May 1 - 8 - Sherlock River to Broome (via Port Hedland, Roebuck Plains and Dampier Peninsula) (Day 359 - 367)

830km

Saturday 1 May - Sherlock River to 80 Mile Beach

We enjoyed a lovely quick morning swim in the Sherlock River. As the water was quite murky we didn't want to hang around too long to see if there were any crocs. :) 

Sherlock River

Port Hedland

A cargo ship being tugged into port to
collect a load of Aussie iron ore

From Sherlock River we made our way up to Port Hedland, which we first visited on our 2019 trip. The reason Port Hedland seems to exist is as a deep-water iron ore export port. The iron ore mines throughout the Pilbara region, owned by companies like BHP, Rio Tinto, Fortescue Metals and Hancock, all haul their iron ore via rail out to Port Hedland, so there are frequently long ore trains travelling up and back next to the highway. The port always seems to be busy with trains coming and going, and equally the horizon is lined up with cargo ships waiting to zip our ore around the world, a sight we revisited at Koombana lookout (same lookout that we had been to in 2019) to have lunch.

 

On the horizon there are always a number of cargo ships lined up waiting to take their place in the harbour. As I sit here at 2:30pm on Saturday May 1 at the look-out, there are ... 21! ships lined up on the horizon, with another three being guided along the channel by tug boats into port. I can't tell from here how many are in port at the moment, but last time we were here there would have been at least 30 docked up. 

Those little dots on the horizon are all cargo ships!

At the Koombana lookout, Port Hedland

So it's a very big industry and a big focus of Port Hedland. However it's a pleasant place, it's not grubby. Dusty, yes at times, as expected for this part of the country, but there's plenty of grass around; Rio Tinto does some salt processing on the way into town so there are big evaporation ponds on either side of the road which add moisture and colour; and palm trees here and there which tells us we're reaching the edge of the Pilbara and approaching the Kimberley!

The beach is much nicer than Karratha. Normal coloured sand, a bit of seaweed and clear water. And a normal beach line where the water comes right up to the beach!

 

Some of Rio Tinto's salt processing works in Port Hedland

From Port Hedland we made our way up the highway and had a quick stop at Pardoo Roadhouse hoping for a nice cold ice coffee but all we found was a boarded up closed building. Bit disappointing but I made us an ice coffee in our travel mugs. :)

Audiobooks

You'd probably be aware we make extensive use of audiobooks on our travels. We've gone through most of Sherlock Holmes, read by Stephen Fry. 'Just William' by Richmal Crompton, read by Martin Jarvis, has been another staple of our last two trips. But recently we've started listening to P.G. Wodehouse's series 'Psmith' (which, if you're not familiar with it, is simply pronounced 'Smith'). Similar to Wodehouse's 'Jeeves', it's set in 1930's Britain, but follows the lives of two boys who are each sent to the same public school against their will, which causes various degrees of friction but also growth as they learn to adjust and deal with setbacks. It has a strong cricket theme so if you like cricket as we do it's even better. The story continues with the adventures they have there and then their lives as they enter the workforce. If you imagine one of Enid Blyton's school series 'Malory Towers', but with older boys and then continuing after they left school, you'd have a broad approximation of what it's like. They are quite long and very entertaining. Lots of British-isms, and a good little insight into what life in those old institutions would have been like.

Our camp spot near 80 mile beach

We were aiming to get as far as we could tonight, and pulled up for the night at a secret little spot we found on our 2019 trip off the highway in line with Eighty Mile beach. We even parked in the same spot (but with a different car and van), and bizarrely it didn't look like anyone else had been there, or if they had they hadn't disturbed .

Sunday 2 May - 80 Mile Beach to Roebuck Plains

We packed up fairly promptly this morning as we hope to get into Broome by midday to get to some markets they hold every Saturday and Sunday.

We've heard of 80 mile beach over the years, but the odd thing about the Great Northern Highway (which runs parallel to the beach) is that it doesn't come within at least five kilometres of the beach itself, so you pretty well can't see it from the highway. There are only two points we could find where you can access the beach - Pardoo Station at the southern end, or Barn Hill Station close to the northern end. Barn Hill was about 100km from where we had stopped for the night.

So we got moving, had a brief stop for breakfast along the way as the kids were 'starving' (particularly Matt who seems to have an insatiable appetite this year!), and arrived at Barn Hill around 9.30.

