If it had not been for our neighbour at the Tarangau Caravan Park we may never have taken what turned out to be one of the best tours we have experienced.
Alex and his wife Jeanette winter in Broome each year where they work for the Willie Creek pearl farm group, he as a guide and she in one of their retail outlets. We got on famously, to the extent that we were quite prepared to accept Alex's advice that the boat tour to the Willie Creek facility was worth every cent of the $190 per head cost.
We were glad however that we had preceded this wonderful day with a visit firstly to the 'Pearl Lugger', the quasi-commercial museum in the pearl retail centre of Broome.
Here we had been able take a good look at the two restored luggers on display together with many other exhibits and information plaques (which provided a deal of material for my last missive).
Our later sortie to the excellent Broome Museum, a deceptively non-descript looking building,
the back yard of which overlooks the mangrove lined shoreline of Roebuck Bay, proved to be first class use of our time.
Here I began to understand the true nature of pearls, how they are produced, classified and valued.
In addition to the pearl related information, this museum presents an array of exhibits relating to the development of Broome, pearl shell 'objects-de-art' and many other odds and ends.
Here, for example, is a photograph of one of the WA State Ships (a fleet I had first learnt about so long ago in Busselton), the Koolanda, alongside the Broome wharf at low tide
and here she is again, this time etched into the mother of pearl of a pearl oyster shell.
This, and the clock displayed next to it, were but two of the many such objects on display which were extremely popular in their day and gave the pearl shell its value during the initial years of the industry.
The museum also houses a highly detailed and interactive display relating to the Japanese air raid on the town about which I have previously written, including various recovered bits and pieces of some of the destroyed aircraft such as this Dornier engine.
But I digress.....the subject at hand is pearls. Here at the Broome Museum I gained my first understanding of just how pearls, either natural or cultured, are classified. It's simple, really, and when you think about it, logical.
Size,
shape,
colour, lustre
and surface are the five criteria by which the appeal (and ergo, value) of a pearl are objectively judged, but as with all such things, it can also just be a matter of 'the eye of the beholder'.
I have to admit that I had previously thought that all pearls were round, were all the same colour and came only from salt water.....wrong. There is a thriving fresh water cultured pearl industry (not the same quality as those from sea water) and the size and colour of cultured pearls is very much a result of the type of host oyster and its environment.
Obviously there is little which can be done about the basis characteristics of each pearl...that is up to the oyster and the conditions in which it lives, but 'surface' is a different matter. As was pointed out in the museum, those skilled in the art of scraping away surface impediments were set to make a great deal of money, as did the redoubtable T.B. Ellies in his day. This came as something of
a surprise to me until I later discovered that the two most important of all the criteria by which pearls are judged and valued are lustre and surface. Size, shape and colour are considered to be more a matter of personal taste.
As we learnt on our day tour to Willie Creek pearls, the modern production of cultured pearls is an enterprise in which high levels of scientific, manual and aquaculture husbandry expertise are the essentials of success. Before we delve more deeply into the fascinating world of the 'molested molluscs', we had to get there.....to Willie Creek that is.
Willie Creek is really a sea inlet on the coast some 40 kms north of Broome. It can be easily accessed by road, but it is much more fun to do so by sea, a trip which not only gets one there but provides marvellous views of the whole Cable Beach set-up (and you all know how I like 'perspective'!).
And what a fun trip it was, beginning when the bus which picked us up at our park and deposited us on the flat, firm sands of the southern end of Cable Beach
near Ganthaume Point. Here our only company were a few punters launching small craft, those taking an early morning constitutional along the beach, and the Fong family, perched in the splendid isolation of their magnificent house high on the Point (yes, they do have a quid or two!)
The promotional blurb relating to this tour talks of transfers to the cruise boat by 'Sea Legs'....and indeed I had been wondering how we would get from shore to ship in the absence of any form of wharf or landing platform.
Simple really.....use an IRB with wheels. What a hoot this craft is. As it approaches the shore, three hydraulically operated wheels are lowered to allow it to traverse the sand with ease.....'sea legs' indeed!
Our transport to Willie Creek lay at anchor offshore. This rather 'practical' looking craft was certainly fit for purpose. With its twin hulls and interesting bow design, the duel motors can push this vessel along at nearly 30 knots. It is a very slippery boat.
Our shore to ship transfers were completed in no time.
With a couple of 'Quells' hastily swallowed and her life jacket firmly secured, 'she who hates being on the water' was ready to go.
And 'go' we did. The seas were almost flat calm over a long, low swell. Our trusty skipper Ryan had us scooting along a a very good clip after a quick sortie out to the end of the Ganthaume Point where he pointed out some of the geological and other features of this part of Broome, including the dark stain on the rocks which shows the level of the high water during the huge spring tides.
