BROOME - 1993

                                                    

"Slip into Broome time" is the motto on the T-shirts, singlets and caps in the souvenir shops up here in the sea port to the Kimberley country. The unmistakable implication is that Broome time and Dreamtime are related and that time is different here from the rest of the world.

The main shopping  street

And it probably is. Hiring a car and driving around the town leaves you wondering what on earth the Broome Explorer tour could do for the three hours. Chinatown is boosted as the romantic link with the past, when Broome accounted for 98% of the world output of M.O.P. - Mother of Pearl. Visions of Chinatowns in Vancouver, San Francisco, even Melbourne or London were flattened by the reality of the Broome Chinatown. Corrugated sheds face each other disconsolately across a road down the centre of which badly burned coconut palms struggle to survive. The odd Chinese name - Wing, Ching, Ling - vying with later arrivals - Anastasia's Boutique - is the only sign that you are in the fabled quarter of the town. Inside the sheds ceiling fans circulate the steam heated air, and the locals, none of whom seem remotely Asian, tell you how lucky you are that The Wet has ended and the humidity is down.

The museum is a haven of cool in the stinking heat of the day. It has some fascinating glimpses of the heyday for Broome and the hell life must have been for the crews on the pearling luggers. Diving to 12 meters without equipment must have shortened the lives of the aboriginal men and women who were the diving crews in those days. And all for the shell of the oysters, the M.O.P., not for the pearls which only one in a thousand contained. But, like many another small town showplace, mixed in with these unique exhibits is the junk and clutter contributed over the years and thrown together like a child's collection after bonfire night. Rhodesian native weapons mix with rusted bullets and bits of aeroplane recovered from Roebuck Bay after the Japanese attack in March 1942. Farm implements of uses unfathomable share cases with faded photographs of long dead families and their pipes, knitting needles and other accoutrements.

Cemetery at Broome

Amidst all the dross is a moving song, which I heard years ago. It is an ode to Nakamura, a young Japanese pearl diver who never made it home and it follows this piece. This ballad was one of the things which led me to Broome and which set up a mental picture of the town. I had imagined a sweeping bay, with luggers lying on their sides at low tide, with a rather picturesque wooden village nestled in the northern curve, protected from the worst of the cyclonic winds. On the opposite hill, I saw the divers cemetery, with Japanese, Chinese and other graves mixed in the fraternity of death. But it was not like that at all. Although the town is above sea level, it is only barely so. A king tide pushed by a south easter almost floods the causeway to the airport, and the foundations of the shops in Chinatown are in danger of being undermined. So there are no rolling hills, just dusty bush in red dusty soil crowding down to the mangroves. The three separate graveyards - Japanese, Chinese and Christian - maintain the apartheid through which their inhabitants lived. All have crumbling headstones succumbing to the remorseless seasons of The Wet and The Dry with temperatures rarely dropping below 30C. The wild green vegetation of the tropical islands would have overwhelmed the area years before now. The scrawny looking scrub of the Kimberley country is no less thorough. Slowly and inexorably it is reclaiming the sites from which it was excluded all that time ago.

Attempts have been made to make the town greener. Water was discovered by mistake by an oil driller in the sixties. Lawns and trees were planted, including the towering coconut palms. Despite the fact that The Dry only started three weeks ago, these foreigners seem to be as affected by the heat as the rest of the inhabitants of the town. What flowers there are wilt and the lawns are browning already, despite their daily watering. The hot dry air will dry a swimming costume in minutes - what does it do to vegetation designed for milder climates?

In the areas where there is no license to water, there is that run down look which goes with bush towns in the Australian interior. Native trees, lean and stringy, shed little shade and, at this time of the year have no colour apart from the dull khaki of their foliage. Clumps of grass scattered against the ochre background are seeding and all seem to be equipped with barbed accessories which leap out and attach themselves to passing flesh or clothes. Down on the bay front scattered sea shells, the detritus of yesterday's people mix with the bottles and cans of today's.

Crudely hand lettered signs proclaim, with varying degrees of accuracy of grammar and spelling, that one of the town's main festivals is scheduled for this weekend, which is a long one - Anzac Day is on Monday. Playing the Chinese motif for all it is worth, Dragon Boat races are scheduled for Saturday and Sunday, along with local sports such as barefoot mud crab tying competitions.

 

The dragon boats set out - mind the sharks and crocodiles!

On main beach, oblivious to the crocodile sighted in the vicinity last weekend and the possibility of the ever present sharks being attracted by the activity, teams of young Broomsters battle a chop, overturning the narrow beamed dragon boats with hilarity and regularity. There are no contestants this early in the day for the crab tying competition. The skilled masters are biding their time and the amateurs have not consumed enough Emu beer to put themselves into the four foot ring with a couple of kilos of armed and dangerous muddies.

Behind the beach the modern gipsies have set up camp. Crystals are for sale which will cure everything from impotence to BO : tie dyed shirts are displayed by long haired be-ringed people who would not have looked out of place in Haight Ashbury thirty years ago: junk Korean and Chinese plastic toys and gewgaws leer in lurid colours: smoking frying pans and woks begin the endless task of feeding the five thousand with ethnic delicacies from all stops East - Eastern Europe contributes kebabs and jiros souvlaki. Similar to look at, but a continent away in flavour, Malaysian satay sticks vie with rice noodles and bean curd.