The entrance to Barn Hill station

Along the 7km driveway to the station

We came into the kiosk area and asked if we were able to just go down to the ocean for a quick swim. Normally they charge for day visitors but she wasn't bothered with that as we weren't going to be that long. We said we'd come past and buy something on the way out.

The beach at Barn Hill Station - what contrast!

Barn Hill was spectacular! We only had about 30 mins here as we wanted to get up to Broome in time for the markets, but it certainly didn't disappoint. The sand is lovely and white, the water so blue, but the beautiful contrast is the back drop of the red cliffs!

Words fail.

We came back via the kiosk and bought some of there homemade coconut ice-creams of various flavours. It was lovely and refreshing after our hot walk back from the beach.

We made it to the markets with 30 mins to spare with what we thought would be ample time but by the time we arrived most of the stalls had packed up and left. We still went and had a quick peak at the stalls that remained and Mim ended up buying a sunhat. 

Mim getting her sun hat at the Broome Courthouse Markets

We drove down to Cable Beach for a swim. Cable Beach is very well known as it's the beach where they have sunset camel rides, so the picture of a silhouetted camel train going along the beach is probably 'THE' iconic photo of Broome. We didn't stay for that this time as we saw it in 2019, and to be honest when you're there it's just camels walking along the beach. I mean, yeah it's different but it's not so gobsmackingly spectacular in real life as one would imagine from the photos.

Mim at Cable Beach

The camels on their way to the beach

 

In a bit of a dusty free camp near Roebuck Plains

We were intending to head towards Derby tomorrow, so headed out of Broome and stopped at a free camp just past Roebuck Plains, which is about 20km east of Broome.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Monday 3rd - Tuesday 4th May - Waiting around Roebuck Plains and Broome

Map of the Gibb River Road.
Pentecost River isn't marked, but is close to the eastern end,
between Home Valley station and El Questro

Here, again, we encountered a change of plans! The intention had been to start the Gibb River Road today (which is an iconic outback dirt road running between Derby and Kununurra), but due to the heavy rains in the wet season there were some difficulties. Our main concern was the water level in the Pentecost River, which according to information from the ABC Kimberley and the Derby Visitor Centre, was considerably high. The Pentecost River is up the eastern end of the Gibb River Road.

The road was also damaged in some places, and as a result there were various locations which were still closed, particularly some of the side roads. In light of that, and some of the research we'd done on the road, we'd allocated three weeks to drive about half way along, to Mr Barnett Station or Ellenbrae Station, turn back and visit some other things which would hopefully be open by that stage, join up with the Victoria Highway (the sealed road which runs from Derby to Kununurra) and visit the eastern attractions from the other end.

So that's what we HAD intended to do. But on consideration of the closures, the fact the river levels would continue to drop, and the fact many key spots were opening this coming weekend, we decided to head back to Broome for some expert advice from the visitor centre. Unfortunately, Derby is really the best place for that and Broome had limited information, but once you're in Derby it's an expensive place to wait around if the key things were closed. With the absence of sufficient advice, we decided to delay the start of that leg of the trip and stick around Roebuck Plains for another couple of days.

Jude with his new hat!

Instead we did some shopping in Broome to get provisioned up for the trip. Jude bought a new hat, similar to the one he lost on the way to Karijini a month or so back. It's not identical to his old one, which was a Barmah hat, but according to Barmah's website there were no dealers in Broome. So he bought this Jacari model.

Ironically, in the next few days before we left Broome we found TWO other places selling Barmah hats!

We then relocated to Roebuck Plains roadhouse for the next two nights, which was cheaper than Broome parks and was on the way to Derby. They also charged by the site, rather than per person, which is a great bonus for us - most parks charge for 2 adults and then charge extra for kids. And they have a pool!

The only annoying thing about this site was that there were hundreds of small gold hard-shelled bugs (ladybird shaped but about 1/4 of the size) which hung around at night time. At one time Mim was hanging up washing and it looked like one garment was spotty from all the bugs!

The pool at Roebuck Plains Roadhouse

Most of the time here was swimming and working. One night we went to the roadhouse diner for tea. Prices were about normal ($26 for a chicken parmi), but the portion sizes were huge! For example, Bek ordered sausages and mash, and there were FOUR sausages!

