Country And Western Stores

Country And Western Stores

Country And Western Stores

I read once that living in the city can feel like a huge tomb of nasty writhing, hungry death. We all need to escape it at times – go nomadic. Broome in the Kimberley, Western Australia, can feel like a therapeutic haven from the everyday accoutrements of the big smoke – the freeway rush, the pandemonium of a megaplex multi-level shopping centre, all that sloths off like old withered skin.

Inbound on a Skywest flight that runs daily, as you descend onto the tarmac your body feels cocooned by the warm air, as if a chrysalis is forming. Relaxing down at Cable Beach on the north side of town, face flushed with sea salt or with feet dusted up by the red pindan sand, Broome is a place where you don’t struggle for downtime, it gives it to you.

The quaint bungalows scattered across town with their neat trimmed tin roofs and corrugated iron undulating walls evoke history and a keen aesthetic that mirrors the visual mastery of many Kimberley people. Helen Norton, sometimes-local Robert Juniper, and more recently Hiromi Ashlin from Happy Bird gallery with her mixed media origami works on paper, are nice examples of people who understand landscape and the poetics of place.