Broome, Australia

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We still had rough seas overnight. It has been very windy, overcast and raining off and on ashore in Broome today, so I expect we have more rough sailing ahead of us tonight and tomorrow. Oh, well.

We arrived in Broome pretty much right on time. They have a very long pier to dock at and no one is allowed to walk on it. They had about a dozen men waiting for us though and got us tied off, their gangway installed and a corral built around it to keep us from wandering the pier. This meant to get ashore today, you had to have transportation at the ship. Oceania ran a complimentary shuttle for that reason I suppose. Several taxis came right out to the corral as well. We walked right off when we saw the Trike coming down the pier. There were 2 of them. Another couple went with Roger with whom I had been in communication. We went with Larry. We all stayed together for the 2 hours though so we got the same tour.

We are docked on the starboard side so we have an interesting view today. At the very end of the pier is a platform with a nest. Maybe osprey.

Larry told us this area is rich with big fish and crocodiles even though people swim at these beaches we can see. They have huge tides. One of the advertised local attractions was a reversing falls. One of the other advertised attractions is fossil dinosaur footprints at the beach. I had asked Roger to arrange our tour timed at low tide to make sure we saw these. He told me to pick any time I wanted because there were numerous places to see the dinosaur footprints and they were not all tide dependent. Great! We did not see any today. Roger walked us to Ganthaeume Point to see a concrete reproduction of what used to be somewhere nearby. I think he said someone stole the footprints? It looked like Big Bird stepped on a wet concrete sidewalk. Very disappointing. The ride was otherwise fun and informative. We enjoyed it even though we got wet to the skin. The other choice would have been broiling sun, so we were just as happy to be rain wet. We got dropped off in town. Paid our $210 AUD and tipped Larry. Found a bottle shop and Clay replenished his beer stock. Took the shuttle back to Sirena. We had decided to eat onboard since Asian fusion seemed to be the local cuisine. Pearl shops seemed to be the other specialty and we didn't want any of that either.

We got back about 1pm and went straight to the laundry and started 2 machines washing. Twenty-five minutes to go to Terrace for lunch. It turns out it was Asian buffet day! Clay started with sushi, coveted my chicken potstickers and he never made it as far as the carving station where I found an entire roast suckling pig that didn't look like it had been touched yet. I told him about it because he loves that, but he said he was already too full. That is at least twice Terrace had that at lunch, he may not get another chance. We got back in time to wait a minute for them to finish and into the dryers. Both ran their full 45 minutes. So we finally got our 2nd onboard laundry chores done.

I played Baggo in Horizons while waiting for our cabin to be serviced or our trike to arrive. I got 4 points! Now I need to find out what is the minimum I have to have to redeem for something. So later I had to play shuffleboard for 1 point and then golf putting for 1 point. I am hopeful that I can redeem for a minimum of 10 points or so! I'll keep you posted.

We are scheduled to set sail at 7pm. I expect we might be all aboard long before that. There were no day long excursions offered by O here. Only up to half day tours with morning and afternoon departures.

Tomorrow is a sea day. If it is not too rough, I'll be active collecting some more Big O points. Dinner tonight will be in GDR for us.

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