What a stunning sky — Mars, Venus, a sliver of moon, and a silhouetted tree on the horizon.

I have a friend who’s an incredible photographer. He sees things in ways I don’t see them and always has the ability to turn ordinary photos into something special.

I, on the other hand, can take an extraordinary scene like this and turn it into a completely ordinary photo.

Damn it.

Big bush fires roared through the outback just outside Broome yesterday afternoon. You could see them raging from our hotel parking lot and again during our nightly sunset walk on Cable Beach.

No one seemed to be very concerned with the approaching flames. The camel caravan made its nightly circuit of the beach without skipping a beat. Hundreds of Aussies frolicked in the water without giving a second thought to the inferno raging right on the other side of the dunes.

We assume that’s because bush fires are sooooo common out here. A thunder storm can sweep across the outback and lightning strikes can spark dozens of them all across the horizon. In addition to all the naturally-occurring fires, may others are intentionally started by aborigines.

Yes, I did, in fact, say that the aborigines start fires intentionally. But no one considers them to be arsonists. They’re just an ancient people following their traditional beliefs.

The Australian Department of Biodiversity, Conservation & Attractions says:

Before Aboriginal people populated the Australian continent some 40,000 to 60,000 years ago, the major cause of fires would have been lightning. Aboriginal people learnt to harness the naturally recurring fire caused by lightning and other sources to their advantage, which resulted in skilful burning of landscapes for many different purposes.

Fire was used for:

• make access easier through thick and prickly vegetation. •. maintain a pattern of vegetation to encourage new growth and attract game for hunting • encourage the development of useful food plants, for cooking, warmth, signalling and spiritual reasons.

Unless one of these bush fires threatens structures, they’re generally allowed to burn themselves out. This part of the country just doesn’t have enough people nor enough water to put up a real defense.

We’ve actually driven through one bush fire whose flames came right up to the edge of the main highway across the Kimberley.

It was scary and destructive, but somehow fascinating and beautiful at the same time.

If I get to Heaven’s gate (which in itself is a doubtful proposition) and Saint Peter says, “Before you enter, Jim, you’re going to need to choose between watching baseball or cricket for eternity,” it would be a tough decision.

I’ve always been a baseball fanatic, but I guess this means that I’ve become a real cricket fan, too. Some people think cricket is boring, but as a newly-minted official cricket fan, I can say with great authority that they are wrong. It’s fascinating, sort of the bastard love child of baseball and chess.

The top-level international game is played in only twelve countries —England, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, the West Indies, India, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Zimbabwe, Bangladesh, Ireland, and Afghanistan. (Yes, the game originated in England back in the 1700s and spread across the British Empire.)

You have to feel sorry for the poor Pakistani team, which just got demolished in a two-game series by Australia‘a team. As a result of a terrorist attack in their home country, the international cricket organization has refused to schedule any games there for ten years. For a decade, its team has been forced to roam the world, perpetually the visiting team, never able to play in front of a friendly home crowd, never able to sleep in their own beds.

What a sad situation for any athlete in any sport. I hope they win every game they play except when they play Australia.

Aussie, Aussie, Aussie! Oi, oi, oi!

Broome only has two seasons. Locals call them The Wet and The Dry. The Wet generally lasts from November until April and The Dry from May through October. 

Here’s a chart that shows you just how wet the Wet is and how dry the Dry is. Two extremes.

Amazing, huh? Rain galore in January and February, a little more in December and February, then nothing the rest of the year. In February 2018 five feet of rain fell on Broome in less than two weeks.

Add in the heat and humidity that mark The Wet and you can understand why the town is empty this time of year.

We hoped a monsoon would come in early this year and strike while we’re in Broome. Locals say they’re incredible sights to see, that the skies are aflame with lightning and stepping outside is like walking into a car wash. Unfortunately, we’re too early and we haven’t seen a drop of rain.

Looks like we’ll need to return in some future January or February.

My favorite uncle sold real estate in Kalispell, Montana eleven months a year. I once asked Uncle Dick why he decided to open a Christmas tree lot in Southern California during the twelfth month and he said, “It’s tough to sell real estate when it’s covered with snow.” 

So each year, instead of freezing his ass off while not selling any real estate in Montana, he brought a big truckload of Montana fir trees to Southern California, rented a vacant lot, and sold them. 

It was genius. Pure genius. He escaped Montana’s cold weather for a month, spent that time instead in sunny Southern California, traded his truckload of trees for a truckload of cash, and had a truckload of fun in the process.

Uncle Dick would have made a fortune here in Broome. There are no Douglas firs for thousands of miles. Here’s all the proof you need: The Broome community Christmas tree, located at the busy corner of Carnarvon & Short Streets, is a boab, one of the strangest trees you’ll ever come across.

Their trunks are swollen and wrinkled and they can grow up to fifty feet tall. Boabs suck up water during The Wet, store it in their bulbous trunks, and live off it during The Dry.

I know it’s a little early, but Merry Christmas.

It’s the slow season in Broome. So slow, in fact, that it’s a little eerie. The beach is empty. The streets are empty. A number of shops and restaurants are closed for the season.

But emptiness has its virtues.

That perfect spot on the beach is always available. No screaming kids. No blaring radios set on different radio stations. No one running past and accidentally kicking sand into your lunch.

Being a glass half full kind of guy, I know can always get my glass fully-filled at any restaurant at any time. Just walk in, sit down, and get served immediately. No waiting.

Think of it as life in the slow lane.

Strong currents, submerged objects, crocodiles and stinging jellyfish. Oh, one other thing: It’s supposed to be 106 degrees Fahrenheit today.

