Sunday, 11 August 2013

6 August – 8 August 2013 – Eighty Mile Beach



This morning I packed up our van while Josh took the girls to the butcher and picked up a few other grocery items I needed.  I’m sure wrestling dvd’s were not on my list but they came back with about ten of them anyway.  Once packed, we went to say goodbye to Andrew, Kylie, Jasmine, Josh and Mia.  I’m sure we will see them again on our journey somewhere.  We started on our travels down the south coast for a few hours today.  It was a very long stretch of road with very little to see apart from the flat road ahead, cattle roaming around, some lovely purple bushes and a lot of dry land.  You could tell it was a fairly long and boring drive as Josh was reading song lyrics to a new cd whilst driving along – carefully of course.  We eventually arrived at the turnoff at the southern end of Eighty Mile Beach and took the red sandy road in.  As we drove over a hill we could see the beach and ocean in our sights.  Driving into the caravan park, we noticed how neat and tidy it was here and that they actually had lovely large grassed areas.  We were lucky to get a powered site due to it being quite busy but parked the van and set it up.  It was about mid afternoon so we headed along the track to the beach and onto the sand.  It was amazing!  The water was nowhere near us but we could see it in the distance.  We had to walk about 200 metres to reach the edge of the water but along the way was a magnificent world of sea-life such as cake urchens, sea snails, slugs, small brown sea stars and thousands and thousands of beautiful shells.  As we finally neared the water’s edge, we said g’day to some other travellers making their way back in only to realise that it was a family that we’d passed many times along the Gibb River Road.  We finally introduced ourselves to Mick, Susan, Samuel, Toby and Lachlan and had a great chin wag about our Gibb River Road experiences while they were fresh in our minds.  We had first passed this family at the turn-off to Mitchell Falls and learnt that they were from Adelaide and on the road for 4.5 months.  Lovely, lovely people and the kids got along straight away.  The sun set whilst we were out here on the huge expanse of sand so we captured some pictures and made our way back in.  Once the sun went down in got quite cool.  We invited them over for a drink after dinner to catch up some more.  Josh sat outside with Sami watching a wrestling dvd for a while but as it was so cold, they didn’t last long and came inside instead.  We’d therefore missed Mick and Susan tonight but we were all here for a few more days to come.
The following morning was spent inside – that nastly school work reared its head again.  We were at it for hours and didn’t appear to be getting anywhere very fast.  I had to walk away for a break at one stage so went to check out the beach.  It was high tide and the water was in near – I couldn’t believe how many fisherpeople were scattered right along the coastline.  I wonder if any of them had any luck catching their dinner?  Early in the afternoon, we decided to get out of the van and so we grabbed our towels and headed to the beach.  The tide was going out so you almost had to chase the water out to see.  We went for a nice walk north along the beach and found plenty of shells to examine.  There were also plenty of other people walking the beach in the same manner, strolling very slowly with their head bowed low in search of the perfect shell.  When we got back to the van, we packed away the school books and joined up with  Mick and Susan and the family for a few drinks and a chat.  I was impressed to see that Susan was baking a cake in her camp oven – something I would never consider doing.  The kids had a game of soccer on the site next to us while the adults enjoyed the last of the afternoon sun, at which time we all grabbed a jacket.  This afternoon we also got to meet another family from Victoria who were travelling Australia with their kids, Chris, Angela, Sarah and James – but only briefly as they were leaving the following day.  After dinner we all met back at our van (which was furthest away from other campers) .  The kids watched a few movies in our van while we huddled in a group swapping our travelling stories – all we needed was a campfire.
We were in contact with Mark and Sharon yesterday and learnt that they were today leaving Broome and heading to Eighty Mile Beach, so instead of leaving today as originally planned, Josh went to book us in for one more night.  We did a little bit of school work before then going for a walk around the park.  In doing so, we noticed that there was a decent sized coast watch building.  We poked our head in as we walked past and saw an above ground pool and a spa.  Apparently, there are volunteer coastal watchers who look out for boat people arriving on their shore.  Seems like the perfect place to do a bit of volunteer work, spending their days out on the beach fishing while keeping an eye out for illegal immigrants.  We walked up to the reception area where they have a great variety of grocery items, etc.  Back at the van, we heard the rumble of a Harley and turned around to find that Mark and Sharon had arrived.  They set-up their tent while the kids did a final bit of school work and then we got together with them and Mick and Susan and the kids for the afternoon and evening.  It didn’t seem quite as cold tonight but we stilled called it a night at a reasonable time.


















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