We hit Broome like an out-of-season and slightly out-of-control cyclone called Jemima. The storm comprises two families: one dragging an insouciant Sydney 16-year-old girl, and ours, under the thumb of two (allegedly) delightful and charismatic under-8s.
At times, over three July days, Jemima threatens to wreak havoc; at others she lolls beside the Cable Beach Club's resort pool like a kitten after too much catnip.
First challenge comes over dinner at the resort's Sunset bar and grill. What to eat when my young charges believe that fish is manna from hell and our friend's daughter regards anything that's not a hamburger as "just some vegetable that I used to know"?
"Broome is probably Australia's most exotic town," says this despondent dad to his daughters, "you can't eat chips and tomato sauce for every meal."
"What's toxic mean?" replies my seven-year-old.
As all parents know, with children of a certain age, meal times are about bartering. Tonight, "five mouthfuls of snapper for a five-year-old" are exchanged for ice-cream and chocolate sauce, but the following night the whirlwind flies off in an altogether more reckless and unpredictable direction, descending upon the Azuki Japanese fusion restaurant, nestled charmingly beside a petrol station, on Napier Terrace, in central Broome.
We settle uneasily at a large communal table and allow my partner, who lived in Kyoto for two years, to order for Jemima. Minutes later, out comes a cavalcade of dishes, including teriyaki chicken, seaweed salad, tempura barramundi, and a vegetable and tofu okonomiyaki with banana prawns.
My daughters rub their eyes. The 16-year-old looks despairing. But half an hour later, every single dish lies empty and Jemima is sated.
When not searching for appropriate fodder, we scour Broome and its environs for interesting activities. We begin, on our first morning, with a crowd-pleasing "scenic and prehistoric tour" on the Broome hovercraft, the one-hour flight skirting the mangroves and mudflats of Roebuck Bay and taking in the 130-million-year-old dinosaur footprints at Gantheaume Point.
"Apparently stegosauruses, sauropods and theropods once roamed this region," I say to my daughters, as they place their tiny feet next to a plaster cast of their prints on the rocky shore.
"But these aren't the real footprints," frowns the 16-year-old, who could throw doubt on the existence of Santa Claus.
"They're out at sea and only visible at very low tides," she adds, before being silenced by one stern glance from her Polish mother.
Back in town, we introduce the children to Broome's illustrious heritage at the Historical Museum. Their eyes widen at the sight of Jules Verne-like pearl-diving regalia and tales of 19th-century fortune seekers arriving in Broome from Japan, the Philippines, China and Europe in search of perfect white gems fashioned by pinctada maxima oysters.
Later, in Chinatown, Jemima gathers unstoppable momentum, sweeping all the females over five into stores full of glinting pearls. Both dads stand outside, helpless to prevent the havoc wreaked on the family credit cards.
We recover by hiring some boys' toys from Broome Broome Car Rentals. The barrister opts for a 50cc Piaggio scooter, while I hire a Toyota Prado, in a post-ironic protest against Top Gear's sneering Jeremy Clarkson.
On Cable Beach in the late afternoon, having painstakingly put together (acceptable) canapés and sparkling wine to accompany the statutory viewing of the big fat sunset, my daughters spot a far more exciting four-legged mode of transport.
Half an hour later, as the sun drops into the Indian Ocean and sprays girly colours across the entire tableau, two dutiful dads and their daughters are prancing through the mauve miasma on a flotilla of camels. Until, that is, the camel carrying me and my five-year-old has a bellowing hissy fit. In an instant, everybody watching gives in to uncontrollable giggles, while my daughter is reduced to an inconsolable wreck.
There is simply no adequate atonement other than hastening the midyear arrival of Father Christmas, which we do after dark that night, by joining a stargazing tour with long-white-bearded Broome maverick Greg Quirke. Quirke's gifts include huge telescopes, lasers and unbounded enthusiasm for the planets and shooting stars. The combination soothes the nerves of our formerly distraught five year old so much that she falls asleep mouthing, "Twinkle, twinkle little star".
She's still humming it when we wake at 5am to go on a Horizontal Falls seaplane adventure. This combination of a 90-minute scenic flight along the Kimberley coastline, splash-landing on a fjord-like inlet in the Buccaneer Archipelago and a speed-boat ride through the world's only sideways-crashing falls, caused by some of its biggest tides, thrills us all.
Back at Cable Beach Club, while the small children are kept busy by the resort's school holidays activities, the mums sip chilled Margaret River chardonnay by the pool, and the barrister leads the travel writer astray, with beer and horse racing, at the grungy Roebuck Bay Hotel.
The next morning, Jemima re-forms and breezes around the Courthouse market, the girls succumbing to diaphanous summer dresses at one stall as one dad uncharacteristically looks for guidance from a Tarot reading at another.
We know our astonishing good fortune cannot last, so on our final night give in to the inevitable, allowing our little misses to order room service and a movie as their mums and dads indulge in Broome's finest dining at the Thai Pearl restaurant, set beside the pool at Cable Beach. This completes a day on which all four parents have been alternately kneaded and pronged at the onsite Chahoya Spa, overlooked by Sidney Nolan paintings on the wall.
As we sit back, drinking wine in the flickering candlelight, as our kids revel in hamburgers, chips with tomato sauce and the saccharine Abba-fest movie, Mamma Mia, we can't help wondering if we've pulled off the near impossible with our family trip to Broome. Dousing the destructive ardour of the many-headed beast known as Cyclone Jemima and reducing her to a mere puddle-duck.
australiasnorthwest.com
In season (May to September), Qantas flies direct to Broome from Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane. See qantas.com.
Cable Beach Club has a range of accommodation, including studios and bungalows to suit families, adults-only and family pools, a water playground and several restaurants. See cablebeachclub.com.
"Scenic and prehistoric" hovercraft tours cost $119 adults/$85 child . Broome Museum, 67 Robinson Street, entry $5/$1 . Broome Broome rentals has Toyota Prados from $144 per day for long journeys like the Gibb River Road or making the most of the beaches around town. Scooter hire costs $35 a day . Sunset camel rides on Cable Beach cost $70/$55 . Half-day Horizontal Falls adventures depart Broome at 5.30am and 11.30am daily, April-October, $795/$695 . Greg Quirke's two-hour stargazing tours cost from $65/$35 .
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