HEADING  SOUTH

EIGHTY  MILE  BEACH

With the caravan back in tow, we headed south from Broome to Eighty Mile Beach.  It's certainly a long stretch of white sand.........    and we struck it at its windy best.  Not much in the way of fishing, although we saw a couple of big ones pulled in off the shore.  We had a go at driving on the sand - a first for us.  Still don't think we like the idea of the beautiful beaches being used as roadways.

You can't book ahead to get a powered site here, so it's first come first served.  So we spent the first night on an unpowered site.  As it turned out, this was a good thing for us, as we discovered that our 12 volt battery in the caravan was as dead as a dodo.  It was O.K. for one night, but meant that we would have to buy a new one down the track before we went to Karijini, where we wanted to spend several nights unpowered.

Phone reception was patchy here - it was quite funny to see people with their mobiles and laptops on top of the sand dunes, trying to make contact with the outside world!  After a restful week, (let's face it, every week has been restful so far) we hooked up again and hit the road to Port Hedland.

PORT  HEDLAND

It's definitely an industrial city.  Red dirt everywhere - trucks - iron ore - large ships in the port - roadtrains - saltpiles. They're redoing the city centre, so at the moment it's a mess of wired fences and detours too.  It's sure to look great when it's finished, but meantime it's hard to manouvre.

 

One unexpected bonus was that we saw the Staircase to the Moon.  We'd heard about it in Broome, but were there at the wrong time.  So we were pleased to find out if also happened at Port Hedland - just when we were visiting. 

After finding a new battery, refuelling the car, and filling up the fridge and pantry, we were ready to head off to Karijini.