broome again.

Dear Grade 4

We have just driven back to Broome for the THIRD TIME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Last time we were here we had gone down to the beach. We were just swimming and then a life gard was telling every one to get out of the water!!

Now, in Melbourne you would be seared of sharks and stingers here there a bit worried about them but its mostly...crocodiles(saltwater crocks the deadly ones).             

above: every one looking for the crock.

After Broome we went to Cape Laveque. It started off being fun but being in the middle of nowhere with nothing to do can get a bit boring. We didn't do much the first day we were there except go up to the lighthouse which you may see in the picture and it may seem huge but it was tiny. The next day we brought all our things to a beach shack right out the front of the beach. We went for a swim and the waves smashed my Dad and I to pieces. And it wasn't just the waves. My Dad also fell on me.

Once you get past where the waves break, it's actually quite nice.

On our way up to Cape Leveque we called in to Beagle Bay. Beagle Bay is a small Aboriginal village. It had a church that we went into and the alter was made of pearl shells. The church was totally built by hand in 1914. It had 3 bells in the tower that we saw.

The next day after we arrived at the beach shelter we did Bundy's Spear-making Cultural Tour. Bundy was an Aboriginal who was really nice and was really good at making spears and finding food. In the picture below Dad and I are peeling the bark off the wattle and Grace is looking for food.

We went spear fishing and a man named Tim showed us how to find Pippies and they are really delicious with salt water or with salt on them. Inside there is muscles and that is what you eat.You can find them in the sand if there is bubbles coming up to the surface when you step.

After spear-making we went to see 7000 year old Aboriginal footprints. See if you can see them in this picture. They were children's footprints and adults footprints were nearby.

The next day we packed the car, stuck our spears on the roof and started to drive off to Cygnet Bay.

We went to Cygnet Bay Pearl Farm for a tour. We learned that the oysters that they come in are actually alive and there is oyster meat inside. To open them you stick a small clamp inside and kill the oyster. Then you can try and pull it apart and check for the pearl. Then you can either eat the meat raw or cook it. You can eat everything inside it-except the pearl. We even found a pearl that was worth $69.00.  The way to tell their value is if they're super round and creamy colour they're super expensive. If they're lumpy and blueish silver like the one we found it's not worth much. Our tour guides name was Terry. The meat was worth $200 a kg.

This is what's inside the oyster. In the white bit you may see the pearl. It's the little round white bit that you may see and the yellow bit is the oyster meat. On the other side is all the other bits that you can eat.

                                                      

This is when we were leaving the teaching area. I am holding the pearl in my hand. You probably won't be able to see it.

Please comment if you can see the pearl in all the pictures with the pearl in it and if you see the Aboriginal foot print.

From Tom.

80 mile to Broome, Cape Leveque & back to Broome

Dear grade 3,
We left 80 mile beach to Barn Hill I thought there was going to be sheep and everything there but there wasn't  but there were a whole load of cows. We saw hermit crabs, one kept pinching me I called him 'Pinchy'!

We did long walks on the beach. There were big cliffs and loads of shells. We went fishing  our bait was prawns we left there to broome.

We went to a cafe called dragonfly i had a mango smoothie 🐬 mangos are a local tropical delicious fruit.

We stayed at the same caravan park it was called "cable beach caravan park" we swam at the beach we all got told there was an salt water crocodile in the water😨 it was scary but awesome at the same time!



On tuesday we went up to cape leveque, we took tents because  the road was very bumpy.

Along the way we stopped at Sacred Heart Church at Beagle Bay. It is famous for it's alter and decorations made of mother of pearl from oyster shells.

We stayed near the reception of Kooljaman resort on the 1st night and the 2 other nights we slept down on the beach in a shelter, there was a shower, a goanna hole that we never saw. We swam at the beach, the waves were awesome and bumped you around ALOT! We had dinner in the camp oven.

We did a spear making cultural tour with a person called Bundy and there was a little puppy there on the way. I called it Buster.

Bundy said that the girls make the food and the boys get the food. Bundy showed me how to find some food in the sand. It looked like a little onion and you had to peel it and it was white in side. Here's a photo of me foraging for food.



Bundy told us that at the sand dunes the Swifts lay their eggs and the chicks hide under the seaweed. On the other side the turtles come up the beach to lay their eggs. It was a good tour.

We left Kooljaman and drove up to Cygnet Bay. We did a tour of the Cygnet Bay Pearl Farm. Our guide was called Terry. Terry lived there since he was a baby and he went to school there. The room where we learned about pearls was his old school room and he found it hard to do school work when he could see fish flipping out of the water through the window. Very distracting.

The really round ones that are smooth with cream colour are really, really expensive. They come in all sorts of shapes. Some look like drops and some have patterns. In where you find the pearls there is also some meat. We ate some from the oyster we opened and it was yummy. It was $200.00 per kg!!!
The oyster we opened had a pearl inside.

We returned to Broome again and we're now getting ready to go to Derby and the Gibb River road.

From Grace.

back to Broome

Dear grade 4 and every one else who is reading.
Were now in Broome here is some thing we've been doing.
We've been at Karratha and dampier. Karratha we have decided was not the best placewe have been to so far and i think the reason is that the pool is only open till the sun goes behind  the mountains. mum did not like that because we had been driving for 650km (8 hours) and we needed some exercise. We visited the NW SHELF PROJECT where we learnt about how gas is accessed from under the ocean and sent to japan.

this is an gas and oil rig its a model not the real thing.

