Chris Pritchard takes a ride-of-a-lifetime on Cable Beach, where camel trains are a popular form of transport.
Max smiles at me. I’m convinced of this, even if others would swear it’s a grimace. His teeth are brown-streaked, though he doesn’t smoke – not even Camels.
This shouldn’t surprise me because Max – who carries me 4km along Cable Beach’s pristine white sand – is himself a camel.
Cable Beach is splendid for swimming, except during the rainy season when stinging jellyfish are a hazard. Camel rides, particularly at sunset, are a Broome institution.
Camels? In kangaroo country? It’s little known that Australia exports camels for racing and transport to the Middle East. Disease-free and with exceptional stamina, the beasts are descended from feral camels. About 200,000 roam the arid hinterland. Several towns hold camel races. Resorts – even on Queensland’s tropical holiday isles – offer camel rides. Camel meat graces tables at a few restaurants. Several cameleers from Down Under have worked with the creatures in Gulf countries.
A popular Australian tourist trip is a train, plying between Adelaide and Darwin, called The Ghan. Its name honours immigrant Afghani camel-train operators, known locally as “ghans”, who operated routes which were supply lifelines to remote communities.
Camel imports, from the Indian subcontinent, began in the mid-1800s and continued until 1907. Railways and trucks replaced camel trains, so Afghanis assimilated into Australian society. Their liberated camels went wild, thriving in the outback. Only in the past 40 years has economic potential – in tourism, live-animal exports and meat – been exploited.
Broome – where tourism trebles the 14,000-strong population around mid-year – boasts a greater frontier feeling than Australia’s other two major northern outposts: Cairns, with its glitzy tourist ambience, and increasingly metropolitan Darwin. But it’s a fast-growing town. Besides tourism, with accommodation in all categories, the main activity is pearling, pioneered by Japanese divers. Now pearl farms produce cultured pearls.
One of Australia’s most multicultural and artistic towns (with over a dozen galleries), Broome – aside from its aboriginal minority – is redolent with Japanese and Indonesian influences and has a strong Chinese presence. Downtown, rather than just a section of it, is called Chinatown.
Like many visitors, I spend warm days wandering through shops and galleries, discovering pearl-oriented attractions and exploring mangroves by hovercraft. I linger at innovative eateries and down-home Aussie pubs, sample brews at Broome’s micro-brewery and reserve tickets to a just-released movie at Sun Pictures, the world’s oldest open-air cinema, where filmgoers fill rows of deckchairs. Whatever else beckons, my camel ride looms as a Broome highlight.
At the Cable Beach Club, this leading resort’s Sunset Bar slopes across lawns to famed Cable Beach where four companies compete for camel-ride business (with little to choose between them). Cable Beach Camel Safaris’ owner Steve Madden is understandably pleased that “almost every visitor takes a camel ride – even those coming on business”. Their bizarre shape – sparking that chestnut about camels being designed by committees – endears these animals to humans, even when the critters are foul-tempered, shrieking and spitting.
My own ride upon Max, a truly dignified ship of the desert, wafts me and another passenger gently along the sand. A fiery ball drops slowly toward the smooth, glistening Indian Ocean. Our nine-camel train is led up the beach by a handler in front.
The sun is fast-sinking. I decide, as the ever-courteous Max sits for me to dismount, that this is a glorious end to the day. But there’ll be time for alfresco cocktails at the Sunset Bar.
FACT FILE
- Easiest access is through Darwin (within the networks of several Asian carriers), with onward flights to Broome on Air North or Skywest. Otherwise, fly to Perth (served by a selection of Asian airlines) from where Qantas and Skywest offer domestic connections. In Broome, car rental companies operate – with beach buggies also available. Taxis are plentiful. A double-decker bus tour provides excellent orientation. The “town bus” makes regular loops, linking downtown to resorts.
- Cable Beach Club (tel 61 8 9192 0400, www.cablebeachclub.com) is an opulent, well-run former InterContinental at the edge of Cable Beach. Rooms start from A$308/US$257 (except for the December-March humid “wet” season when the rates are A$268/US$223).
- Cable Beach Camel Safaris (tel/fax 61 8 9192 3999), 1.5-hour rides, A$45/US$37.50. Longer rides by arrangement.
- Log on to www.westernaustralia.com or www.australiasnorthwest.com
