Roebuck Bay WA

Broome Port, cruise ships visit here sometimes.

The Port of Broome has played a vital role in the past 126 years in the development of the North West of Australia.  On 10 August 1889, just five years after Broome was founded, the Broome Port was proclaimed as a Warehousing Port.
In the first years the Port did not have a wharf to operate from so vessels would come in on the tide and sit on the bottom once the waters receded. Cargo was lowered over the sides of ships and carried to shore.

In 1896 the State Government awarded a contract to J Wishart & Sons for the construction of a 2,953 feet (about 900 metres) wharf at Mangrove Point (Town Beach) which was completed the following year.
 
The wharf was the headquarters of the pearling fleet, and essential to the cattle industry - a tradition which has continued into modern times. The Port was connected to the town by a tramway line which ran from Chinatown to the end of the wharf.
The wharf served as a 'spring tide port' and trading vessels could only enter and leave port on spring high tides. At low tide the flat bottomed vessels would rest on the muddy sand.

Construction on the present deepwater wharf at Entrance Point began in February 1964 and was officially opened in July 1966. The state of the Port's infrastructure received a substantial boost in 1996 when the Government approved a $3.9m deferred maintenance program.
Information above was copied from [ here ]

Roebuck Bay, Broome WA

In 1941 several Dutch flying boats arrived with refugees from the Dutch East Indies. While laying at anchor in this bay they were attacked by Japanese Zero-fighter planes. The flying boats were defenceless and they were repeatedly attacked and sprayed with bullets from machine-guns. A hundred men, women and children were killed, many of them drowned; others were incinerated by the burning fuel on the surface of the water.

The wrecks are still in situ, and several of them are visible a few days each year at extreme low tide.
 
Roebuck Bay, with its sheltered waters, was the site chosen for the undersea telegraph cable from Asia to come ashore in 1871, to continue overland to Perth. This line is not to be confused with the Australian Overland Telegraph Line.   Wikipedia 

The bay is apparently an excellent place for fishing and bird watching!

Cable Beach WA

Cable Beach and a selection of my photos.

The Indian Ocean

Camels of Broome

There is just something special at Cable Beach when the camels arrive to take people on a ride along the beach at sunset.  The ride goes for half an hour and more women seem to do it than men. 

Camels of course are not native to Australia but suited to out back Australia.

*The very first camel to ever set foot on the red Australian soil arrived in 1840 and came from the Canary Islands. (This was a somewhat unlucky camel, as it accidentally caused its owners death and was subsequently shot...) But this first camel was soon followed by others. 24 more camels arrived in Australia in 1860 to be part of the Bourke and Wills expedition. And in the next fifty years an estimated 10,000 to 12,000 camels made their way to Australia!

The camels came to Australia mostly from India and Palestine, and nearly all of them were dromedaries (the one humped variety Camelus dromedarius). Apparently there were only about 20 two humped camels (bactrian camels of the species Camelus bactrianus) imported during that time.
On top of that Australians also started breeding their own camels.

The first of several Australian camel studs was established in 1866 in South Australia, and the studs went on to operate for fifty more years. (Interestingly the working camels bred in Australia turned out to be of much higher quality than the imported camels...) It was the camels, and the camel drivers or cameleers, that opened up the Australian Outback.
The camel drivers came mostly from Afghanistan, but also from Pakistan and the Turkish Empire.
*Taken from Outback Travel Secrets..