Eighty mile Beach

Eighty mile Beach

After a short drive from Barn Hill...and down another dirt road, we arrived at Eighty Mile beach caravan park.  The first thing we say was a bloke cleaning a huge Mulloway which he had just caught on the beach.  We looked over the sand dune to see a fisherman every 15 metres for as far as the eye could see...all dragging in salmon and sharks.  We got unpacked super quickly and heading down to the beach only to find that everyone was packing up and we were a bit late.  I still tried without success, but decided to get myself better organised for tomorrow.  The kids played on the beach but were very disappointed not to be able to swim due to strong currents, little sting rays and sharks...swimming was not advisable.

The next morning the tide was way out (as expected) and the beach was flooded with shell collectors.  We drove a couple of kilometres down the beach trying to find a place where nobody had been looking and found some nice shells but nothing very big.  We found lots of broken shells that were very impressive, but nothing whole. 

We found the reason why we couldn’t find any goods shells when we returned back to the park and visited a man next to us (from Edithvale) who had 30 polystyrene tubs full of huge shells that he had found over the past 6 months which he uses to make things.  He gave the kids a coral reef creation (which was brilliant) and we looked at his wind catchers and other handiworks.  There were very impressive.

I tried very hard to catch a fish that afternoon which out success (surf fishing sucks!!) as I watched people pull in fish all around me... my fishing rod must be broken!!

We quite enjoyed Eighty mile beach, but we decided to move on as it was still hot, and the kids wanted to be able to swim.

Dampier

We left Eighty mile beach early as we knew we had to get some kms done today.  We were heading to Dampier about 550kms down the road which we hadn’t done in a while.  We stopped in South Hedland and got some supplies at Coles (and Mel’s coffee at McDonalds) before we made it to Point Samson for lunch where the kids had a play at the park.  As it was a Sunday ,we skipped Port Hedland and Karratha and went straight to Dampier and to a much cheaper caravan park by the Hamersley Iron loading point (which had some massive ships being loaded).  We could n’t be bothered pulling out the BBQ tonight so we walked down to the recommended local pub where that had all you could eat BBQ....big mistake.  The fish was nice but the steak was like old boots.  On the upside  because it was such a male dominated town, the pub had girls in bikinis serving behind the bar....see, I’m always looking for a silver lining.

On from Dampier, we decided to do another big day driving to get to Exmouth in one foul swoop (instead of staying in a roadhouse along the way).  We left by 7.07am got some fuel and Hotcakes for the kids breakfasts (parents of the year) and we hit the road.  The kids did surprisingly well backing up a big day on the road.  We visited Red Dog on the way out of town.

We did one stop on the way and then made it to Exmouth by around 2.30pm, where we stopped in town and booked a glass bottom boat tour, and stocked up on food (at insanely high prices!).  We were staying closer to the reef at Yardie Homestead (about 30kms out of town) which was supposed to be cheaper than in town.  Unfortunately this wasn’t the case as even though I lied about the kids ages (being 2 and 4 instead of 3 and 6) we still got slugged $8 a child which meant it was $46 a night!!  Not happy.

We got setup and it will be nice to have 5 nights in one place again.