Day 80 11/6/2011 Barn Hill Station – Eighty Mile Beach.

Day 80 11/6/2011 Barn Hill Station – Eighty Mile Beach.

Brrr it was really cold this morning, out came the jumpers and tracksuit pants, the wind had come up again over night and was roaring down the cliff top, and shaking the caravan to the bottom of all the rivets holding it together!!  It was with a level of reluctance that we were leaving Barn Hill.  We had really enjoyed this camp spot, we had met lots of great people, had some laughs, caught heaps of fish and swam to our hearts content, but with lots more of the west coast to explore we packed up and headed off.



The things I have to do to get internet connection
to check emails and keep the blog up to date!! The
dongle for the internet was on the caravan roof!!



Along the way we marvelled at the flatness of the land, how the Great Sandy Desert meets the ocean cliffs, well Pete and I marvelled at the landscape the three kids were deeply immersed in their videos!! We pulled into Sandfire Roadhouse with only the smell of petrol left in the tank!! Pete put 76 litres into a 72 litre tank!! As he was in paying for the petrol and chatting to the lady he found out that we were lucky that we came through today because they only had their unleaded petrol delivered this morning!! Yesterday they were a dry roadhouse!!  Thank goodness for the extra day at Barn Hill I’m not sure we would have enjoyed an enforced stop over at the Sandfire Roadhouse.

The stop at the roadhouse also gave us an opportunity to check out the jobs board!! Heaps of jobs for couples on local stations doing small tasks like cooking and watering gardens, we have also spoken to a number of nomads who move around house sitting particularly on the west coast.  Slowly Pete and I are starting to plan an early retirement that includes travelling and sporadic work commitments!! Sounds like bliss!!

We arrived at Eighty Mile Beach and whilst I knew the wind had not abated I was still disappointed that it was windy!! The kids immediately headed to the beach, Callum and Claudia to check out the swimming possibilities and Zac to check out the fishing.  I must admit I was a little disappointed with Eighty Mile Beach, it is long and but the sand is a grey colour and so the water is all murky and not crystal blue!!  We have been spoilt so far.  The beach though was covered in beautiful shells so we spent a few hours collecting shells for an unknown purpose.

On the way back to the beach chatting with the Ranger and other travellers we learnt that swimming is not recommended anywhere along the beach due to sea snakes, tiger and bull sharks as well as an assortment of other marine animals just lurking out of sight under the water, apparently there are rips and the beach is unpatrolled.  Pete and I just looked at each other what were we to do, it was windy, we couldn’t swim and the fishing was poor, no pool or park to play in and we had booked in for three nights!! So without further ado we headed to the office and changed our booking to just two nights!!

Zac headed off to fish on dusk but returned later empty handed.  Pete, Callum, Claudia and I settled into playing a game and getting ready for bed.  The hatches were battened down for the night and settled in for a good night sleep.