After leaving Broome, we drove 360 km in a very barren landscape, just dry little bush and rocks, to a cattle station/caravan park on the long white sand of Eighty Mile Beach. Arriving, we could see the turquoise water over the sand dune. The caravan park is quite vast and located right behind the sand dune. We got a pretty good site, halfway between the toilet and the beach entrance, very strategic position.
As the name suggests the beach is really long, just sand as far as the eyes can see, but the main activity here is not swimming, nobody does because of the huge amount of sharks roaming around. Instead everybody is fishing from the shore on the rising tide and collecting shells on low tide. And many shells, we found so many different varieties, patterns and colours! We are completely hooked on shell gathering now and our collection is growing by the day. Pete was also quite excited about the fishing bit. Apparently just about everyone caught a fish on the day of our arrival so he was ready early the next day to get a good spot on the beach. Better get there fast as it fills up quick. Fishermen everywhere for about 2 km! And it proved to be quite a good day too, quite a few bites. Of course many were from baby sharks, they are so adorable when this small! If only they could stay like that. But Pete also caught quite a few bluenose salmon, of which we kept one for our dinner (no picture of the catch, sadly). It was pretty tasty. Pete also scored some threadfin salmon‘s wings (finer taste than the bluenose) form a guy who caught a 4 ft one and we had that for lunch, simply pan fried, extremely yummy. The next day the famous west coast wind picked up again making the fishing quite bad again so we moved on.
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| Pete in action |
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| 80 Mile Beach full of fishermen |
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| Baby shark, isn't he cute? |
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| White belly Sea Eagle |
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| The beach is littered with shells |
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| Shell decorations |
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| on the war memorial |
Next destination the Pilbara, one of the driest region in Australia, they don’t get a raining season, they get cyclones and 40-50 °C in summer. It is a mining region, mostly iron, with also large salt flats (salt for industrial purposes). The majority of the population is employed in one of the big mining or construction companies and while some live in nice houses, many workers live in dongers (small and simple tin or steel accommodation) and there are rows after rows of them. Not a very cheerful sight. The salaries are quite good, even the lowest ones and in consequence the cost of life is very dear, everything cost a fortune, rent, food, alcohol. A hard place to be when on a traveller’s budget. We spent one night in Port Headland, to say hello to Fletch, who’s been working here for the past couple of months, it cost us $50 to be on a shitty camp site!
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Typical Sight in the Pilbara: The longest train loaded
with Iron ore and the sparkling salt flats |
Sam and Fletch were to meet us a week later somewhere to spend a few days travelling together, so we found a little coastal town on the Roebourne peninsula, away from industrial sights, to spend the week: Point Samson, 2 hours west of Port Headland, 1 hour east of Karratha. On arriving the wind was so strong it was quite a challenge to set up camp. Apparently the wind had been howling like that for the past 2 weeks, but was expected to subside very soon…Let’s hope because it is pretty noisy in the camper with heavy winds. Lucky for us, it did, not stop entirely (I don’t think that ever happens around here) but lower to a bearable strength.
We spent many lazy days on the beach, swimming, snorkeling and shell hunting.
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| Honeymoon Cove - Our little beach at Pt Samson |
Behind Point Samson is Cape Lambert, one of the sea ports for exporting iron ore from
Rio Tinto's mining operations in the Pilbara. The wharf at Cape Lambert is 3 kilometres long and 30 metres high, one of the highest, longest and deepest wharves in Australia
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| Cape Lambert Wharf |
A little bit of sight seeing in the region:
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| Barren landscapes |
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| Very windy |
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| Red Dog statue in Dampier |
When Sam and Fletch joined us, we decided to head south to Onslow, a small fishing community 4h south of Karratha, but on getting there it was clear that without a boat, the place would be extremely boring, so we made the rash decision to keep on driving despite the late hour and finally arrive in Exmouth around 8 pm (after spending an hour avoiding sheeps and wallabies on the road). Next post Exmouth and Ningaloo Reef.
