The rain followed us across the Pilbara, not heavy and inconvenient in itself but creating other problems for us. We had planned on staying on at Cleaverville but with the rain came the sandflies in large numbers. We were driven out and decided to head Eastwards away from the rain.
Alas, it was not to be. We tried Pardoo station stay, beyond Port Hedland. It looked like a likely place to stay with the map showing a terrific coastline of mixed beach, rock and creeks. Unfortunately, the rain had been there before us and closed all the station tracks between the homestead and the coast so visitors were confined to the camping area. With more rain looking likely, we pushed on for 80 Mile Beach.
The 80 Mile Beach Caravan Park is a true delight. It is clean, well organised with very friendly staff. The fish are usually friendly too with threadfin slamon being the main target. Unfortunately, the smaller more common blue salmon were missing this time and 100 or so anglers competed for the 4 or 5 giant threadfin that were caught each high tide. These fish are trophy fish, running between 5 and 15 kilos each. We lucked out this time and I was so jealous when the guy right along side hooked up.
Coming out of 80 Mile Beach, a large black headed python tried to make a meal of Benjy but found the taste of bear too much for his refined reptilian ways.
From 80 Mile, we dropped in to Bidydanga (La Grange) to discuss some work further down the track before pushing on for a couple of days in Broome. Along the way we discovered that our MP3 player had been “borrowed” from the car (along with 3 fishing rods) while parked at Cleaverville. Armed with this excuse, we hit the shops in Broome to buy an iPod. Mary Dawson was visiting with her mother so we managed to catch up for a meal out, rounding off Broome as the usually expensive stop on the trip. We were horrified when we took a near empty vehicle down to the fuel station and filled LPG and Petrol tanks with $218 worth of fuel. And it’s only going to get worse.
We head for Derby.