Day 67. Some early history of Broome. 17/07/2015

Another beautiful day in Paradise. After some early morning chores we set off to visit the Broome Historical Museum. The Museum  building itself has an interesting history and was first erected in the late 1890's and it became a store in 1901. After quite a colourful history the building was bequeathed to the Shire and the Broome Historical Society became the lessee. The Museum holds some excellent displays detailing the history of pearling in Broome. We learnt that the much sought after pearl shell the Pinchada Maxima was first discovered in Cossack in 1861. The display was very interesting and informative and also featured many artefacts associated with pearling. There was a Decompression Chamber on display that was used for the pearl divers who were suffering from the bends and interestingly, between 1910-1914, 92 pearl divers died and after the introduction of the chamber only 1 diver died in 1915. In April 1887 Roebuck Bay was hit by a cyclone and 140 men drowned on the pearling fleets.
The explorer William Dampier landed at Cygnet Bay in 1688 and on show in the Museum is the original copy of his book "A New Voyage round the World," that was published in 1697.
Broome has been a very multicultural town and there were wonderful displays depicting the lives of the Chinese that lived here in the 1800's, the Japanese pearl divers along with Indonesians and of course the Aboriginals.
In a separate building was an original Sail Makers Shed of 1907, and in another annexe was the McDaniel Shell Collection, an amazing shell collection that has been visited by Royals and the public alike.
Broome was attacked several times during WW11 and there were many objects and stories from those times. There was even a railway line constructed that took goods to and from Chinatown and the Port, carriages were pulled by horses before small steam engines took over the role. The Museum had many other displays that held our interest for a couple of hours and I'm sure we could have spent longer there.
We followed our Museum visit with a quick trip to get fuel and some groceries and then returned for a rest and to prepare for our outing to see the sunset over the beach at the Cable Beach Club Resort Bar and Bistro. We left camp early at 4pm to secure front row tables with the best view. We spent a wonderful evening with Pat and Keith, Neil and Sue, Rod and Jude, Don and Heather. The sunset again was amazing,  the setting of the Bistro is just awesome.
A perfect ending to a fantastic day.

The air attack by the Japanese on Broome caused considerable damage.

Finding the missing plane but not until 2012.

The great diamond heist - this is intriguing.

Amazing how people survived

The White Australia Policy was implemented.

William Dampiers (published) 1697 original "A New Voyage round the world." 

The first person to circumnavigate the world. A very brave sea captain.

The route of the old Broome train tracks.

A steam train unloading in Chinatown.

This will bring back memories to some of us.

Drinks before sunset at Cable Beach Resort.

Amazing sunsets.