I had originally not planned to see the western side of Australia, but somewhere near Townsville on the east coast, after speaking with a lot of travelers who raved about it, I changed my whole itinerary for the rest of my time here to include the west coast - and I'm so glad I did. Western Australia is one of the most remote areas in the world, with less than 1 person per square kilometer (less than Namibia!) but has some of the most beautiful natural attractions I've seen so far.

I arrived in Broome, on the northwest coast of Asutralia, which was established as a pearling center by the Japanese in the late 1800's. By the early 20th century, Broome was supplying about 80% of the world's mother-of-pearl. Nowadays, pearl farming is what keeps the pearls coming in, rather than actual boats and divers. I only had 2 days in Broome before beginning a trip down to Perth, and I spent it taking a tour of the Dampier Peninsula, north of Broome. I've been trying to learn a little more about Aboriginal culture, but they are proving to be pretty reclusive people. Really the only aboriginals I've seen have been the drunk ones in Alice Springs. The tour I joined traveled up the Dampier Peninsula to Cape Levique, an area of beautiful beaches and small Aboriginal Communities. The main reason I joined the tour was because it advertised a visit/tour of an Aboriginal Community called Lombadina. We drove up the 4WD track for a few hours to a small town called Beagle Bay. The big attraction there was a church in town that has an altar made of mother of pearl. Another interesting thing about Beagle Bay is that it is a community of survivors and families of what's known in Australia as The Stolen Generation.

The Stolen Generation refers to a time between 1930 - 1970, when the Australian Government thought it would be a good idea to assimilate Aboriginal children into white society by taking them from their families and placing them in training camps where they learned to be domestic servants to white people. They weren't allowed to speak their language or practice any of their aboriginal culture. The idea was that as they were "integrated"into white culture, they would meet, marry, and have children with white people, and their children would do the same, and after several generations of this, aboriginal culture and genetics would be "bred out." This practice is obviously not being continued, and the Australian Government began in inquiry in 1995, opening family records, tracing family members and trying to reconcile what has happened, but will not actually apologize.

I guess that explains why I've found the Aboriginal people are not very welcoming to white people.

After leaving Beagle Bay, we traveled up to Cape Levique, hung out on the beach for a while, and then returned back down the peninsula towards Lombardina. There was supossed to be someone meeting us there to show us around the community, but instead of a tour guide, we were greeted by this sign on the community art center, which was supossed to be our meeting place.

All righty then. Foiled again!

My last night in Broome was spent in a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad hostel appropriately named "Broome's Last Resort." I should have taken my 18kg pack and RAN when I heard the music booming from down the street. Unfortunately, everywhere else in Broome was fully booked because David Helfgott (the pianist who's life story is told in the movie Shine) was actually in town performing that weekend. I would definately have tried to get tickets to see him if I had known I was going to be blown off by the Aboriginals in Lombardina. After I waded through the drunk people to get to the check in desk, I was given a room about 5 feet away from the bar. I asked for a room further away but was barked at by the rude man they were fully booked and there was nothing else available. Ok, fine. I went into the 6 person dorm and there was stuff everywhere, and I mean EVERY-WHERE. I threw my stuff on to a bunk and left to take a walk to try and calm down and accept that I had to stay in this awful place. I was really tired, but there was no way I could sleep with all the racket going on at the bar. When I got back to the room, I walked in, and there was a drunk couple in there - doing stuff that I can't describe on this blog, if I want you all to still be able to access my site from work. All I can say is EWWWWW!!!!!! So I left again. Came back, still happening, left again. Came back at about 1am and yelled at them that I was staying and they'd have to find somewhere else to be. They left, but it didn't really matter, the music and drunkards were still going strong and I was so mad, I didn't sleep at all that night. I spent most of the night calculating how much debt I'd be in if I stayed in 5 star hotels for every night for the rest of my trip. Ugh. Not possible.