Broome, Western Australia

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For other places and usages, see Broome.

Broome (Template:Coor dm) is a pearling and tourist town in the Kimberley in the far north of Western Australia. The year round population is approximately 14,000, but that grows to around 30,000 during the tourist season.

Broome is famous for its beautiful Indian Ocean beaches and wonderful dry season climate. Being in the tropics, it has two seasons. The wet season extends from October to March and has hot and humid weather with tropical downpours. The early pearl masters used to send their families to Perth to escape the wet season and beached their luggers to avoid the cyclones that occasionally visit during the wet.

Broome was first visited by European William Dampier in 1688 and again in 1699. Many of the coastal features of the area are named by him. In 1879, Charles Harper suggested that the pearling industry could be served by a port closer to the pearling grounds, and that Roebuck Bay would be suitable. In 1883, John Forrest selected the site for the town, and it was named after the Governor of Western Australia, Sir Frederick Broome.

In 1889, a telegraph undersea cable was laid from Broome to Singapore, connecting to England. Hence the name Cable Beach given to the landfall site.

The town has an interesting history based around the exploits of the men and women who developed the pearling industry, starting with the harvesting of oysters for mother of pearl in the 1880s to the current major cultured pearl farming enterprises. The riches from the pearl beds did not come cheap, and the town's Japanese cemetery is the resting place of more than 900 Japanese divers who lost their lives working in the industry. Many were lost at sea and the exact number of deaths is unknown.

The Japanese were only one of the major ethnic groups who flocked to Broome to work on the luggers or the shore based activities supporting the harvesting of oysters from the waters around Broome. They were specialist divers and, despite political pressure to expel them in support of the White Australia Policy, became an indispensable part of the industry until World War II.

During the war Broome was bombed twice by Japan, killing over 100 military personnel and civilians, and destroying much of the pearling fleet. At the end of the war damage and evacuation had left Broome as a shell of its former self, but the town and its pearling industry soon recovered. The mining boom of the 1960s and later tourism also helped Broome develop and diversify, and now Broome is one of the fastest growing parts of Australia.

At Gantheaume Point and 30 metres out to sea are dinosaur footprints believed to be from the Cretaceous Age approximately 130 million years ago. The tracks can be seen only during very low tide.