WHEN the new owners of Broome’s Cable Beach Club Resort unveiled the world’s largest crystal Buddha statue in late 2003, they were not just paying homage to an extraordinary beach retreat. The new “Buddha’s Sanctuary” meditation pavilion also typifies the multi-racial spirit of harmony and tolerance that has long permeated this colourful Western Australian port town, with a population now nudging 15,000.
When the upstart aristocrat Lord Alistair McAlpine first arrived in Broome in 1974, he seemed too nonplussed to make any meaningful observations. But the place must have gotten under his skin. Returning with his new wife Romily in 1981, he remarked: “the golden rain and tulip trees bloomed. The frangipanis scented the air and the flowers of the bush were bright. There were no tourists, and locals were lying in the sun on the beach, a 20 km beach that is amongst the most spectacular in the world.”
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