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.
No comments:
Post a Comment