Broome, WA 6725

A Town on Two Names

Broome sits on the red-dirt coast of Western Australia, 2,200km north of Perth and right at the edge of the Kimberley. It has two names. To the wider world it's Broome. To the Yawuru people who have lived here for tens of thousands of years it's Rubibi, and you'll see both names on signs, parks and council documents around town. That dual identity sets the tone: Broome is one of the most culturally interesting towns in the country.

Around 14,000 people call it home year-round. That number more than doubles in the dry-season tourist months. The town is small enough to walk across in twenty minutes, but its reach is enormous: Broome is the gateway to the entire western Kimberley, and most travellers heading north into Cape Leveque, the Dampier Peninsula or the Gibb River Road pass through here first.

Cable Beach

If you've seen one photo of Broome, it was Cable Beach. Twenty-two kilometres of unbroken white sand, turquoise water, red pindan cliffs at the southern end, and a sunset every clear evening that turns the sky into a watercolour. It's the town's defining feature and where most visitors spend their first afternoon.

Vehicles are still allowed on the beach north of the rocks (4WD only, watch the tides), and you can drive right onto the sand and pop a chair down for the sunset show. Camels trekking along the shore at golden hour is the postcard image, and yes, the rides are real and worth doing once.

The water is generally swimmable from May to October, but conditions change fast. Stinger season runs roughly November to May (irukandji and box jellyfish), and saltwater crocodiles appear in the area too, especially around mangroves and creek mouths. Always check the warning signs and swim only in patrolled zones.

When to Go

Broome runs on two seasons rather than four.

The dry season, roughly May through October, is the tourist window. Days are warm and clear, nights are cool, humidity is low, and every road north of town is open. This is when accommodation books out months ahead and prices peak.

The wet season, November through April, is hot, sticky, and prone to monsoonal storms and cyclones. Many tour operators close, some Kimberley roads become impassable, and stinger season is in force. The trade-off is dramatic skies, lush landscapes, and far fewer tourists. April and October are the shoulder weeks when things start opening or winding down.

For a first visit, mid-June to early September is the sweet spot.

Staircase to the Moon

Three nights a month between roughly March and October, the full moon rises over the exposed mudflats of Roebuck Bay at low tide, and the reflection on the wet sand makes a glowing optical staircase that climbs up to the moon itself. It only happens here, only at certain tides, and only when the timing is right.

The town runs night markets at Town Beach on Staircase nights, and the foreshore fills up with people setting up chairs along the seawall. Check the Visit Broome calendar for exact dates if you want to time your trip around it.

The Pearling and Chinatown Heritage

Broome was a pearling capital from the 1880s, and at the industry's peak the town supplied around three-quarters of the world's mother-of-pearl. Japanese, Malay, Filipino, Chinese, Koepanger and Aboriginal divers worked together in dangerous conditions, and the cultural mix that came out of that era still shapes the town today.

You can walk it in an hour. Start in Chinatown, the historic centre on Carnarvon and Dampier Streets, where the original tin-sheet shopfronts still trade as galleries, jewellers and pearl showrooms. Sun Pictures, opened in 1916, is the world's oldest operating outdoor garden cinema and still shows movies under the stars. The Japanese Cemetery on Port Drive holds more than 900 graves of pearl divers, an unusually large memorial for a town this size and a sobering reminder of the cost of the industry.

Several local pearl farms still operate up the Dampier Peninsula and run tours, and the showrooms in Chinatown stock everything from $200 keshi pearls to museum-grade strands.

Gantheaume Point and the Dinosaur Footprints

At the southern end of Cable Beach, the red sandstone cliffs at Gantheaume Point hold one of the most significant dinosaur footprint sites in the world. The prints, around 130 million years old, are visible only at very low tide, and finding them takes a bit of patience and good timing. Plaster casts of the prints sit at the headland as a backup.

The point itself is worth the visit even if the tide is wrong. The lighthouse, the rock pools (Anastasia's Pool, named after a former lighthouse keeper's wife), and the colour contrast between the red rock, white sand and turquoise water are one of the best photo spots in the region.

Roebuck Bay and Town Beach

The east side of town opens onto Roebuck Bay, a 550 sq km tidal bay that hosts hundreds of thousands of migratory shorebirds every year. The Broome Bird Observatory at the southern end of the bay is one of the best birding sites on the Australian flyway, and twitchers come from around the world to see species that have flown all the way from Siberia.

Town Beach itself is the family-friendly side of Broome: calm water, picnic shelters, the Staircase to the Moon viewing area, and the regular Saturday markets at Town Beach Reserve. It's a 5-minute drive from Chinatown.

Eat and Drink

Broome punches above its weight on the food front, partly because of the cultural mix and partly because the town has the budget tourists who'll pay for it.

Matso's Broome Brewery is the town institution: a pub-and-brewery in a heritage tin-roofed building on Hamersley Street with a beer garden that's been busy since the 1990s. Their mango and ginger beers are local cult items.

The Aarli on Hamersley does modern Australian with a Kimberley twist. Cable Beach Club Resort's Sunset Bar is the place to take the camel-and-cocktail crowd. For the catch-of-the-day, Cable Beach Sunset Bar & Grill and the seafood vans at Town Beach on market days are reliable.

Coffee culture is genuine here too: Good Cartel and Stowaway are both well above the standard you'd expect for a town of 14,000.

How Many Days Do You Need

For Broome itself, two to three days is enough to cover Cable Beach, Chinatown, Gantheaume Point, Town Beach and a Staircase night.

Five to seven days lets you add a Cape Leveque or Dampier Peninsula day trip, a horizontal-falls scenic flight from the airport, a pearl farm tour, and a longer walk along the cliffs. If you're using Broome as the base for a Kimberley road trip, plan a two-week minimum and pick up a 4WD.

Getting to Broome

By air, Broome International Airport (BME) sits right on the edge of town, a five-minute drive from Cable Beach. Qantas, Virgin and Rex run direct flights from Perth (2.5 hours), and Qantas runs seasonal direct flights from Sydney and Melbourne during the dry. From Perth Airport, there are usually three flights a day in peak season.

By road, it's a serious commitment. Perth to Broome on the Brand and North West Coastal Highway is 2,240km, which is three to four days of solid driving with overnight stops at Carnarvon, Karratha and Port Hedland. From Darwin, the alternative is the Great Northern Highway through Kununurra and Halls Creek, around 1,870km of equally long driving.

Once you're in town, you can walk most of central Broome and Chinatown. For Cable Beach and Gantheaume Point you'll want a car or the Town Bus shuttle, and for any Kimberley side trips a 4WD is essential.

Final Word

Broome is one of the few Australian towns where the geography, the climate, the Indigenous culture and the migration history all hit you at the same time. The Cable Beach sunset is iconic, but the town really earns its reputation in the small details: a walk through Chinatown at dusk, a pearl shell on the high-tide line, the Yawuru place names on the sign at Town Beach, the moon rising over Roebuck Bay.

Come in the dry. Stay longer than you think you need to. And if Broome is your introduction to the Kimberley, plan a return trip before you've even left, because most people do.