If you’re old enough, you may think that’s an amusing headline. If you’re not, please allow me to explain:

For decades, Camel cigarettes’ advertising used the same headline over and over and over again. Each ad showed a different suave, sophisticated customer saying, “I’d walk a mile for a Camel.”

(Let’s just ignore the fact smoking enough of those Camels would result in chronic emphysema and COPD that would inhibit a smoker’s ability to walk across the street, much less a mile.)

You can ride camels on the beach here in Broome. So what I did there, you see, was reverse a few words in the old cigarette headline. Instead of reading “I’d walk a mile for a camel,” it now reads “I’d walk a camel for a mile.”

Get it? Get it?

Oh, my god. Genius.

(Just kidding. That’s the kind of quick and easy kind of headline you learn how to do your first month in advertising.)

Bad headlines aside, we really do love coming to Broome’s Cable Beach to see the nightly camel caravan swaying down the sand at sunset. They’re so big, so majestic, so damn handsome.

I wrote this weeks ago, but couldn’t figure out a good reason to post it. Today’s my birthday. Seems like a perfect excuse.

Do you remember Ann Landers? Back in the ‘50s and ‘60s and ‘70s, she was a nationally-syndicated newspaper columnist who dished out pithy advice to readers who sent her questions. Her column ran in thousands of newspapers across the country.

I was a bit of a precocious little boy and I started reading Ann Landers in the local daily newspaper when I was about six years old. When I left home to go to college it was a bit comforting to find out that Ann’s column also ran in my college town’s daily newspaper.

What possible connection, you may be wondering, could Ann Landers have with this travel blog. Well, the answer lies in the photo that was always found at the top of Ann’s column. It never changed. It was the same when I was twenty as it was when I was six. The woman never aged.

Surely she had, in real life, grown older as the years passed. But if so, one never would have gleaned that knowledge from her photo. Despite the passage of time, the damn woman simply showed no signs of aging. Crows feet didn’t creep across the corners of her eyes. Her cheeks remained high and firm. Worry lines dug no trenches across her forehead. Her pearls aged more than she did.

You’ve been patient long enough. Here’s the tie-in:

Jamie complains that the photo atop JimandJamie.com is seven years old, dated, and that it should be changed. She correctly notes that I had been very ill with Lyme Disease for several years when that photo was taken and she says that I look unnaturally red and puffy as a result.

I give her excuse after excuse to explain why it cannot be changed:

“We never seem to be able to take a photo in which both of us look our best. This one’s a good compromise.”

“The website needs a horizontal photo and I can’t find another one that crops as well.”

“We have some photos that would have worked, but I was capless in them and the light reflecting off my bald pate created a glow that ruined the shots.”

“I don’t want to impose on Russell, our tech guru, to re-do the banner image.”

And so on and so forth.

But the honest to god truth is that I share Ann Landers’ fear of exposing the ravages of time. The years have not been my friends. When I was young, people said I looked liked Peter Fonda in Easy Rider, but now, for god’s sake, I look more like Gollum in Lord of the Rings. I have less hair than a newborn chihuahua. I have more wrinkles than a bag of prunes. What started off as dimples have grown into crevices.

So if you don’t mind, I will leave that same photo up there and I will be completely happy with it many years into the future. A little fantasy never hurt anyone.

Tonight we experienced almost simultaneous acts of stupidity, kindness, and sadness. The stupidity was all mine. The kindness and sadness came from complete strangers.

When we picked up our rental car the other night, the friendly counter agent informed me that it was illegal to drive the car on the beach.

“What are you talking about,” I asked. “One of the main reasons people come to Broome is to drive their cars out onto Cable Beach. So you can tell me it’s against the rules, but I’m going to do it anyway.”

She just laughed and said, “You won’t be the first, you won’t be the last.”

Tonight the unthinkable happened. We were flying down Cable Beach when I made the mistake of turning off the hard packed wet sand and onto the thick, fluffy, dry sand. It took about ten seconds for the car to bury itself axle-deep. I got out to survey the situation and had only enough time to say, ”We have a problem” when a ute (that’s Aussie slang for a utility truck, kind of a pick-up on steroids) circled around and pulled up behind us. Everyone inside the ute jumped outside to lend a hand.

The driver laughed and said, “You got bogged.”

Daisy, Maxey, Casey, and Michael pulled shovels from the back of the ute and began digging away the sand that had us trapped. I saw the shovels come out and said, “Wow. You guys really come prepared.” One of them told Jamie that they had driven around 1600 kilometers in 24 hours and had used the shovels to bury a family member earlier that day.

What does that even mean? We’ve all “buried” family members, but it’s just an euphemism that means we attended their funerals. None of us actually took shovels nor dug the graves. But we think that is exactly what they had done earlier today.

They appeared to be of some sort of aboriginal heritage, so we imagine that they had buried their relative back on their traditional lands as part of some sort of age old rituals. We both wanted to know more, but it just seemed inappropriate to ask about putting mom in the ground while they were digging our car out of the ground.

They were sweet, generous people with huge smiles splayed across their faces, something that you might not expect since they had attended a family funeral earlier that day.

After much digging, they finally got most of the sand removed from under the car, hooked a rope between their ute and our Nissan, and slowly eased us back onto the hard, flat, wet sand. We thanked them, shook hands all the way around, jumped back into our respective vehicles and made sure we both took the safe route back onto the paved road.

Thanks again to Daisy, Maxey, Carey, and Robert. Hope we run into you again someday when we can return the favor.