Saturday, 30 May 2026
Today we made our final push to the west coast. We left Derby about 9.00am after taking a last couple of photos. We didn’t photograph the Wool Shed yesterday, so took a quick photo this morning … since it is one of Derby’s oldest buildings. This slight detour put us on Villiers Street where we took a photo of another one of the marsh sculptures, this one the Kimberley Moon Rise Girl Sculpture. Even in broad daylight the sculptures look amazing but they are spectacular with the setting sun behind them.
Before we were properly underway, we made one more stop at the Boab Prison Tree, which forms part of the Derby Commonage, a collection of historic points of interest both in situ and relocated from their original positions. The cattle yards, Myalls Bore and concrete trough were for the communal use of drovers taking cattle to Derby for shipment. The tree is believed to have housed Aboriginal prisoners kidnapped from the West Kimberley, put in chains and marched to the coast to be put to work in the pearling industry.
We started heading south on the Derby Highway, turning right onto the Great Northern Highway about 40 kilometres out of Derby. We crossed the Fitzroy River again soon after, this time on the single lane Willare Bridge. After the bridge the road traverses about 10 kilometres of flood plain, so the road has been constructed atop a berm to (hopefully, most of the time?) keep it above water. The berm is protected on both sides with rock ballast, with even more rock ballast being added at the moment.
Even with all of these earthworks in place we were passing flood markers marked to show up to two metres of floodwater. Adjacent to the road were hundreds of termite mounds. Which got us to wondering about what happens to the termites when it floods? Google to the rescue. Because you can Google anywhere, anytime when you have Starlink on the roof! In a flood, the termites abandon the underground part of their mound. Their underground tunnels collapse, sealing the bottom of the mound and protecting the central hub. Any termites trapped in water can go into a state of suspended animation to conserve oxygen, allowing them to survive submerged for up to 30 hours! After the flood, thousands of worker termites use the soft, waterlogged soil to quickly patch and rebuild the damaged sections of their sand-and-saliva built fortress. They are very resilient insects.
At the Roebuck Plains Roadhouse the Great Northern Highway turns south towards Port Headland and, eventually, Perth. We’ll be heading that way in a few days, in the meantime we continued west on the Broome Road, into Broome. With it being Saturday, there were a couple of businesses we needed to catch before 1.00pm closing.
First stop was at Repco to buy a new compressor hose. We may not need to be changing the air pressure in the tyres much going forward BUT, best to be prepared with a new hose rather than the one held together with gaffer tape!
Next we wanted to catch Molly’s Bakehouse for lunch. Syri took us to a spot on Jones Place where there was absolutely nothing looking like a bakery in sight. Bernie put Molly’s Bakehouse in again and … she took us around the block to exactly the same place. Taking a leap of faith, we drove into what looked like an industrial estate where we spied a sandwich board for Molly’s Bakehouse. Wow, it could hardly be more hidden away.
It was only just after 12.00pm, but their fixtures were BARE. The guy at the counter told us they had been ‘annihilated’ this morning and all he had left to offer us was a vegetarian focaccia and a banana muffin. Knowing that we would struggle to find anything else at this hour on a Saturday, we decided to share the focaccia and I was happy to let Bernie eat the banana muffin. He tells me it tasted like chocolate??!
Our next stop was at a car wash to give the truck a much needed clean. We had actually passed the car wash on our way into town, so we had to back track, but we weren’t under time pressure to use the car wash. It took lots of soap and water to restore the truck to white. Even though she looks much more presentable, there will still be red dust hiding in various nooks and crannies for months to come! At least now we will be able to clamber in and out without ending up with red dust on our legs and clothes.
We drove back into town and checked in at the Discovery Park. We have another well-appointed cabin to stay in for the next five nights. Although the cabin has similar cooking facilities to the room in Derby, we seem better equipped to actually cook a few meals. We are quite close to the BBQ area too, so that’s another option for preparing our own dinners. All we needed was some food to prepare, so it was off to Woolies to stock up for the next few meals.
Back at the cabin it was Split o’clock, before taking a walk down to the Town Jetty. The tide was out and the (almost full) moon was already quite high in the sky. The sky was very pretty though with tones of pink and purple. It is full moon tomorrow night and, fingers crossed, Monday and Tuesday nights we should be able to see the ‘Stairway to the Moon’ phenomenon. Tomorrow night we will probably drive over to Cable Beach to watch the sun set.
Now that we have completed the westbound leg of our road trip, we have added another 5,272 kilometres to the odometer. We have now driven 11,690 kilometres since leaving home seven weeks ago.
Steps: 12,108 (7.67kms)
