80 Mile Beach & beyond (11/6/12 - 13/6/12)

Keen to leave the sandflies behind, we headed off from Port Smith on Monday morning and drove 240 kilometres south to 80 Mile Beach. The 6 kilometre dirt road into 80 Mile Beach was the dustiest we had encountered all holiday.  As soon as we arrived we felt relaxed - what a lovely spot.

We managed to get a campsite close to the beach and right next to our Newcastle friends, the Marshies who we met in Jindabyne back in January.  It was so nice to catch up and share our travel stories.  The kids loved seeing their buddies again and picked up where they had left off five months ago!  One of the best things about our trip is all the wonderful people we have met along the way.

Simon and Andrew took the four big kids for a drive along the beach to collect shells etc in the afternoon, while Donna, Lee-Anne and Genevieve had a great catch up.  A nice dinner together, a few drinks and an early night for all.  As we hopped into bed, we had a massive downpour of rain, the first rain we'd had for some time.  On Tuesday morning we woke up to beautiful sunshine and heavy fog. 

80 Mile Beach is as the name implies 80 miles of beach, covered with countless shells and has huge tides.  Unfortunately we didn't get to enjoy it too much as we decided on Tuesday morning to push on toward Karijini.  We had a great 20 hours or so there and it is somewhere we could go back to and spend a couple of weeks.  Thanks Marshies for a great catch up and the yummy cous cous salad!

From here we drove 260 kilometres south toward Port Hedland for supplies and a quick look around.  An incredibly busy iron ore port with some of the biggest cargo ships you would ever see!  Not to mention the huge amount of massive road trains.

It was then back in the car, headed toward Karijini. We made it as far as Bea Bea, a free camp 40 kilometres north of Auski roadhouse, as the sun was going down.  An early night for everyone, although poor Ben was sick most of the night, so there was four very exhausted Thomas' on Wednesday morning.  Thankfully Ben was feeling a lot better Wednesday morning so we decided to push onto Karijini, 130 kilometres south west.

We are now all pretty much resigned to the fact that our amazing adventure is almost at an end and we will reluctantly be back to reality very soon.  We may as well enjoy the last of the sun as there doesn't seem to be much around in the south at the moment.