Blogs from 80 Mile Beach, Western Australia, Australia, Oceania

In keeping with our determination to relax as much as possible while we're here we sleep in and spend most of the morning reading on our deck and listening to bird noises. We don’t of course recognise any of the latter but Issy thinks it’s a good idea to pretend that they’re talking to us and turn their sounds into words. According to her, one bird has spent most of the morning tweeting “pass the bread please”. Presumably its mates are taking their time complying. We decide to take a late morning stroll along the beach. We turned left when we hit the water yesterday, so this time we turn right. I think this means we’re heading north. If we thought it was deserted yesterday then this morning's destination makes that look like peak hour at ... read more

Today we head south to Eighty Mile Beach which is a hundred or so kilometres south of Broome where the Great Sandy Desert meets the Indian Ocean. It seems that there are a few different ways to spell the name of our destination - the way I’ve spelt it, or Eighty-mile Beach, or even 80-mile Beach. I’m not too sure why they’re so concerned about the spellings when it’s not really even 80 miles long; apparently it’s actually somewhere around 140 miles long, so not even close. We’re told that it used to be called Ninety Mile Beach, but the name was changed back in 1946 to avoid confusion with the Ninety Mile Beach in Victoria. You’d think they would have at least taken the opportunity to get it right and rename it 140 Mile Beach, ... read more

Well we are officially heading towards home from today. A little way off but heading in that direction now, south... But south or not it's still damn hot! We are camping without power tonight so its pretty obvious how hot it is! After an unrushed start we said goodbye to Broome. Our neighbours across the patch waved us off. That was an amazing family, a youngish couple with 6 kids and one on the way! They were camping too, one ordinary looking tent is all they had. A real contrast on some of the setups we saw, they were definitely roughing it! The eldest looked about 12 and one every 2 years after. Lovely family too. Very unusual these days! The road from Broome is the Great Northern Highway. There's not much happening, though, just a ... read more

All along the coast right up to Eighty Mile Beach Caravan Park the scenery is the same, vast plains of low scrub, occasional trees, we are watching out for cattle, and now we see some wild horses. The Park is packed with tourists, and when we set up in the non powered site, no powered left, we go up over the sand dune to have a look at this famous beach. It’s an amazing sight! For all along the shore in both directions, there are hundreds of people lined up, all with their fishing rods in the water, waiting for the big one to bite. Others are combing the totally shell beach, for treasures Next day we try our luck with the rods, but the tide comes in and goes out again with no luck. I ... read more

Days on the Road = 48 Days (6 Weeks & 6 Days) After a great night’s sleep we head off to ensure that we get a powered site at Eighty Mile Beach Caravan Park as its first in best dressed, so I don't feel like going off the battery for three nights especially when you can't swim in the ocean there! We turn off the Great Northern Highway down a 10km dirt corregated road to Eighty Mile Beach and we were very lucky to get a fantastic site. After we setup, we head down to look at the beach which is just amazing, the tide is in and the sand is pristine white. We look left them right and all we can see up and down the beach is people fishing, what an amazing picture. This ... read more