Eighty Mile Beach and Port Hedland

We left Cable Beach and headed south through miles of flat nothingness until we came to the sign pointing us to Eighty Mile Beach campground. After so many stationary days, we were out of practice on the long hauls and this drive felt particularly painful.  Upon arrival we were greeted by the sounds of a travelling country singer playing the resident campers some of his favourites. The campsite was quite large and open and we were lucky enough to have one of the closest sites to the beach.

After setting up, we went and checked the beach – which was indeed a long as the eye could see. Also, because it was a very shallow beach, this, in combination with the large tides had the effect of making the tide go OUT! – about 1km out! We watched the sunset while the kids found an endless supply of shells and succeeded in bringing most of them into the car.

After an interesting dinner with Ari being punished for not eating her dinner by being sent to eat her dinner at the nearby war memorial :( (Mummy told her she would laugh about it when she was older), we went for a late night beach trek to see if we could see any turtles, but instead found thousands upon thousands of big crabs.

Eighty Mile beach – being so exposed was a very windy place, so after spending the night being buffeted by the wind, we had brekky, the kids did some school work, and then we hit the beach for some sandboarding, tumbleweed soccer, kite flying, coral garden making, and cartwheels.

Rich was on a mission to try and capture the extreme tide coming in, so went to the same spot on the beach and took a photo every hour for six hours.

We had just had dinner and were getting ready for bed when the Bremmers turned up in the dark. After a few drinks and some funny revelations about previous lives we hit the sack.

Next day we were up early and were packed and pretty much ready to go (1 million shells and other various smelly marine life in plastic bags scattered throughout the car). The Bremmers emerged from their van bleary eyed when we were beginning to hitch the car up to the van – they were astounded. It then took us about 45 mins to round up the kids, before we headed off with a plan to meet later at Karijini National Park.

We first stopped in at Port Hedland for some lunch at a great waterside park.  We watched some surfers out on the point of the river mouth (hang on, aren’t there crocs here?!?), and the mineral wealth of the country pouring directly into container ships and then rather briskly leaving port, plying through those beautiful torquoise waters.

Picked up a matching windscreen chip (they actually join up) on the ‘scenic’ way through the outskirts of Port Hedland after a wrong turn and then set out (through some appalling traffic control) on the long drive to Karijini National Park.

The drive was quite long – but we were enjoying the ‘Ender’s Game’ audiobook along the way – and the scenery was quite breathtaking the closer we got to the park, with many mountain ranges and rocky outcrops. We rocked up to the National Park at around 5:00pm, watched the sunset and had a meal, before putting the kids to bed.

Kel went to bed early, and Rich was on his fourth or fifth Southo and Coke while writing the blog, when there was the sound of an engine, followed by a soft toot of the horn. Rich looked up to see a grinning John Bremmer pulling into the campsite, family and caravan in tow.