Monday 26th May
We left the Pardoo Roadhouse at 07.30 and set off on the long, straight Great Northern Highway towards Broome. There wasn't much on the itinerary for the day apart from more driving, but we did have an early morning stop at 'Eighty Mile Beach'. I was keen to go for a swim, and this made me realise how much I had come to enjoy a daily dip in the sea, but the tide was way out when we got off the bus to take a walk. We had to settle for a leisurely saunter towards the shoreline and back again. It was quite nice but nothing spectacular; apart from being a very long, remote beach, it was fairly nondescript.
By the time we got to Broome at 16.00, we were all thoroughly fed up with the bus and our driver Val who just wasn't cut out for the job. Members of our group were also staying at several hostels in Broome, and I got a room at the 'Kimberley Klub' which is located in the middle of town, while the majority of the guys were staying near the beach at the 'Cable Beach Backpackers', about 4km from town. I was disappointed to be a bus ride away from the beach and the guys from the Easy Rider bus who had arrived there a few days beforehand. The 'KK' was fine although I found it to be a bit more impersonal that most of the other hostels that I had stayed in over my time in Australia, plus I also knew fewer people there.
After getting changed, we were picked up by Val and the other guys in the ER bus and went out to the beach near Gantheaume Point to watch the sunset, and there was some champagne brought out to celebrate what was the end of the ER trip for many people on that particular bus. I had booked myself onto the ER bus all the way to Darwin; the others who were intending to go there as well had arranged alternative transportation plans (including the Greyhound, rental cars and camper vans). Later in the evening, we went for dinner at a pub in town but I couldn't really stay awake much later than 22.00, another instance which convinced me that I was most definitely turning into a 'morning person', having loved late nights so much in the past. So, the other guys that were staying at the 'KK' and I headed back to the hostel and got some sleep.
