BROOME, WESTERN AUSTRALIA
The west coast haven shines brightest during its annual festival of the pearl.
The pearl is nature’s best argument for what’s possible when foreign matter meets a new environment. Known for the South Sea pearls scattered off its coastline, Broome is a town that embodies this idea more than most. Home to the Yawuru people for more than 30,000 years, the centuries since European arrival have drawn Japanese, Malay, Chinese, Filipino and Koepanger treasure-seekers. Every year, as pearl harvest season comes to a close and the tropical heat seeps back into the evenings, the town turns up the volume on this multicultural bonhomie with Shinju Matsuri – Japanese for “festival of the pearl” – a 15-day extravaganza that began in 1970 and today draws a crowd of about 20,000 (20 August-4 September; shinjumatsuri.com.au).
For event director Saira Hanlon, the Sunset Long Table Dinner, where guests enjoy a banquet of local seafood catered by Sydney Cove Oyster Bar on the sands of Cable Beach under a technicolour sky, is about as quintessentially Broome as it gets. “I always describe it as ‘barefoot black-tie’,” she says. “We showcase incredible local produce like pearl meat, the drinks are flowing and you get to marinate in what’s probably the best sunset you’ll ever see.”
Other crowd-pleasers at this year’s festival include the Chinatown Feast, a hawker’s market of local chefs and performers; the Jetty Gala, a high-end cocktail-style event held on the new Town Beach jetty; and the Paspaley Floating Lantern Matsuri, where paper lanterns are lit and set afloat from Gantheaume Point.