Garry and Carols Van Trip: Broome to 80 Mile Beach

We are on the move again. Our stint in Darwin was enjoyable and is over. The people we worked with at the Van Park and at the Hardware were very friendly and made our job easier. It was good for us to see Darwin after some rain. The frangipanni are in full bloom, the mango trees covered in ripening fruit, and all the other trees are covered in fresh growth in anticipation of the coming wet season. We did get rain (a ‘shower’ the locals called it), on Sunday morning when we awoke to thunder and had 140mm by 11am. It really freshened the place up and washed the dust away. Of course we watched one more Darwin sunset during fish and chips at the wharf.

Our flight back to Broome was uneventful with the usual plane full of clean orange shirts going from Darwin to work in Kununurra and another plane full leaving Kununurra in dirty orange shirts on their way home to Broome for their days off. After the rain the views of Darwin were clear but the inland is hazy and looks hot.

Russian cargo plane at Darwin as we left. Dwarfs the Dash 8 behind it.

Darwin from above Coolalinga Van Park

Bucketting down

As soon as the plane door opened in Broome we could smell the sea air and it was welcome.

We spent a day catching up on household chores and washing the car on Thursday and prepared the van for the road again. We are travelling towards Port Hedland but still travelling more west than south. The hilly country of the Kimberley is nowhere in sight as the drive to Eighty Mile Beach is flat open cattle country. There is lots of scrub and a few open flood plains but little to ease the boredom. The first fuel stop south of Broome is a roadhouse 300kms away and at $1.92 / litre they don’t take Woolies discount vouchers either. Its pretty hard not to top up as the next roadhouse is 145kms further on and we were leaving the beaten track a bit further south. 10 kilometres off the highway is the 80 Mile Beach Caravan Park right on the beach front; well 100m from high tide mark behind the first dune anyway. The sand is white, the water is white with a slight green tinge and the beach stretches as far as the eye can see either way. The beach has heaps of shells and is soft and clean so we will be going for a walk in the evening cool. We arrived a bit after high tide and got to drool over the good sized threadfin salmon being cleaned. Each fisher person had only a few fish but they had enough to keep them in tucker for several days. It seems the locals / regulars use quad bikes with little trailers set up with rod holders and eskys for the days fishing as there were several of them in use. We had heard that the road in was terrible as it is 10kms of rough dirt but we were pleasantly surprised as it was a little corrugated but not rough at all and it was less than 10kms long. The sites in the park are good with a good covering of green grass and good shade from plenty of reasonable sized trees. The trees are growing back after being flattened by a cyclone a few years ago. Despite feeling very remote we wound the TV antenna up an got 12 digital channels straight away (better than Cable Beach) and even got mobile reception but only on top of the sand dune near the beach. A couple of quiet days ahead…

Then after dark and after a lovely looonngg walk along the beach collecting a bag full of seashells and a card full of sunset photos, I found that we have internet reception outside the van; very civilised. We also walked back in and found a message from Nez & Den with a photo of their new purchase. A great looking landcruiser for travelling with; so we hope they get back to touring again when they are able.