Halls Creek is looking a bit tired – the caravan park has closed since the owner died and no-one wants to take it on and the main hotel in town is behind serious security fencing.
Otherwise, a fairly typical small country town in the sticks. A couple of small supermarkets, a roadhouse/fuel stop, two motels, a busy aerodrome and lots of administrative buildings, police, schools etc.
Locals were friendly enough but news reports that after dark a lot of juvenile crime (mainly break-ins and car theft) happen as kids take to the street rather than be around the drinking and fighting at home. Locked in to the Kimberley Resort we didn’t see the after dark life.
I got talking to a big aboriginal guy while having a hamburger lunch outside a local cafe. He turned out to be the cousin of a Ernie Bridge, a well known state politician and hard worker for the Kimberley. ‘Evil’ had worked for the dad of a girl I was at boarding school with (and she went on to become longtime mayor of Katherine in the Northern Territory) so he filled me in on how the old man had lost his cattle station to drink, debit, slow horses and fast women. He was a bit of an entrepaneur with ideas for making money turning local pest horse populations into pet food. At the Fitzroy Crossing Lodge halfway to Broome ‘Evil’ turned up on a video of aboriginal groups organising rebuilding Fitzroy Crossing after the floods in 2022. Another old lady was dressed in a puffer jacket as the high 20 degrees Celsius was too cold.
Very nice to be able to relax, have coffee on demand and a clean shower followed by (expensive) big meals and a beer.
