A piece of Broome history

It would have to be something pretty significant to get me out of bed at 5am on a Sunday during a holiday. Despite the desire (strong) to sleep in, I couldn't pass up the chance to see this. On the mudflats under Roebuck Bay lie a number of plane wrecks. I wrote briefly about this in one of my early Broome posts.

During WWII Broome's airport was strafed (shot at) by Japanese fighter planes. They also shot and destroyed a number of Catalina planes (aka flying boats) which were carrying Dutch refugees from Java. A number of these have been preserved in the mudflats.

So we trudged through 1km of mud and a tidal river to get to the wrecks. The tide was so low that there were some wrecks exposed that Chris and Wendy (longtime Broome residents) had never seen.

Wing?

tide coming back in

Chris with his new-found wreck. I decided not to venture out there because there were stingrays in the knee deep water!

Crab in disguise:

Looking back towards shore:


Some go in style: No sloshing through mud for these hovercraft passengers

The long walk back: 2.5 hours later, the sun has fully risen