Time Out Back

I recently took a week off and 'went bush' as we say in Australia. So my head is elsewhere and not really settled down into the intricacies of my vintage world. There is plenty of 'vintage' in the outback but not of the manmade (woman made) kind.

We flew to Broome on the far north west coast of Australia (5 hours from Sydney by plane) which has a rich and varied history and is known for its pearl industry that involved a great influx of Chinese and Japanese pearl divers to this remote place at the end of the 19th century.  The Indian Sea here is pale aqua and the sands are pure white, and fine like velvet between your toes. Further out as we drove into the wild - there are boabab trees everywhere - and it looks a bit like Africa. 

The striking wall of orange to the right is a Devonian reef dated between 375 and 350 million years ago, when a tropical sea filled the Canning and Bonaparte Basins. 

The structure was built by lime-secreting organisms, mainly calcareous algae and extinct coral-like organisms called stromatoporoids. Though corals were present, they were much less important in reef-building than the corals of modern times. Gastropods, brachiopods, bivalves and stromatolites were also present in and around the reef. 

We camped here and when you walk along the cliffs you can see some of the fossilised animals preserved in its walls. The river runs beside it, and now and again on the banks, as we walked past, a fresh water crocodile, (known for their docile nature) would amble back into the water. Needless to say, we couldn't swim there! 

The journey ended by driving onto Cable Beach back in Broome to sip champagne and watch the sun set over the western coast - a novelty for us easties! Is there anything more vintage than a good sunset?