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Published: July 23rd 2023
CAPE KERAUDREN
Parts of the Cape have a rugged coastlineAfter two days on the lagoon between Marble Bar and Port Hedland, we headed off to stay in the G'Day Park in Port Hedland for a few days. Our first stop was the car/van wash and it took John a good half hour to get the dust off everything and it seems to be still oozing out of every crevice! Arrived at the caravan park and got all set up and looked across and down one and there were a couple we met at the Marble Bar Races....Toni and Mick..... we were so glad to meet up and we had a lovely time with them as our neighbors....happy hour 4pm each day for the 5 days! Port Hedland is a very industrial town everything is red, house roofs, roads, shops! A very spread out town, like Port Hedland and South Hedland are about 12klms apart even though its one town...with a salt mine in the middle. We had heard about the Seafarers Charity and that they did a tour of the harbour so we decided to do it, it was a real eye opener, Port Hedland Harbour is ginormous! Seafarers relies on donations and their shop for money to keep supporting
HEDLAND HOTEL
Few beers in the Sunshine all the seamen who come to town a lot of them being on the ship for 6-9months at a time. So our tour was a crew transfer vehicle and there were about 20 guests but also collecting and taking back seaman to their respective ships after they come in for shopping, medical or just the pub! BHP has the lions share of births at Port Hedland with Fortesque just behind them and then Roy Hill (Gina Reinhardt) and a few for the smaller ships. The trains bring the iron ore to the port, they are 2.4klms long, and there are 1 every hour 24 hours a day....each ship holds about 36,500 tons of iron ore....the stats are just unbelievable but the most sad thing is that most of this goes to China and comes back to us made up. As my cousin, who used to work out this way, said our useless government should not be letting this happen. We thoroughly enjoyed our tour and hearing about the Seafarers Organisation, it was about 2-3 hours in total...it just depends how many ships the boat has to pick u/drop off seamen. With Port Hedland so spread out, we virtually had to
PORT HEDLAND
Nachos....yummm drive everywhere, our caravan park was 6.5klms from the main town. We visited the Hedland Hotel one afternoon had a lovely arvo...on the edge of the water on a beautiful sunny day. The pub has new owners who own many hotels all over Australia and it has had a beautiful renovation done in recent times. After 5 days of stocking up, washing everything, swimming in the pool at the caravan park (it was the most freezing pool I have been in) with some days being 31 degrees...we enjoyed our stay here especially catching up with Toni and Mick, who are from Mooloolaba, for our happy hour each day, lots of chats and laughs and talking all things Thermomix so Toni managed to buy one down at Karratha so now another convert. Next stop Cape Keraudren about 160klm north of Port Hedland and 20klms in from the highway, what a beautiful spot, the sea is bright, bright blue with lovely white sandy beaches and rocky outcrops, when the tide goes out there is about 1-3klms of rock pools and little pools along the receded water, had a beautiful 3 days here. You book it but not a spot so there are
HAPPY HOUR
Laughs and chats with Toni quite a few areas to camp but we headed for the cliff area. Not near the mangroves as I already had 4 midge bites in Port Hedland and they were supposed to be thick here at Cape Keraudren but I have been lathering the Good Riddance all over me and seems to be keeping them at bay. Did quite a few lovely walks.... thoroughly enjoyed our time here! Onto our free camp at Stanley Rest Area, some of these rest areas are huge, with fire pits, toilets and tables and chairs, so good just for an overnighter then onto Roebuck Plains Roadhouse to camp on night to hopefully get an overflow caravan site at two sites in Broome, who are not allowed to take bookings you have to show up on the day. We had read that the Roebuck has good food so not expecting too much had an amazing feed there, two serves of smoked brisket (melted in your mouth) with a huge jacket potato with all the trimmings and a lovely salad bowl washed down with a very drinkable bottle of red $64 the lot, could not believe it, brisket was $20 a serve and had to get
PORT HEDLAND HARBOUR
Hard to capture the huge harbour doggy bag could not eat all the meat. After sussing out the overflow was not to be so no stay in Broome, we were not that disappointed anyway as been here before and it wasn't on our bucket list again! Had been trying to book a park since we were in SA during May, minimum 1 week but could not get anything at the 6 caravan parks there. We went into Broome twice from Roebuck Plains and man it was crazy busy, could hardly move in the joint so we parked in a paddock near the Coles shopping Centre one day and the local indigenous arguing, swearing and fighting just near us and then in Coles you had to have a peg on your nose. Didn't give us a great feeling after we were told by another caravaner that their daughters van got rocked in Broome a couple of months ago, dear oh dear where are these places going! So if you plan coming to Broome during June, July, August you need to book months and months in advance, we thought a couple of months out we would have got in. Already been up to Cape Leveque another time so
not heading that way. So our next stop would have been Derby but we managed to get a spot at the Willare Bridge Roadhouse for a few nights so drove the 160 odd klms from Broome to Willare and kicking back here 100 metres off the Fitzroy River. Its a great roadhouse also, meals not as cheap as Roebuck but excellent steaks and we bought some beef here which was reasonably priced. The roadhouse is owned by the Burton family who are Burton Beef Company who own three stations they source their stock from and a focus on high quality. A few English backpackers here doing their 88 days remote work for their visas, not too bad they get full board including three meals a day plus their wage. They all seem pretty happy and they save as there is not much to spend your money on here except booze.
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