Our friends had booked a Pearl Farm Tour
and needed to leave at 9am, so once all the kids were awake we suggested they
play together for one last morning, while Tony and I got on with packing up to
leave. It felt weird to be packing up after being here for so long, but we
hadn’t spread out as much as we sometimes do and it was fairly straightforward
– except for the bat poo on the roof of our annexe, which took a bit of time to
clean off, and the sticky flowers that were all over our tent roof. We said a
sad goodbye to our friends as they left for their tour (we’ll see them again at
home in about 10 weeks so we are all looking forward to that) and then finished
packing while the kids played with their Skylanders. We were ready to go just
before 11.
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| The pool at our caravan park in Broome |
The drive south was through fairly
unchanging terrain, although it was different to anything we’ve seen so far.
The land was very very flat, the ground was mainly red dirt and the plantlife
was very short – lots of bushes low to the ground, and hardly any trees. After
several hours there were some hills in the distance, which we eventually drove
past, and on occasion the ground would be sand rather than red dirt. In those
areas the termite mounds were white rather than red, which makes sense but was
a surprise the first time we saw them. Every now and then we would just see a
glint of the ocean over to our right, above the cliffs or dunes that must be
along the shoreline. It was weird to think that for the whole time we drove,
there was the same beach following the coastline to our west – Eightly Mile
Beach is over 200km long, incredible.
We were unsure where we were going to stay
and kept considering our options as we went. Eighty Mile Beach Caravan Park was
our first thought, and the reviews were mixed, but we couldn’t swim in the
ocean there and it felt like more than we wanted to pay for what we’d get. Cape
Keraudren was our favourite option, although when I looked into that and
realised how expensive it was we decided to skip that as well ($20 entry fee
for the car, $10 for the trailer, then $10 per person (possibly a bit less for
the kids)). There were a few roadhouses and station stays – the station stays
were also expensive, and the roadhouses in the middle of nowhere, and everyone
was mostly happy in the car (we got bored from time to time so paused Harry
Potter and played a game for a while, or had some food, or switched around who
was using the iPads/ etc) so we kept going. We stopped for petrol at Pardoo
Roadhouse (cheaper than the previous one, and we’d had to use our jerry can to
get that far, but worth it to save 10c/litre) and then drove another 70km to De
Grey rest area, a free camp next to a river about 80km from Port Hedland.
We arrived around 4.30, it’s been a while
since we got to our destination within an hour of sunset. This was our biggest
driving day yet, over 500km. As we drove into the camping area we saw a large
white cow trying to look into someone’s caravan. We drove around the very large
camping area and found a spot that looked like it would get good morning shade.
We took the bikes off the trailer and then a german guy in a campervan next to
us came over and said that we were setting up in a spot where people drove
through. We pointed out that right next to us was another spot that people
could drive through (the place we had driven through, ourselves, to get to our
spot) and we thought that would be enough, he said he was just letting us know
and that there were lots of other spots around… We wondered if he just didn’t
want us that close to him (we wanted a spot that was shady if possible, and not
too far from the toilets (this spot was several hundred metres back to the
toilets). We decided to have a bit more of a look around, Tony rode his bike
and found a very shady spot closer to the river, so we moved down there. This
spot felt much more like bush camping, lots of big gum trees around, and a bit
nicer than just being camped on the large flat area we first drove into. It was
hillier down here, with lots of little spots in between ridges of dirt and
grass.
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| Sunset over the DeGrey river |
We got the tent set up then the kids and I
went down to check out the river. There was water covering about a third of
it’s width, although it didn’t look very deep, there were wading birds in the
edges and lots of water plants showing through the surface of the water.
There’d been recent sightings here of bull sharks in the river, so we had a
look but didn’t see anything like that, just ripples every now and then from
some unknown fish. We watched the sun set behind the bridge then went up to the
toilets, on the way back we met a couple with a dog and chatted to them for a
while. Tony cooked sausages for tea and we had them on bread. It was nice to be
away from lights and towns again and to really see the stars – I always forget
when I’m in town how much brighter they are when in the bush. We went to bed as
soon as we had all the beds and blankets set up, and had shut all the windows
and doors – the nights are definitely getting cooler now! I read a chapter of
Inheritance then everyone was happy to go to sleep.
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