Broome - Indee Station (ATA Day 1)

ATA...what is that I hear you ask? Well it's Adventure Tours Australia and we've signed up for a 10 day tour with them to get us from Broome to Perth and experience some of what Western Australia has to offer. The stops have been plotted on our Route Map (see the links section on the side of the blog) with Yellow pins that will be set to markers like the Green OzBUS ones as I get internet access to update them. When we finish this tour it leave us with only one Australian state to explore on our mammoth adventure – Queensland.

So, our last evening in Broome saw us in bed before 10pm..very sensible and very unlike me. The reason, my alarm was set to go off at 5.45am for the first time in almost 2 weeks so I'd be ready for a 6.30am collection from the Kimberly Klub. I woke up before the alarm and pondered the reasons why I was voluntarily putting myself through more of these crazy o'clock starts by joining another bus tour. I came to the conclusion that even though I'd rather wake up on my own terms, when I was forced into early starts I actually got to see a whole lot more than I did when I didn't have to be up. Being on an organised tour I was guaranteed to see something new everyday rather than being left to my own devices and deciding I was too tired to explore. And sadly, I've gotten used to having someone plan things for me and tell me where to be when so unless there's a plan in place I've gotten a bit lazy (hence the major efforts I've been putting into getting a route and itinerary planned for Conor's forthcoming arrival in Melbourne to make sure we see as much as possible in our limited time travelling here).

Anyways, 6.30am arrives along with a Western Exposure truck with driver/guide Ben. Not the ATA branded bus I was expecting, but so much cooler. The truck looks like a lorry but surprisingly it drives like we're on a bus. The only person already on the truck when it arrived at the KK to pick us up was the Japanese guy whose name hasn't stuck with me yet. Along with us there were 3 other passengers at the KK - an Aussie couple David and Jan in their 50's from the Melbourne area and a Czech girl in her early 20's who lives in Munich whose name escapes me at the moment. With 20 passengers and Ben it means that all bar one of the 22 seats on board will be taken, so everyone has a seat buddy, no solo seats – the days of OzBUS are well and truly behind us. Una and I got the primo seat, first one on the passenger side behind the door so we've got the barrier thing in front of us to use as a foot rest, we've got nobody in front of us reclining seats, and best of all....there's no seat rotation required! We can keep this baby for the whole 10 days!!! The passenger list has 6 English, 4 Irish, 2 Chinese, 2 German, 1 Scottish, 1 Japanese, 1 Czech and 1 Dutch persons on board. A fair mix of ages and everyone seems like good people so far.

It's hard to avoid comparisons with OzBUS. The people are different obviously and nobody on here reminds me of an of the OB crew as yet. The thing that I find slightly weird is that a good number of this gang already know each other either because they were on the Darwin – Broome tour a few days before this one (at least 6 people I think) or because they were staying at Cable Beach Backpackers (14 people) and had got acquainted there. I thought this might be bad in that it's an automatic clique but so far it's not really an issue. Everyone seems friendly and throughout the day I've spoken to more than half the people on the bus (not that I can remember their names). Also, because we're sharing seats it's harder to fall asleep (not that we didn't manage it) so people are talking more than we did on the first day of OB. Finally, one of the first points of business on the bus was for everyone to introduce themselves to the group on the microphone with name, nationality, length of time in Australia and a recent embarrassing story. I remember a few names and a few faces, but haven't necessarily connected them properly. This kind of ice-breaker would have been useful on OB (guys if you're still reading take note ;) ).

During the day I found myself expecting a gasp of 'ohhh lovely' from Annie or see Barbara running up to the bus after a toilet stop when we're all on board ready to go and she's the last one we're waiting for. It's the first time since August 23rd when I've actually given thought to the fact that the big trip is over and I may never see some of those lovely people again!

Ok, so back to the trip at hand, we were on the road from Broome to Indee Station – the first port of call along the 750km drive was 80 Mile Beach which is in fact more like 77 or 78 mile beach, but rather than shortening things on this occasion the Aussies have made it longer than it is for ease of naming. The brochure had suggested we might have time for a quick swim before lunch, but when we got there Ben told us it's a fishing beach that has been known to have sharks so swimming isn't really something we'd want to do. So we settled for splashing our feet about in the shallow water and collecting some of the most unusual shells I've ever seen. I took a few sand dollars with me that I'm hoping to make a pendent out of when I get home if I can figure out how to do it nicely. We made sandwiches for lunch in the caravan park by the beach and munched happily on those while I discovered the delights of Solo Lemon & Lime drink instead of Coke.

After lunch we were back on the road to get us to Port Headland for a brief stop to stock up on food and beer for the next 4 nights as we're bush bound into Karijini National Park tomorrow. There's only so many sandwiches of mystery meat I can eat so I'm back on the muesli bars, crackers & cheese and cashew nuts. I'm taking a few days to dry out after hitting the beer hard in Indonesia and Australia with OB so will be beerless for the first couple of nights of the trip.

Food and drink on board off we headed again turning onto road 95 to get to Indee Station, a sheep and cattle farm where we'd be camping out for the night. The camp was basically a clearing in a cattle field with a trailer full of swags and stools. We laid a big tarp on the ground and set up the 20 swags – talk about close proximity to each other, you roll over and you're on the person next to you...not the best when you've only just met! But, having said that, it was the best night's swag sleeping I've had yet. I woke up a few times during the night because I was too warm and the only way I could cool down was to sleep with my arms and chest out. Something I'd have been scared to do to that point but if a creature wanted to get me, it'd get me regardless of how much of me was out in the open. At first I was a bit freaked out by the fact that there were cows roaming all around us but we didn't see them close to camp at all so I was at ease by the time I was going to sleep and thoughts of a midnight stampede crushing me were at the back of my mind.

Back to the first evening, once the swags were rolled out and the campfire was lighting Ben started on dinner – beef stew, on a cattle farm! The cooking was started by putting a metal sheet on top of the campfire barrel until it heated up, then he threw chunks of meat on top (the metal was dirty and rusty so I just tried to block it out because I was so hungry). He flipped the meat around with a paint scraper until it was starting to brown up, then half brown/half raw he tossed it into a big pot, topped it up with carrots, broccoli, onion, squash and garlic and put it to boil on the gas ring that was on site for us to use. To accompany the stew we had mashed potato – roughly mashed campsite styleee, no nicely pureed mash like at home. When grub was up we all tucked in and surprisingly most of the massive pot of stew was chowed down in record time. I struggled a bit with the beef as it was quite grizzly but managed enough to stave off my hunger. For dessert we had toasted marshmallows which I mixed with my Dairy Milk Bubbly Mint (we gotta get these at home they're sooo good) in an attempt to have some S'mores.

It was nice sitting around a campfire getting to know these new people and hear about their travels so far in Australia. Though I'm now even more terrified about driving in Melbourne than I already was. Some of them lived there for a while but avoided driving at all costs. The right hand turn system there seems to be even more crazy than I had imagined – to make a right turn you have to get into the far left lane of traffic and wait for all the cars going straight ahead and all the trams in the centre of the road to stop moving before making the turn....confused? I am!!

Tomorrow's start time is 8am....I can't believe it. Mental that it's that late...and more mental that I consider that to be late?!