Broome, AU

A pub-brewery in a heritage Chinatown house with a wraparound verandah looking over Roebuck Bay, doing pub plates, woodfired pizzas and the mango, ginger and chilli beers that put Broome on the craft-beer map. The default Broome lunch and the place every visitor ends up at least once. Lively, casual, and one of the best verandahs in town.

The Cable Beach Club's casual open-air grill perched on the dune above the beach, with shaded lawn seating, woodfired pizzas, burgers, and cocktails timed to the sunset. Walk-up, no booking, and the easiest way to watch the camel train and the sun drop into the Indian Ocean with a drink in hand.

The beachfront restaurant at the northern Cable Beach car park, rebranded from Zanders in 2025, with tables right above the sand and the most direct sunset view of any sit-down restaurant in Broome. Fresh local seafood, elevated pub classics served as share plates, and a long cocktail list. The book-ahead sunset dinner of choice.

A small-plates restaurant on Hamersley Street near Chinatown doing pan-Asian and Middle-Eastern-inflected sharing dishes — softshell crab, grilled prawns, lamb skewers — with a leafy courtyard and a tight cocktail list. The town's most interesting cooking and the dinner locals book for visitors they want to impress.

An Italian small-plates wine bar tucked off Carnarvon Street in Chinatown, doing handmade pasta, woodfired flatbreads, antipasti and a deep Italian-leaning wine list. The room is small and atmospheric, and it's the town's best date-night dinner that isn't on the beach.

The stylish outdoor restaurant and bar at the Mangrove Hotel on Carnarvon Street, with sweeping views over Roebuck Bay. A modern Australian menu built around Kimberley produce — fresh barramundi, grilled steaks, local seafood — served under shade sails with live music on selected evenings. The go-to bay-view dinner when you want something a step above pub food.

A drive-through and walk-up coffee spot on Weld Street in Chinatown with proper espresso, breakfast burritos, acai bowls and big breakfast plates. The young, tradie-and-traveller crowd's morning meeting point and consistently rated the best coffee in Broome.

A leafy garden cafe in a heritage Chinatown bungalow doing all-day breakfast, healthy bowls, big salads and house cakes under shade sails and frangipani. The relaxed brunch spot when the Cable Beach sun is too much and you want a long, slow morning under fans.

An Indonesian-Malay restaurant on Murray Road near the Cable Beach roundabout, doing rendang, nasi goreng, satays and curries from a chef-owner who grew up cooking these dishes. Unpretentious, reliable, and the answer when you want a proper-spiced dinner that isn't pub food.

A casual all-day cafe right on the Town Beach foreshore with shaded outdoor tables looking across Roebuck Bay. Breakfast plates, burgers, fish and chips, ice creams and cold drinks. The convenient pre-swim or post-swim stop, and the most low-effort lunch with a water view in town.

A network of sandy walking tracks through the coastal monsoon-vine thicket behind the Cable Beach dunes, on Yawuru country. Several loops of 1-3km link Cable Beach to Gantheaume Point through tracks of pindan and pandanus, with interpretive signs on bush food and Yawuru culture. Flat, shaded enough to walk year-round in early morning.

A clifftop walking route along the red pindan bluffs between Gantheaume Point and Entrance Point, with multiple drop-down tracks to the beach and rock pools below. The unofficial sunset walk for locals — about 3km one way along the top, plus optional scrambles down. Big colour and almost no crowds.

A short timber boardwalk through the mangroves off the end of Dampier Terrace in Chinatown, on the site of the old pearling-lugger jetty. Five minutes end-to-end but worth doing twice — once at high tide for the water, once at low tide for the mudflat crabs and birds. The easiest piece of natural Broome to reach on foot.

A short clifftop and beach loop of about 1.5km around the Gantheaume Point lighthouse, taking in the dinosaur footprint reef, Anastasia's Pool and the red-cliff viewpoints. Not a hike — more a structured wander — but the single highest concentration of Broome's photogenic angles per kilometre.

A flat 2km one-way foreshore walk along Roebuck Bay between Town Beach, the WWII Catalina memorial, the Mangrove Boardwalk and Chinatown. The town's most useful linear walk — connects half the worthwhile stops on the east side and doubles as the Staircase to the Moon parade route on full moons.

A low-tide-only beach walk south along the hard sand of Cable Beach to the red cliffs of Gantheaume Point — about 4km one-way, finishing under the lighthouse. Only doable on outgoing or low tides and best as a sunset walk with a pickup waiting at the Point. The classic Broome long-beach amble.

The world's oldest continuously operating outdoor cinema, open since 1916, on Carnarvon Street in Chinatown. Canvas deckchairs on a tin-roofed open-air floor, current-release films, an old-school candy bar and the planes from Broome International occasionally roaring overhead because the runway approach crosses the cinema. A Broome rite of passage.