I have already used some of the shots I took of Cable Beach during our transit and shall not bother again here. Suffice it to say within less than an hour we were on our approach to the Willie Creek complex, shimmering on the distant shore in the morning sea and heat haze.
Although they are somewhat difficult to pick up, I would like to refer you to the white water of the waves which appear to be breaking near the shore. This is an illusion of distance. The entrance to the Willie Creek inlet is surrounded by sand banks which present a serious trap for young players. The waves in this photo are quite a distance off shore.
The entrance channel winds its way past rows of these sand banks which prevent a direct passage into the inlet moorings. At one stage we were almost heading out to sea again as we dodged the lurking banks.
In fact, the entrance to Willie Creek in anything other than a flat bottomed punt is only possible on certain tides......today was to be the last for over a week that our tour would be able to operate as it did. Even then a good local knowledge is critical. Notwithstanding my considerable experience at sea in various craft, I was struggling to pre-empt our course through this maze of sandy shoals.
Ryan had no such difficulty, although he did later admit he was certainly concentrating, and we were soon at our mooring in the sheltered waters of Willie Creek
where the local 'barge' took us to the landing dock.
Thanks to 'broomeaccommodation.com' this aerial shot of Willie Creek shows the entrance to the 'creek' curving through the sandbars
and the pearl farm buildings on the right bank.
Once we had been dropped off at the landing dock it was but a short walk past a flat rock shelf
and on up the path to the Willie Creek restaurant, shop and interpretive centre.
Here our tour guide Ben, a qualified marine biologist from Old Blighty (what a way to spend a working holiday in Oz!) provided us with an extensive, highly informative and humorous explanation of the way in which pearls are cultured. Ben really was a whizz. He had that wonderful knack of presenting potentially complex scientific information in an entertaining and simple way.
I learnt very quickly that my previous belief that to produce cultured pearls one merely had to poke a bit of grit into some poor unsuspecting oyster, stand back whilst it launched into a frenzy of self-protection by coating the unwelcome intruder with increasing layers of nacre, and then helping oneself to the resultant pearl, was fanciful to say the least. I had the general principle right, but I was woefully lacking on detail.
Before launching into what I hope will be a reasonably succinct expose of this whole process, a spot of history.
We previously left the Broome pearling industry as WWII approached. The war came and went and the effect it had on the industry (and the town) was significant. Whilst the five years of conflict had allowed the pearl oyster beds to recover and had wiped out the Japanese competition (literally in many instances....you may recall the fighting on the island of Palau was particularly vicious), all the luggers and the experienced divers had gone. Additionally, the development of a good, sturdy plastic button had severely dented the demand for pearl shell. Despite a small resurgence, by 1960 the traditional pearling industry had collapsed.
A new era was about to dawn....that of the cultured pearl. And here I discovered that I had been living in blissful ignorance of another very relevant historical fact for years. Despite the fact that Kokichi Mikimoto brought cultured pearls to the world in a large way, the real credit for pioneering the technique to the point that it became commercially viable belongs to another man altogether.
The British ex-pat marine biologist, William Saville-Kent, had been working with a few of Broome's Pearling Masters for some time in the early 1900's to seed pearl oysters. He had advanced the technique significantly when two Japanese associates took this knowledge back to Japan. This was passed on to Mikimoto through a family connection. Mikimoto put it to very good use, adapted his earlier techniques which had not been altogether successful in producing a pearl of good shape, and patented the process (I suspect that there was a considerable amount of wheeling and dealing along the way!). The rest, as they say, is history and the name Mikimoto has been inextricably associated with the cultured pearl industry ever since.
In 1921, back in Broome, one entrepreneurial Pearling Master and local luminary (he served as Broome's mayor for some time), Captain Ancell Gregory, had cottoned on to the potential of this cultured pearl business. He applied for a licence to culture pearls on a lease in Roebuck Bay.
At this time the pearling industry in Broome was still harvesting and exporting over 60 percent of the world's natural pearls and it comes as no surprise to read that Gregory's rival pearling masters took a dim view of his proposal. They won the day. Despite whatever clout he may have had, Gregory's enterprise was shut down by the Fisheries Department in 1922......so much for competition! I suspect that there would have been some interesting moments in the Roebuck Pub over this period and for some time to come!
And the Government did not stop there. The WA Parliament passed a law prohibiting the production of cultured pearls in the State. Unsurprisingly this action by the authorities put paid to the development of the cultured pearl industry in Broome and elsewhere for many years.....until 1956 in fact, when the legislation was repealed and 'Pearls Pty Ltd' established a farm at Kuri Bay in the Kimberly near Derby. Now there are 22 pearl farms licenced in Australia, 16 of which are located in Western Australia. What a turn-around.