Tea at Roebuck Plains Roadhouse

Matt's $19 mega burger -
including meat patty, chicken schnitzel, steak and bacon!!

 

Wednesday 5th - Thursday 6th May - Dampier Peninsula

We figured if we were going to be around Broome for a few days we might as well head up the Dampier Peninsula for a few days. There are some nice beaches up that way from what we've seen.

So we left the caravan park and went through about 20km of dirt roads to reach a spot a little way up the coast. We had looked at a couple of spots - Willie Creek and Barred Creek - both looked nice, but up here we weren't too keen on being around a creek which would quite possibly house a croc! (We later found out Willie Creek did indeed have a resident saltie, although Barred Creek is apparently still vacant for tenancy). So we found a track leading to the beach about half way between the two spots.

The boys ran on ahead to check no cars were coming the other way

It was a rough-ish track, and skinny, but we took it slowly and made it nearly to the beach. The track was relatively flat and had gone over patches of rock, but about 100m from the shore there was a final sand dune to climb slightly uphill in which we got bogged. We backed out with the help of softer tyres and the recovery tracks.

We were considering giving up, as we didn't want to be bogged permanently out in such a remote area; but we looked around and found a different path which went over patches of rock mainly and would get us close to where we'd been aiming for. So we dropped the tyres down to about 10psi, and with some careful planning and picking our path we got most of the way there to this rocky island.

The last bit was the tricky bit as it had an uphill section, but a downhill bit first. So we unhitched the van, drove the car back and forth over the sand to compact it, then reconnected the van. Unfortunately due to a bit of miscommunication between the kids, the jockey wheel was raised while one of the front caravan legs was down and suddenly we couldn't move it up or down anymore! So I had to pull the tools out to perform a temporary amputation!

What a time for a caravan leg to break!

Bang! Not much left of that gear! :(

We later found the excessive force had cracked one of the gears inside. Highly unfortunate, given we'd been carrying a spare broken leg around with us for the past month (which had perfect gears in it), and had only tossed it out a week ago at Port Hedland as it was so much in the way in the va! If only we'd known these gears were a known weakness and could have kept those! :(

Anyway we hitched back on, took a deep breath and went for it. Down the hill, up the other side, around the corner, then roll back onto the patch of rock we'd chosen, and we were done!

If you're in the Facebook group, it's this video:

https://www.facebook.com/814063075/videos/pcb.5426579314082379/10159062377973076

or this has some other related videos:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/theroaming5/permalink/5426579314082379/

Anyway we made it, and here we were for the next couple of nights!

 It was nice to be by the water, however the water wasn't quite as cool as we'd have liked so it wasn't as refreshing as we'd imagined. The spot was absolutely beautiful for sunsets, there was plenty of sun throughout the day for the solar panels, but it was also very unprotected and out in the open full sun.

No it's a toy car! Nice photography Matt!

Friday 7th May - Sat 8th - Back to Broome

We had considered heading further up Dampier Peninsula, but the broken caravan leg meant we were going to have to go back to Broome to get a replacement. Plus we needed to restock the cupboards before starting the Gibb River Road. I found a place in Broome who could sell us the leg, and also do some welding on the caravan suspension rocker bolts which had broken their welds again and were twisting around over bumps - not what we wanted on what promises to be a rough road (the Gibb River Road - I'll provide more info on that when we get to it).

So we packed up and headed back into Broome, with no dramas getting out this time. We kept the tyres down quite low for the dirt road back in which made it quite comfortable. As it was only corrugated sand it was OK for the tyres, but wouldn't have wanted to have done it on rock!

Getting the welding done in Broome

 

After we got the welding done and the new leg bought, we booked into the Broome Caravan Park for two nights, deciding to head out on Sunday towards Derby.

Broome Caravan Park pool - magical!

On Saturday we realised the Broome Courthouse Markets were on again, so given we'd hardly seen any of it last time we had a second crack at it. It was a lot better, with many more stalls this time.

The Barmah hats we wished we'd found a week earlier!

We got some coffee beans, a couple of knives and some smaller trinkets which would easily fit in the van, then did some more food shopping in preparation for the drive out to Derby, and returned to the caravan park. 

The afternoon would have been work and swimming. There was a speedway race on that night and the racecourse was right next to the caravan park. This made for a noisy evening! :(

-- Greg and Mim