After an unusual sleep in, the kids reluctantly got stuck into some schoolwork this morning.  They may have even learnt something.

We’d planned on a morning shop and then an afternoon at the beach, but the tides ruled otherwise.  So we went to the beach in the morning when the sand was at its widest.  The water is pretty salty up here and this was setting off the kids eczema a little bit.  Not enough to stop them body surfing and jumping the waves for a couple of hours.

Kel & I got plenty of exercise walking from the car to the water, to check on the kids and cool down, and then back to the car again to dry off and sunbake.  Well maybe not exercise, but it’s my story and I’m sticking to it!

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We had to be off the beach by 12 otherwise we’d be stuck on there until after high tide passed which would be about 3.  So, back to the park for a rinse off before heading out to do the shopping.  Except the rinse off turned into a swim in the pool … and then lunch … and we ran out of time.

Next stop of the day was Broome Hovercraft Tours.  We’d booked in to do the sunset tour and that meant arriving at 3:30.  You need to pre-order some drinks to enjoy out on the sand bar at sunset.  A nice bottle of ‘Grey Nomads’ Sauvignon Blanc fitted the bill nicely.  While we were waiting for the show to get on the road Kel got a Roebuck Splice cocktail … the ingredients for this I reckon she’ll buy at the next opportunity, it was pretty yum.

The hovercraft first took us out following the coastline around Roebuck Bay, pointing out spots of interest and giving us some history of the area.  She gets along pretty quick and we were soon reverse parked up on the sand.

This stop was to highlight the dinosaur footprints that have been exposed by erosion here.  Quite interesting.  I’m sure the kids have remembered more facts about them than I have.  The tracks were made by about a 50 ton baby sauropod dinosaur.  This is the kind with 4 legs, big tail, long neck, eats grass …

A squillion years ago this baby trudged through the muddy forest floor.  This caused the mud underneath its feet to become compressed.  You can see below one of the footprints that is on the edge of the rock that the layers have been squished below it.  Tapping the rock around the footprint you can hear that it sounds almost hollow, whereas tapping the footprint makes no sound at all as the rock is denser.

History lesson out of the way, we headed out onto the tidal flats in search of a sandbar to watch the sunset and have some drinks and nibblies.  There was a bit of deja-vu with a boat and sandbars … but there wasn’t going to be any trouble with a hovercraft to scoot around in.

Out on the sandbar were hundreds of sea snails all scooting around in search of god knows what.  Also plenty of hermit crabs too.  Some of them are truly tiny.  Blake found one crab that was in a shell about a cm long and about a mm across the opening.  The whole place is absolutely brimming with life.

Once the sun had set we floated back to the hovercraft base in comfort, while sipping the last of our wine.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_oHn2Gx0lX0

Dinner tonight was at Matso’s brewery.  We wanted to go there to check out the chilli beer, which had plenty of bite.  Dinner was a curry platter for Kel & I and a Steak for Hannah.  Blake settled for a bowl of chips as he thought he was a bit seasick from the hovercraft.  Not likely … but chips he had anyway.

When we got the curry platter, Kel made her usual mention that it wouldn’t be hot enough and the Indian chef (from Melbourne) reckoned he could fix that.  He brought out some hot pickles and a tub of chilli.  He sprinkled a bit of it on the rice and proclaimed that that would be hot enough for us.  Kel asked if she could have a go and proceeded to cover everything in a layer of chilli.  The chef nearly had kittens!  He looked at me and I just said that “I’ll have the same thanks”.  He nervously covered my curry platter in chilli as well … and then took a photo of it … perhaps for public liability insurance purposes.  He came and checked on us a few times while we demolished the platters, incredulous that we were still alive.