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3 Days in Broome: Where to Dine, Stay, and Play in Style
Broome offers a unique experience at every turn. Learn about the town’s pearling history , ride a camel and marvel at sunsets on breathtaking beaches where the bright red earth meets the turquoise Coral Sea.
Broome is also the gateway to Australia’s Kimberley region – one of the last wildernesses on earth. We stayed in Broome at the end of a 3 week trip along the spectacular East Coast of Australia from Byron Bay to Port Douglas. From Port Douglas, we flew to Darwin to join a 10 day cruise through the Kimberley with Silversea. The cruise ended in Broome giving us the perfect opportunity to spend a few days here exploring the town in the far north of Australia which had been a bridge too far when we last visited on a tour of Western Australia.
Broome - A Town of Two Halves
The first thing you need to know about Broome is that it is definitely a town of two halves. On one side, you have the world famous 23 kilometre long Cable Beach, renowned for its stunning sunsets and camel rides. On the other side, you have the Old Town of Broome – Chinatown and the Town Beach. The connection between Town Beach and Cable Beach was originally made 137 years ago when an underground telegraph cable was pulled across the peninsula in 1889 and came ashore in Cable Beach – hence its name. Until the mid 1980s when the bitumen road was constructed, only a rough dirt and red sand track connected the Old Town of Broome to Cable Beach.
The distance between the two halves is 7 kilometres. You can see why until the road was built, no-one ever really came to Cable Beach! It was the opening of the Cable Beach Resort in 1988 that really put Broome on the tourist map
Getting Around in Broome
Understanding the geography of Broome is important before you visit as where you stay can have a significant impact on the sort of experience you have here. If you choose to stay on one side but spend your evening in the other, you will need to get a taxi back home after dinner.
There is a bus that connects the two in around 20 minutes. The TransBroome Route 890 runs directly between Cable Beach and Broome Town Beach, passing straight through Chinatown on the way. It operates 7 days a week, but is only an hourly service, so you have to time your journey carefully if you want to rely on it, especially as Broome is a hot, hot, hot little town!
Uber does not operate in Broome, but there are a number of private taxi firms that can be easily organised and booked on line. One I can recommend from personal experience is Broome Private Taxis. Airport Shuttle buses can typically be booked via your hotel too.
Given the logistics, you may prefer to hire a car for your stay in Broome, although we managed perfectly well without one.
3 Days in Broome: Where to Dine, Stay and Play in Style
Day 1 - Cable Beach
Beautiful Cable Beach is 23 kilometres long and very easily walkable. It makes a relaxing start to any stay in Broome. Much is being done to improve the infrastructure as I write with Phase I now complete. Phase II has no published finish date that I could find, so it may well be that the improvement works are still in progress if you make your own visit there. There are a number of bars and retaurants close to the beach including the Surf Club (entrance fee applies).
If you are driving, then you do need to be careful on Cable Beach to avoid getting bogged. There is a Facebook Group called “I Lost My Car on Cable Beach” which gives you some idea of the costly disaster that might befall you if you don’t pay enough attention to this!
Sunset on Cable Beach - A Stairway to the Sun!
Broome is also famous for the optical illusion of Staircase The Staircase to the Moon. It happens 2 -3 days each month between March and October. We didn’t manage to see a Staircase to the Moon on our trip – but the sunset in Broome delivered a fiery red Staircase to the Sun instead!
Must Do - A Camel Ride at Sunset
Yes – it is a touristy thing to do – but it is a lovely experience to ride a camel on Cable Beach at sunset. The camels are unlike any I have met elsewhere in the world. They have a statuesque calm and elegance about them as they patiently wait for the sun to set before making the long traverse from the far end of Cable Beach – past the rocks – up past the Surf Club and on up the Cable Beach Road. They are spared the indignity of kneeling to let you mount – a mounting platform is provided as part of the tour. They make a much looked forward to stop at the Spinifex Brewery en route to let the children feed them. It is a Broome legend – and really a Must Do for any visitor. There are 2 camel groups in town: Red Sun Camels and Broome Camel Safaris (the “blue” camels!. Book on line in advance with whichever you choose.
Outdoor Cinema
The Broome Outdoor Cinema (Sun Pictures) is a beloved institution in town and a popular destination for both locals and tourists. It is an open air cinema – it is never cold in Broome – allowing visitors to enjoy a wide range of movies on the big screen under the Kimberley skies. It is worth having a look to see what’s on while you are in town.
