Jan. 26: Australia Day in Broome

S was awake at 4:30 but her sisters slept until 5:30. YAY! We had some food at the house and then the girls and I drove to The Good Cartel for some coffee while G took a 35 minute run on Cable Beach. Mind you, it was already 90 degrees and humid so it probably felt like a 4 hour run to him and he certainly looked like it when he came back in! We then all headed to "city centre" and the original "downtown Broome" for breakfast. We dined in "Chinatown" which was only recently named that after a slew of derogatory names. The Chinese came to Broome to work in the pearl industry, in other industries and as indentured servants. We ate at the "Mango Cafe" this morning and had a blast. Facebook reminded me much later in the day of a picture of G and the girls having "breakfast with daddy" 4 years ago. They just started going out in January 2014, when they were 13 months old. What a difference 4 years make!

After breaky, we headed to "Entrance Point" to look for real life, honest-to-goodness dinosaur footprints. We found some! And then we shockingly noted that we can't believe there are real dinosaur foot prints and the area is not at all protected or roped off. Anyway, that was pretty damn awesome! There are more at "Gantheaum Point" but they're only visible at low tide, so we're going to try to go there tomorrow.

After the excitement of the dinosaur prints, we headed to the 12-mile bird observatory. It was written up as much more than it was: it is essentially a zoo of all kinds of birds and S noted a few times "it's so sad that they're all in cages." It was rather depressing and the formidable heat (it was 37 C / 92 F and humid by this point) made us turn around and leave very quickly. But not before saying a whole lot of nice things to Eddie the Emu.

Then back to the Broome Beach Resort for some pool time. Yesterday's quasi-monsoon (or perhaps a real monsoon!) could not have been more different than today's weather: not a cloud in the sky today and just brilliant sun and intense heat. We played in the pool FOREVER. So so so long. We finally came out because everyone realized they were hungry. Then the girls and G relaxed and watched some episodes for some quiet time in the cool. Then we headed out to dinner to try Matso's Brewery. It was fantastic and the beer (especially their "mango beer") was excellent. It would fare well against Portland microbrews for sure. We ran into a woman - an Irish woman married to an Aussie from Broome, whom we saw at The Good Cartel a few mornings ago - and said hi to her and met her husband. He asked us how long we're in town for (we leave tomorrow) and we joked later that he likely was going to invite us to hang out. We were bummed we missed the chance to make our first travel friends. They have sons who are 5 years old and 2 years old. Oh well!

Ii about melted at the very end of dinner, having been awake and active since 5:30 am. We headed back to our house in the dark (the sun sets early here since we're so far north) and put them all straight to bed. Asleep by 7:30 so let's hope we don't see anyone at 4:30 again!

We start our travels south tomorrow. We drive about 4 hours before making a quick overnight pitstop. We then make another pitstop the following night, and arrive at the Ningaloo Reef on the 29th of January. Hopefully we get wifi over the next few days and hopefully I can post some pictures. I have some good ones!