I don’t know why we make travel plans, we never stick to them. We did get up to Darwin to see our son and Daughter-in-law, but we stayed three weeks rather than the planned five. Also we had planned to return home via the Red Centre, but instead have back tracked and are now back in Broome again.

We had a caravan park booked in town as from 28th, which at the time of writing this, is today. Arriving three days earlier than that we decided we’d give the Broome Gateway Caravan park a go. It’s nearly 30 kms out from town, and they don’t have powered sites. However, it’s around half the price of any of the sites in town, and it gets great reviews so we thought we’d give it a go.

The sites, as promised, are really spacious. There’s plenty of shady trees on most of the sites, and plenty of sunny space left for charging solar panels. Having plenty of solar panels and a power pack, we don’t need to have a powered site as long as we can get our panels in the sun for most of the day. We had our caravan set up, the annex partially set up beside it, and beside that a 2.4 x 2.4 shade house. There was a small grove of trees at the side of our shade house, probably around 3 metres in width with about 5 trees, and there would have been a similar amount of space on the other side of our caravan. For anyone used to caravan parks you may think I’m exaggerating. I’m not, I wish I’d taken more photos to prove it. The sites are amazingly big.

The ablution blocks are equally as spacious. Each toilet, shower, and hand basin is in its own very large, separate room. The rooms have painted concrete floors, and the walls are concrete block and tin. The showers are hot, and whilst the toilets and hand basins are stained an outback sort of orange colour, it’s still clear that they are spotlessly clean.

During the three nights we were there, there were two ‘fire watch’ alerts issued for an area that included the caravan park. Fortunately the fire was to the west of us, and the wind was blowing in a Westerly direction, so the fire was travelling in the opposite direction of the caravan park. If the wind had reversed, it may have turned nasty, but all was good. We couldn’t even smell the smoke, despite the fire looking alarmingly close.

We wondered if it would feel too far away from Cable Beach. However, none of the caravan parks in town are right on the beach, so even when staying in town, we usually take our car and drive onto the beach at Gantheame Point. The extra 25 – 30kms seemed to make very little difference really in the scheme of things.

At around 5pm they light a big fire in the communal fire pit at Gateway. The travellers bring along a drink and sit around the fire sharing travel stories and getting to know each other. On the first night we met three other couples who come from the same suburb in Mandurah that we live in. We’d never met them before, amazing!

Today we moved into the caravan park that we booked in town. As I type this I can hear every word my next neighbour says as she talks on the phone, and the noise of traffic going past on the adjoining street has me thinking that Gateway may just end up being our preferred caravan parks for future years. It was so peaceful there comparatively, although the noise of the trucks on the highway at night did carry on the wind from time to time.

To be fair we’ll give it a couple of weeks here before we make any firm decisions for future years. One thing that we certainly can’t ignore though is the cost. If we had stayed for the entire 5 weeks at Gateway the cost would have been a total of $1320. For the same amount of time in town, this particular caravan park, albeit on a powered site, will cost us $2695. That’s less than half the price. Even factoring in a couple of extra tanks of fuel, it’s still at least $1000 less. Most of the caravan parks in town are even more expensive than that. We’re actually in one of the cheaper, no frills parks. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a very nice park, with lots of shade, and very clean toilets. There’s no pool though, nor children’s play equipment (we don’t want either of those things anyway). Compared to the space allocated at Gateway, these sites are small. The phrase that comes to mind is ‘crammed in like sardines’. But I guess the owners have to make a living, and there are always a lot of tourists in Broome during the winter months, so there’s a need for caravan parks to fit as many caravaners in as they can. Whether or not we decide to stay at Gateway again in future years, we really did enjoy the space and the serenity there this year, even though it was only for three nights. It had a campground feel to it rather than a structured caravan park full of rules and regulations. Oh – and I haven’t yet mentioned they seem to take great pride in being extremely dog friendly (to friendly dogs). They even have a fenced dog paddock for pooches to run around in off lead. Typing this up, ya know what – and I think you’ll agree with me, I think it’s going to be a no brainer as to where we stay next time we bring the caravan up to Broome! What do you think?