Interestingly, the Broome Outdoor Cinema use to be a victim of tidal flooding. Many nights cinema goers would roll up their trousers and lift their feet up whilst the tide swirled in. Some even brought a bucket with them to keep their feet dry while watching the movie! A levee bank built across the marsh in 1974 put an end to the flooding. Pavement plaques in Carnarvon Street in front of the cinema pay tribute to its 100-year milestone as the World’s Oldest Operating Picture Gardens in August 2017.
Day 2 - Willie Creek Pearl Farm
Broome was Built on Buttons
It is well known that Broome was a town that was built on buttons. Back in 1910, Broome was the world’s most important pearling port, supplying up to 80% of the global market for mother-of-pearl used in buttons for clothing and cutlery handles. In its heyday, Broome had a fleet of over 400 pearling luggers and 3,500 divers harvesting the giant Pinctada Maxima oyster shells from the bottom of the ocean floor. Nowhere else in the world can you find this species in such abundance and size.
Pearling - A Dangerous Pursuit
Diving for oyster pearls is a dangerous business. The pinctada maxima oysters thrive in the warm tropical waters around Broome, but so do deadly sharks, box jellyfish and irikandji. There were many casualties – the Pearl Lugger’s Museum in Chinatown has all the gory details. If you survived the sharks and the jellyfish, there was an even higher risk of decompression sickness – “the bends” – on your return to land.
I was horrified to learn that at one time, the abhorrent practice of blackbirding was carried out in the Broome Pearling Industry. It is not a history to be proud of. Aboriginal men, women and children were kidnapped, often chained together and held in hollow boab trees before being forced onto pearl luggers. They were made to skin dive naked for mother of pearl in deep waters without breathing apparatus. We were told that the indentured labourers had to bring back either a pearl, an oyster shell or a handful of sand to prove that they had dived down deep enough – otherwise they were sent out into the treacherous ocean again. Even more shocking, it was falsely believed that pregnant aboriginal women had a greater lung capacity so they were deliberately targeted for the lugger boats. A statue in town ensures that this sad past is never forgotten. The practice was thankfully ended in 1904.
The Cultured Pearl Industry - Willie Creek Pearl Farm
If you only do one thing during your stay in Broome, I would highly recommend booking a tour of the Willie Creek Pearl Farm which lies at the end of a long, red dirt road on the Dampier Peninsula. They operate hotel pick ups which makes it easy if you have no transport available.
The oyster shells were originally harvested for the mother of pearl inside them rather than the pearls. It is extremely rare to find a pearl in a wild oyster shell and even if you do, it is unlikely to be perfectly round like a cultured pearl. The process of culturing pearls was first discovered by Kokichi Mikimoto in Japan back in 1893 and he guarded his trade secrets closely. Japan are still world leaders in the industry today.
The mother of pearl industry collapsed after World War II when plastic buttons became available and Broome needed to look elsewhere for a profitable industry. The Japanese had discovered that by intentionally inserting an irritant into an oyster to stimulate the natural secretion of nacre, near spherical pearls could be produced. Broome began producing cultured pearls early in the 1920s, but the Western Australian government banned the practice in 1922 to protect the natural pearl fishery. This law was repealed in 1949, paving the way for modern commercial farming. The Australian pearling industry pioneers were the first people in the world to be able to culture pearls without the aid of the Japanese. Broome fully transitioned its industry to commercial cultured pearl farming in the mid 1950s.
The whole process of culturing pearls is fascinating and the team at Wille Creek’s describe the painstaking process from start to finish with passion and enthusiasm during the half day tour. The process begins with the nucleus of an imported Mississippi Mud oyster which is tumbled to round it before export. The nucleus is placed in the gonad of the oyster shell which is the deepest and safest part. A ring of donor tissue from a living oyster is stacked in the shell around the nucleus and gradually, the oyster treats the nucleus as an irritant and naturally forms a coating of nacre around it. It take years to form a cultured pearl. The oyster shells have to be returned to the ocean, turned regularly, and cleaned from pests and debris during the process. An oyster can produce as many as 4 pearls during its life.
What Does the Future Hold for the Broome Pearling Industry?
