Eighty Mile Beach

Tuesday the 1^st September, after six nights at Barn Hill we left and continued south. This post is a little delayed again due to not having good phone/internet service. There will be a few more posts in the next couple of fays.

We wanted to check out Eighty Mile Beach as it is one of the main destinations up this way so that is where we went. It is about 250km south of Barn Hill from memory and that is all the kms we really like to travel in one day. It is a good caravan park and so we had power for the washing etc.

Went straight up to the beach which the van park is right next to. The sand is not a pure white sand but rather, more a mixture of mud flat and sand and so the water is a cloudy consistency and not really inviting to swim in. It is primarily a fishing spot and the fisherman flock there in their hundreds or more. It is shoulder to shoulder fishermen in the peak season and if you wanted to swim there at that time you would probably wind up with a hook in you or a shark or stingray having a go at you. If they don’t get you the fishermen will. There has been punch-ups between fishermen over tangled lines and taking one another's spots. More about that later.

 

On the way to the beach I bumped into Kevin who we met at El Questro Station months ago. We saw Kevin and his wife, Rhonda, at Broome a couple of times after that and they are on a similar trek to us. Their daughters were on the SBS program, ‘Go Back to Where You Came From’ which they told us about and so we watched.  It was Rhonda’s birthday and they were celebrating with friends, Norm and Pat from Mandurah near Perth, who invited us to join them. So happy hour started early that day and continued on through dinner as they had caught a few good fish that, and the previous day. They were very welcoming and invited us for dinner with them all. They are all terrific people and I hope we can repay their hospitality one day. We talked about that happening as they have a son at Holdsworthy Army base so they may venture over our way and we can have them over.

The next day we went fishing with them all. Pat, who had not been fishing more than about once in her life caught a nice blue salmon. I caught a small reef shark which is not good eating apparently. When we had nearly finished fishing I went a little way into the water to cast out. I am glad I only went a little way as a three metre shark appeared about three metres in front of me. It was a huge shock. Earlier I had been out deeper to cast. Never again in that cloudy sought of water. I did not have a camera at the time unfortunately.

That night was hamburger night in the van park so we joined them for dinner that night and said goodbye in the morning.

There were these marks in the sand and think they may have been turtles coming up during the night and laying eggs. Any centre markings between the two lines would have been wiped out by tide action.

Glad we dropped in to Eighty Mile Beach and glad I didn’t get taken by the shark.