Broome to Darwin

Regretfully the Broome stop for the Sun Princess was disastrous for us and many others. The ship docked around 14k's from the town itself. Passengers were then to be ferried via 12 or so buses between the ship and town. The jetty was under repair and there was only room for one  bus at a time to travel one way or the other.

Rather than lining up 4 buses at a time and loading them all at once and then a convoy of buses head in to town laden with passengers, they did it one bus at a time. There would be several buses lined up ready to take passengers but only the first bus would be loaded.

Upon arrival to catch a bus you were given a numbered ticket and told to wait on  board. Tickets in the 200's were called to board their bus as we arrived at around 11:20 am.  We were issued with tickets in the low 1020's. That the first lot had gone around an hour earlier gave us good reason to believe we had a lengthy wait in front of us (and we were right).

We were told by others that the problem was the jetty construction works and the strict OH&S conditions for the worksite . But to the lay person it appeared that, with a few modifications, you could load several buses at the one time without any problems with OH&S guidelines.  There wasn't any flexibility in anyone's mindset on the dock nor was there senior enough ship's official to push the case.

But what was worse was the lack of communication from the ship's management team to the 100's of waiting passengers on what was happening.  There was no apology, no information no nothing. From comments being made by those waiting, you felt Princess Cruises had lost 100's of future travellers.

We eventually arrived in Broome itself around 2:20. We had to be back on board by 7pm.

The one place we both really wanted to see was Cable Beach so we boarded the "City Tour Bus" and 15 minutes later we were at Cable Beach and it's impressive, long wide sandy beach fronting on to the Indian Ocean. (Photo below).


Broome has a wet season and a dry season. This wet season had been quite dry so the locals were delighted with the 40mls they had received in the morning. And I guess they were even more delighted when another 30mls fell in 20 minutes that afternoon, just as we were stepping onto Cable Beach!

We sought cover (along get with 30 or so others under 2 small bus shelters) to catch the bus back to town. We weren't drenched through but we were wet enough to require a change of clothes.  The rain had been enough to cause some street flooding in town so any proposed shopping we wanted to do had to be done ASAP. This was completed reasonably quickly but I got wet feet walking through 20mls of floodwater.

Finding free WiFi in town wasn't a priority because of the rush for time and the wet weather. Standing around in wettish clothes didn't help either so the missing photos for the previous blog will be uploaded if possible at Darwin.

The wait to catch a bus back to the ship was a mere 30 minutes, a relative wink of an eye compared to the wait we had to get into town. My supply of VB cans in our cabin was a very welcome sight after arriving back at the ship and jumping in to dry clothes.

A hearty meal, an entertaining Floor Show and a 90 minute Rock 'n Roll band on stage under the stars completed a long day.

Both Friday and Saturday are days at sea.  On Thursday the ship sailed close to the Kimberley Coast providing all passengers with sensational close up views of red cliffs and the glorious colours in the sunset (photo above).  The ship stopped for over 15 minutes giving passengers on either side of the a wonderful Kimberley experience.

There was footy to watch live over the weekend. Hawthorn played and won on Friday as Geelong did on Saturday. On Saturday it was Patsy's birthday so we celebrated with a Steakhouse Restaurant meal.

The weather on deck currently is very hot and steamy.

We arrive in Darwin on Sunday.