One of three camel operators running sunset trains along Cable Beach — the silhouette in every Broome travel brochure ever made. A 60-minute ride up and back along the wet sand at the tide line, finishing as the sun drops. Touristy, yes, but unmistakably Broome and oddly meditative on the camel.

The longest-running and biggest of the Cable Beach camel operators, with the distinctive red-saddled string and the most departures per day. Same beach, same sunset, slightly bigger group. The one you book if Broome Camel Safaris is sold out for your dates.

A working South Sea pearl farm 35km north of town running half-day tours that show how a pearl is seeded, grown, harvested and graded, ending with a pearl showroom. Touristy but genuinely educational — Broome's pearling industry still drives the town and this is the cleanest explanation you'll get. Outside the 20km radius but the canonical Broome day trip.

A small in-town pearling museum and tour on Dampier Terrace, built around two restored historic pearling luggers in dry dock. Guided 90-minute tours by ex-divers walk you through hard-hat diving suits, the divers' lives (Japanese, Aboriginal, Malay) and the South Sea pearling history. The town-bound counterpart to Willie Creek.

A no-frills crocodile park 15km out the Broome Highway, founded by Australian bushman-filmmaker Malcolm Douglas. Hundreds of saltwater and freshwater crocodiles in big pens, plus a daily feeding tour at 3pm that's the entire reason to come. Sweaty, gritty, and absolutely worth two hours.

A bird research station and visitor centre on the eastern shore of Roebuck Bay, run by Birdlife Australia, with guided birdwatching tours of the Bay's globally significant migratory shorebird flocks. Hundreds of thousands of waders pass through on the East Asian-Australasian Flyway, peaking September-October. Birder catnip and accessible to anyone with binoculars.

Day and half-day scenic-flight tours from Broome airport over the Buccaneer Archipelago to the Horizontal Falls — tidal rapids forced through two narrow cliff gaps in McLarty Range, called by David Attenborough one of the greatest natural wonders of the world. The bucket-list Broome day trip and worth every dollar.

The Saturday morning markets on the lawns of the old Courthouse on Hamersley Street — produce, mango chutneys, local crafts, pearl jewellery, food stalls, and live music under shade trees. The town's social morning in dry season and the best one-stop for souvenirs that aren't from a gift shop.

Twenty-two kilometres of white sand and turquoise Indian Ocean on Broome's west side, named after the undersea telegraph cable that once landed here. The sand is hard enough for two-wheel drives north of the rocks at low tide, and the unbroken horizon makes it the country's most theatrical sunset spot. Lifeguards patrol the central flagged zone in dry season.

A headland of pindan-red cliffs dropping into turquoise water at the southern end of Cable Beach, with 130-million-year-old dinosaur footprints visible in the reef at very low tide. The lighthouse and the rust-and-blue colour clash here is the other postcard Broome image after the camels. Free to visit, open all hours.

Broome's historic pearling-era centre on Carnarvon and Dampier Terrace, where Japanese, Chinese, Malay and Filipino divers and shopkeepers built the town in the late 1800s. Today it's two short streets of pearl showrooms, cafes, the Sun Pictures cinema and the old Streeter's Jetty walk through the mangroves. The orientation point for everything else.

The east-facing town beach on Roebuck Bay, a five-minute walk from Chinatown, with shaded lawns, a cafe and a playground. It's the locals' family swim spot and the official viewing platform for the Staircase to the Moon, when a full moon rises over the exposed mudflats at low tide.

The vast turquoise bay on Broome's east side, one of the most important shorebird sites on Earth — hundreds of thousands of migratory waders stop here on the East Asian-Australasian Flyway. The bay is also where the pearling luggers once moored and the WWII Catalina wrecks still sit in the mudflats at very low tide.

A 3km strip of red pindan cliffs and rock pools running between Gantheaume Point and Entrance Point on the southern peninsula, much quieter than Cable Beach. The colour palette of red rock, white sand and turquoise water is at its loudest here, especially in late afternoon light. Locals' sunset alternative when Cable Beach is packed.

The largest Japanese cemetery in Australia, with around 900 headstones, mostly of pearl divers who died of the bends or in cyclones during Broome's pearling boom. The weathered stones — many shipped from Japan — sit in shaded rows off Port Drive and are the most affecting reminder of who built this town.

A small volunteer-run museum in the old Customs House by Town Beach, packed with pearling gear, diving suits, Japanese-Malay-Aboriginal social history and WWII bombing artefacts. Two hours and a few dollars is enough to understand why Broome looks and sounds the way it does. The best rainy-afternoon (or any-afternoon) primer.