Down at the other end of the beach the fun fair has been erected. Big wheel, spider, octopus and chairplanes stand ready. Late in the afternoon, as the sun sets, they will whirl, twirl, shake and stir the stomachs of their riders, laden with beer, coke and tucker until they spray their contents in fan shaped modernistic patterns to the guffaws of their watching mates. Those who wisely give the fun fair a miss will no doubt flock to the Sun Cinema - The Oldest Cinema In Australia. Sitting in deck chairs, half the audience under the shelter of the roof and half in the open, they can thrill to the adventures of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Part III. Those who do either of these things will miss the opportunity to stand on Gantheaume Point at sunset. There a pathetic concrete slab, which appears to have been walked in by a flippered swimmer before it set, has a plaque proclaiming that it represents the dinosaur footprints said to lurk beneath the waves only 30 meters off the point. In the steamy hot twilight in a jumbled wilderness of stone, with the shattered, striated rocks almost scarlet in the light of the setting sun it is not too difficult to imagine a dinosaur or two roaming around not so long ago.

Sand patterns

There are other things to do at sunset in Broome. We had booked for our sunset camel ride with Red Sun the day we arrived at the Cable Beach Club, in a sense of bravado. Now, impatient, and a little anxious, a small knot of us stood on Cable Beach. The sweep of the shoreline is impressive at low tide. A tidal rise and fall of over 30 feet makes for a wide expanse of sand, especially when it runs northwards for about 80 kilometres.

As we waited, all the stories we had collectively heard about camels were surfacing. Nervous laughter greeted some of the comments: others were met by a concerned silence. All joined in except the two backpackers who, with their zoom lensed cameras were shooting everything in sight.

A mob of camels cleared the corner below the bluff upon which the club stands above the beach. Forgetting that we had been told to look for camels with red blankets, we clustered around, watching intently as they knelt, one after the other, roaring, grunting and farting. Their keeper was a strange looking fellow, dark brown in colour, whether genetically or weathered, it was impossible to say. He soon made it clear what he thought of those of us who had booked for the Red Sun camel tour, novices in the game which he had been at for years under the cognomen Ships Of The Desert.

The ships loaded their freight, two passengers to each vessel, except the unfortunate craft at the rear of the string, who alone carried a Colleen McCullough lookalike. "Lean back! Lean back!", yelled the cameleer to his cargo as the craft lurched forward and then backward, getting to their feet. And then they were off, padding on their spongy feet to the north. And still no sign of our Red Sun camels.

Here they come!

We spotted them after a few minutes. Way up north, heading steadily down the beach. Returning from a previous tour. Slowly they made their way towards us, picking through the stretch of rocks exposed by the tide, swinging in an extended loop along the shore between us and the sun which was fast descending towards the skyline. The silhouettes they created looked magnificent. The backpackers cameras were not the only ones clicking and whirring now. The camels stopped, sank to their knees and haunches and unloaded their passengers. Steve, their owner and our guide, apologised for the lateness and distributed us among his charges. We got the strong one - poor blighter with the best part of 200 kg aboard. Into the saddles, leaning back against the sudden forward pitch as our camel rose and then we were ten or twelve feet above the beach.

As we swayed along in line astern, the sun dipped below the horizon at last, leaving the sky ablaze. The reflection in the water at the edge of the beach went from shiny silver in the north to bronze to beaten gold in the west. A host of images played to the silenced riders. There were almost too many to take in. A twin masted sloop raised her sails and swung out to sea: gulls paddled at the waters edge: the fingernail of the new moon started to show in the darkening sky: two fishermen stood waist deep in the surf, their wives and dogs sitting around a fire up on the beach: the Ships Of The Desert swung along, heading back now, splashing the golden water so that it sparkled and gleamed around their feet.

We finally turned for home. In the deepening gloaming as we headed south, the glorious Southern Cross appeared above us, pointing the way, although neither camel nor leader needed that. Steve talked of his love for his charges, wiping out the myths surrounding these ungainly beasts which, he swore, were more like dogs than anything else; loyal and loving. A shooting star split the pointers of the Southern Cross like a great firework in the sky. Our ride ended.

That's us - third camel from the left. Poor beast

This visit to Broome also spawned another piece - CABLE BEACH - WAS IT LOVE? And here is the song about Nakamura

 

SAYONARA NAKAMURA
by Ted Egan

When the luggers all sailed away

From Roebuck Bay on that fateful day

The diver on the B 19 was Nakamura

Not yet twenty-one

From the Land of the Rising Sun

His homeland was the island Okinawa.

In the deepest holes of the Lacepede Shoals

To fulfill the pearling master's goals

Went the diver from the B 19, Nakamura

His quest for the lustrous pearl

As strong as his love for the beautiful girl

He'd wed when he returned to Okinawa.

Chorus:

But it's goodbye now, farewell

Say goodbye to Okinawa

For today we'll bury you

In West Australia

You will never be as one

With the Land of the Rising Sun

Sayonara. Sayonara Nakamura.

From the West came a tropical squall

And the mercury began to fall

Forty fathoms deep was Nakamura

"Set sail"- no time to stage

For the storm began to rage

And they dragged to the surface the boy from Okinawa.        

The agony's in his eyes

An old Malayman cries

He knows that the bends have got young Nakamura

Helplessly they cursed

As the diver's lungs near burst

And he died on the deck the boy from Okinawa.

Chorus

To the diver's cemetery at Broome

Bearing gifts all deep in gloom

They walked with the body of the diver, Nakamura

Headstones face the west

A thousand divers lie at rest

And they're joined today by the boy from Okinawa.

Chorus

And it's Goodbye now, farewell.

Say goodbye to Okinawa

For today we'll bury you

In West Australia

You will never be as one

With the Land of the Rising Sun

Sayonara. Sayonara Nakamura..