Sarah’s Big Holiday

Apart from fuel Sandfire roadhouse offers a couple of interesting exhibits and a large collection of caps, neatly hung under the roof. There's also a German family with 2 little kids, Noah (2.5y) and Lilly (14m). Sarah - completely ignoring the little boy until she bought herself an ice cream and finished it - had a great time with them. The couple had worked here as backpackers 10 years ago and loved it so much that they came back to stay. It’s an interesting way of growing up, basically at a petrol station with travelers passing by, and where the station people come in to get their supplies from a delivery truck twice per week. But they also said they're not sure yet what to do when Noah has to start school. Sandfire is pretty much right in the middle between Broome and Port Hedland, 300 km either way.

Roadhouse exhibits and the cap collection, some wildflowers and our delicious camp oven damper (lucky you don't see the burned side) from the night before.

Eighty Mile Beach 

50 km from Sandfire is the turn off to 80 mile beach, which is 9 km off the main road. There's nothing else than a caravan park and beach, beach, beach. First we thought to stay at the day-use area and head back to the main road to find a free camp but the beach is so beautiful white and blue, has so few people and plenty of shells and the promise of a stunning sunset made us change our minds and pay $35 for an unpowered but green site

80 mile beach at outgoing tide

It was the right decision as you can see in the wonderful-kitsch sunset pictures. 

The tide difference was about nine meters today and it seems that the beach not only got its name from its length but the also from the way you have to walk to the water during low tide. Next morning Martin wanted to fish in the incoming tide - like 50 other guys. A long white beach, a keen fisherman knee deep in water, every 10 meters and some lonely women tanning further up on the sand ...Sarah and I built 20 sand castles that got all washed away by the rising water. The guy next to Martin caught a blue threadfin salmon. We went over to see the fish and Sarah realised that the man cut the gills, and the fish was bleeding. She looked at it for quite a while, until the fish was no longer moving. Than she went to ask the man if the fish will still be swimming... In the end we got 2 small fishes from that man but, Sarah carrying them in her arms (in a bag), still pondering over the bleeding and dying fish and actually didn’t eat much of it when we made dinner.

We had dinner at a free camp at the De Grey river, a huge area with big sites. Instead of going down to the river bed, we took one on the plains but the wind was blowing so hard that we couldn't have a fire.

De Grey rail bridge, cattle coming to visit, wildflowers