several canon tubes loaded with gunpowder and a large iron spike that attaches to each corner of the net.  The team waits anxiously by the side of the road near the beach while a single observer waits for the right kind of birds to come within the correct range of the launching site.  When the net is cast, the roadside team rushes out to the beach, runs into the water and saves the frantic birds from death by drowning.  Each bird is quickly inserted into a canvas cage that has been hastily erected beneath a shade cloth set up on the beach.  Of upmost importance is the animal's health--the darkness within the cages calms them and following their initial capture, are only handled by volunteers with experience.

The purpose of the exercise is to tag and measure the birds, in as short a time as possible, so as to reduce the amount of stress and shock they experience.  This requires you to weigh and measure their various physcial features, determine age by their feather development, then attach a metal tag around their leg with serial number.  I worked as note taker while the docile animals were gently handled--they were Eastern Curlew for the most part, medium sized birds with long, thin, curved beaks and brown and white plumage.

Once finished, the bird was passed to the most experienced of the team; the bird was brought away from the group of volunteers and brought into a three-sided canvas shade tent whose open side faced away towards the open beach and ocean shore.  The bird was deposited in the tent and left to make it's way out and then slowly walk out--this was to allow the bird some time to shake off the ill-effects of its capture, handling, and release.  If just let go as is, it would try to fly off but would be very likely to injure itself or worse, drown in the ocean.  While conducted humanely and with no injuries or deaths, it is obvious that the animals go into a mild shock from the experience.

One other event stood out during my stay at the BBO: a day and dinner spent in Broome, as the volunteer cleaner (I forgot her name!) celebrated her 74th birthday with a group dinner at Cafe Carlotta.  We drove into town in the morning and I spent the day internetting, getting my mane cut, shopping at the Op-Shop, and eating non-instant multi-staged meals.  Dinner was great--italian cooking--I had a barramundi soup with a cappucino froth, a papperdelle pasta with pancetta and a mushroom cream sauce.  Although the pasta wasn't flavourful enough, the bread from the wood fired oven was excellent and the atmosphere terrific.  The lady who'se birthday it was loved her wine, too, so that was alright--a few bottles of WA wine from Margaret River and then a latte to finish it all up--decadent!

But then it was back to the observatory, with the heat, the flies, the same old, same old.  Terrible, I know, and I learned more than I'm letting on, but at the same time, I was pretty excited by the prospect of the Leeuwin coming into to berth at the Broome pier.  Eventually it did, and I left the BBO--with good memories, and having had a good time, and in a little better shape than when I first showed up.

It was then July 25th, 2005.