It was fascinating to discover that nacre is now being used to produce PearlBone™, a bioactive bone substitute converted by using nacre from the Western Australian Pearl Oyster. Developed by Marine Biomedical, it provides a highly biocompatible, low-risk alternative to traditional synthetic bone grafts, promoting natural bone growth and regeneration for orthopaedic, trauma, and reconstructive surgeries. That could lead to a very bright future indeed for Broome?
Day 3 - Broome Discovery Tour
Another great way of spending a day in Broome is to take a small group bus tour of the town with a local guide. We booked our half day tour through Get Your Guide. The tour drops you back in the Old Town at lunch time which is convenient for an afternoon of exploring before returning to your hotel. If you choose to base yourself at Cable Beach, you can take a bus back at the end of the afternoon.
You are quite likely to be accompanied by a wild horse or two on your bus journey – there are a number in town which the locals call “Broome brumes”. You might also pass a huge sand truck which are up to 60 metres long and used to carry sand which is mined here for its ore content which is valuable in the automative industry.
Gantheaume Point
After visiting the iconic Cable Beach, the tour stopped at Gantheaume Point – a picturesque area of ancient rugged red cliffs which contrast beautifully with the brilliant turquoise waters of the Indian Ocean behind them creating a vivid, ever-shifting panorama. Wedding photographs are often taken in this beautiful spot which would otherwise have been difficult to visit without our own transport.
Dinosaur Footprints
Amazingly enough, 130 million year old dinosaur footprints can also be seen at at Gantheaume Point in Broome at low tide.
Japanese Cemetery
After touring around scenic Entrance Point and Roebuck Bay, the tour passes the Japanese Cemetery where 900+ Japanese pearlers who lost their lives in the dangerous pursuit of pearling were laid to rest.
Chinatown used to be called Japtown because of the high number of Japanese pearlers who lived there. The area was renamed Chinatown following World War II to distance Broome from references to its wartime enemy. During WWII, the Japanese population in Broome was largely interned, and anti-Japanese sentiment surged.
Town Beach
A stop at Town Beach enables you to compare it with Cable Beach. Whilst it doesn’t have the iconic sunsets, camel rides and any of the glitz of Cable Beach, Town Beach does have beautiful sunrises, great views of the Staircase to the Moon (when it occurs) and a family friendly vibe that somehow fits with the small town feel of Broome more readily than Cable Beach. If you want a bit more action, Thursday nights are market night on Town Beach and the bus runs with increased frequency to ferry locals and tourists to and fro to them.
Chinatown
Broome’s Chinatown has a plethora of souvenir shops and pearl showrooms as well as bars and restaurants offering local fare. It is a fun place to spend an afternoon. The Museum is definitely worth a visit if you are interested in the history of the town.
Broome Pistops
If you are in the Old Town of Broome, then there are a couple of places that merit a visit. For starters, the Millie Café is famed for being the best Aussie pie shop io town. You can’t visit Broome without calling in at Matso’s either – try their famous alcoholic ginger beer – crisp, delicious and thoroughly refreshing. They make Mango beer too – you have to try it?
On the Cable Beach side of town, where we were based, the Spinifex Brewery has a great community/family atmosphere and serves good value Australian menu staples and great beer. I chose the Staircase to the Moon pizza – well – it would be rude not to?!
Kimberley - Scenic Flights
It’s worth noting before I leave Broome that it is a good place for taking scenic flights to those parts of the Kimberley that cannot be reached by water on a cruise ship. You can explore the Bungle Bungles, the Mitchell Falls and the Horizontal Falls on scenic flights departing from Broome. There are a number of operators including Broome Aviation.
Where We Stayed - Accommodation Review
Your choice of where to stay in Broome depends on which side of the town you want to base yourself and budget. We decided we wanted to stay on the Cable Beach side of town because we knew that we would want to watch the sunset each night there and it would be so much easier to get back to our hotel afterwards than staying on the Old Town side of Broome.
The Cable Beach Resort & Spa is one alternative, but we were put off that by the restoration works in progress around Cable Beach and also by the price. The Oaks Cable Beach Resort is just a short walk away from the beach and well placed for the Spiniflex Brewery just down the road. It made a good choice for our short stay with a room rate half the cost of the Cable Beach Resort. The hotel has a lovely pool area and offers apartment style rooms.
If you decide to stay on the Old Town side of Broome, the Mangrove Hotel is a good choice.