We went to Deep Gorge. NO, this is not one rock it is a bunch of rocks with Aboriginal art on it.

On the rock closest to the picture, there is a turtle. See if you can see it. Also try and see if you can see the dingo that is just above Graces shoulder.

Like Port Hedland, Dampier has a salt mine too. That's not snow I'm licking, that's salt, Again.

In Dampier, there was a thing that is very famous who didn't let a lady sit on his chair in the bus. That day, we were at the Red Dog memorial and dad told us that a lady had come along and wanted to sit on his seat on the bus and he growled at her but then they became friends.

After Dampier we went to the Whim Creek Pub.

They had birds there and some of them were really friendly and one of them was really crazy. He kept getting his beak stuck in the cage like the one below.

This one even let me pat his beak and head. He was not crazy.

 After the Whim Creek Pub we went to Barn Hill. We have all agree that it was worse than Karatha. We found hermit crabs and we got to let them walk on our hands. 

There were lots of caves and rocks to climb on. Below I am running across the rocks at the beach. There were even a couple of holes that Grace and I went down and then there was a little cave that we would crawl down until we got to the sand.

Then we skimmed some rocks in the water. I never knew you could skim rocks in the ocean.

Now its our second day at broome and where having fun.

From Tom

80 mile beach

Dear grade 3

Yesterday we visited the Karratha gas plant and this is part of the North West shelf project. It produces most of  the gas for western australia. It is for people to use for bbq's & cooking. I did a quiz and all of the answers were in the visitor centre. A nice girl called Mandy corrected it and i got 1 wrong, she gave me sunscreen lip gloss, a water bottle, a cap, 3 stickers for completing the sheet. then we walked back to the car i said "look!" we saw someones drivers lisence and credit card.

 O OH we walked back to the visitor center A.S.A.P (as soon as possible) and showed Mandy the drivers licence and credit card. The person's name was Andy, Mandy said they were really nice and she will get in touch with them, we saw them as we entered. 

We also saw aboriginal rock art at deep gorge in dampier, we saw a turltle, boomerang and emu and dingo.

Then we went to the  memorial of Red dog, he may have been accidentally poisoned, I'm not sure but he was a cute doggie.

Then we went to Whim Creek hotel, we slept out the front, Tom had a hamburger and I had pizza. we played darts and billiards, two men called Nick & Matt taught us how to play.

We met Harry, hello Harry he would say that all the time as you walked past. Then there was Mr Hello, anyone guess who these were? they were singing and dancing like grade threes!

We are now at 80 mile beach it is 220 kms in length!! that is long isn't it. the shells here are amazing

We have met 2 kids here who are doing home school

take care miss you from grace.😎😎★★

Bullara Station

Dear grade 3,
After Coral Bay we went to Bullara Station and there were 7 sheep 1 sheep was called snowflake (he is in jail because he used his horns and bumped the owner of the farm her name was Edwina).

This is Brownie

This is Snow

This is Brownie and Me

This is all of the sheep drinking water. When I hear them Baaing I had to run over to the tap as fast as I can, turn on the tap and give them some water. Damper John told me to do this job. Damper John cooks damper every night at 5 o'clock. He always reads a poem and there is a cute little dog named Indie who is a sausage dog. Indie doesn't belong to Damper John, she just really loves him and she follows him everywhere he goes.

This is Indie when I was at the damper.

This is Cashew, the Guinea Pig. He lives in a little pen.

There is also 2 horses called Carrot and Buster.

We went from Bullara Station to Cape Range National Park. We saw Sting Rays called Raelene and Ray. We saw a big eagle eating a dead kangaroo. We saw an Emu. It was looking around the shops.

"I'm an emu looking around the shops"

Then we came to Karratha and today we are going to look around Karratha and Dampier.

From Grace.

(dictated by grace, typed by dad)

Coral Bay to Karratha

Dear grade 4 and every one else who is reading.
Sorry i haven't been typing lately but we've had no connection
We have spent 2 days at Bullara Station. Bullara Station is 250 000 acres working cattle station. We had fresh baked scones and I patted a guinea pig called Peanut. The scones were delicious.

there were 7 sheep:Brownie (old sheep) Horns (like Jesus...but a sheep) spit (lamb. John, I'll talk about him later is worried because a spit is what they cook sheep on!!) Kiwi (mostly black sheep with no horns), Snow (a fluffy white sheep with horns), Speckles (daughter) and Snowflake (He's in jail for hitting people with his head, so he got his horns cut off and now he's not that bad-He's my favourite). Damper John (he has that nick name because there was 6 other Johns there that day) cooked damper better than Simons on genius day.

.  

                                          bellow the day we left.

We went fishing at Yardie Creek at Cape Range National Park. That day I caught 3 fish. 1 in the daytime and 2 at night. They were very flipperty. They flopped around like nothing on earth but we didn't eat them because it was against the law to eat fish that small.

There was really good snorkeling and we saw thousands of fish. I patted a wild Turtle on it's shell. It had moss on it. We saw heaps of coral and a sting ray. We did a great boat tour up Yardie creek and saw a spider web that was abandoned, Wallabies and Ospreys.

From Tom.

Yay We made it.

Dear Grade 3.

Yay we made it to Coral Bay. As we came into Coral Bay it was 9000 km since we left home.

When we got settled in we went to the beach and we snorkeled. We saw lots of fish and coral.

The next place we're going to is Bullara Station and North West Cape National Park. We will be offline for about a week.

We went fishing and every fish kept stealing my prawns! We didn't catch anything.

See you in 6 weeks,

From Grace.