The Banfield family, who bought the Willie Creek pearl farm in 1994, are no slouches. Lured off the land (wheat farming) through a business relationship with Lord McAlpine, they arrived in Broome in 1989 to initially set up and operate a bus service which included tours to Willie Creek. After buying the pearl farm they continued to expand their business which now includes the ownership of six showrooms in Willie Creek, Broome and Perth, The Pearl Lugger (which we visited previously) and Broome Sightseeing Tours. Not bad for erstwhile cockies.
But back to the present and our tour. Ben explained how Broome's famous South Seas pearls are produced. Central in the process is the very large pearl oyster Pinctada maxima, and as you can see and its name suggests, it is a whopper. It produces either silver or gold coloured pearls of exceptional lustre.
Both wild and hatchery produced pearl oysters are used. They are initially held in large tanks on board 'seeding vessels' for four months to acclimatise to their new location before they are "relaxed and pegged open to allow a pearl technician to perform the operation in a sterile room on board the vessel".
Seeding is a highly specialised process. Those engaged in this part of the operation are all scientifically qualified and most have had to work their way up the process chain from the more menial tasks before being let loose on the captive molluscs.
And it is not just any bit of gritty irritant which is placed into the oyster, nor it is just plonked anywhere. Let me again quote from the Willie Creek guide book. "A small nucleus formed from the shell of the Mississippi mussel [a very dense shell which forms a weighty pearl] is inserted into an incision in the oyster's gonad [!!!!! author's exclamation]. This nucleus is coupled with a piece of nacre secreting mantle tissue, which develops into a sac around the the nucleus within the gonad. The shell is then safely housed within a pearl panel and placed on the ocean floor to undergo a complex 'turning' process which encourages the development of a round pearl."
Why the gonad? Within the anatomy of the oyster this is the only spot where the planted pearl seed can be safely housed whilst the shells are rotated and moved, and beyond that I'll offer no further comment!
So there you have it. After a couple of years of constant husbandry, the oyster shell is again prised open and (hopefully) a beautiful pearl is extracted. But the poor old oyster is not done with yet.....it often has to deal with another attack on its vital parts for a second seeding. There is no rest for the wicked in the cultured pearl game, if you were born a Pinctada maxima that is.
After all this it was time for lunch. My brain was reeling with information and we were both happy to sit down to what proved to be an excellent meal, even if a little small in the typically yuppie vein. 
The tourist side of the Willie Creek farm is extensively housed,
and the large restaurant section caters for many,
which is just as well. We were not the only ones visiting Willie Creek, but we knew which tables were ours......we had the blue water bottles!
After lunch it was back to our transfer boat where we were given a lesson on they way in which the seeded oysters are regularly cleaned and turned, all snug in their mesh support. And would you believe....Dave, the skipper of this craft, not only grew up in Clare but has a brother in the SA Police whom I know very well!
After a quick tour of another section of the Willie Creek inlet it was back to the pearl shop where obviously it was hoped that we would be sufficiently enthused by the whole thing to be lured into a purchase or two. 
To my great relief, despite the fact that Liz was at one stage adorned with a necklace of significant quality, she decided that the price tag of $30,000 was just a bit beyond our resources at the moment!
As for me, well I just knew that pearls are not my thing!
This had been a very good day. But it was not quite over.....we still had the trip back to look forward to. As we made our way back out of the creek we passed the hulk of a seized illegal Indonesian fishing boat
before making passage at a good clip back along the coast. It was time to sit up on the side and just enjoy the ride.
As we passed the Cable Beach resort the camel trains were assembling on the beach
and the daily procession of 4WD's were beginning to make their way down to the sands for sunset.
The sails were being hoisted on the cruising pearl lugger
and the southern end of Cable Beach was now crowded with vehicles bringing even more revellers to the beach for another Broome sunset experience.
As for us, well it was onto the trusty Sea Legs and back onto dry land once more, where this incredible craft was lowered on its hydraulic legs to allow us to disembark with dignity intact. I could not help reflecting just how similar this manoeuvre was to that of the camels as they plonk themselves down onto their knees to divest themselves of their passengers.
With the flick of a switch Ryan had this marvel back up again 
and heading out to sea whilst we rejoined our waiting bus for the ride back to camp.
The Willie Creek boat day tour is a very slick operation indeed (unlike this blog which developed another mind of its own towards the latter part of it....apologies) Things did not miss a beat all day. In a nutshell...efficient, very informative and damn good fun. Let me end as I began...today had been worth every penny it cost and was a real highlight of our Broome visit.
I read a article under the same title some time ago, but this articles quality is much, much better. How you do this..
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