80 Mile Beach & Port Hedland

On leaving Broome the obvious very quickly became obvious; Australia is BIG. When you look at the map you can imagine the journey from Broome to 80 Mile Beach can be done in a very short time indeed, in fact you would think that you were being extravagant even taking motorised transport, surely we could simply cycle? Well no, on joining Highway 1 (the principle North – South road in Western Australia) we were advised by the trusty satnav that our next instruction was to turn right in 330km . . . that wasn’t a case of following the road past multiple junctions as per the M6 in England, our right turn was the next road on the right!

So once we had come to terms with this it was a case of sitting back and heading South; this is not a picturesque road, there is nothing to see aside from the odd roadkill and the nerve-racking wait for that road train that you spot 10km ahead heading in your direction reach and pass you at a combined closing speed of approximately 200km/hr – people talk about Australia having many different natural ways of killing you (sharks, snakes, spiders, crocodiles etc.) but with all of those I would suggest you would have a relatively high chance of survival, if you hit one of these road trains head on then I would suggest even dental records wouldn’t be much help.

Anyway 330km later and it was time to turn right, at this point I realised when I mentioned the ‘next road on the right’ this was not the sort of road that I could continue my 100km/hr progress for the final 9km to our overnight stop, this final 9km would have to be at a speed of considerably below 30km/hr if we didn’t want to leave parts of our home for the next 4-weeks discarded on the road behind us.

We finally arrived at our stop for the night, Eighty Mile Beach Caravan Park.It won’t come as any surprise to know that it is the beach and the beach is very long, we have only been here 3 days and are already finding sunsets not particularly remarkable.

Next stop before heading outback to Karijini National Park is Port Hedland a further 250km down the road. Port Hedland is in effect a mining town with a large BHP presence mining iron ore and a smaller Rio Tinto operation harvesting(?) salt. It’s beaches are also known for turtle nesting from November to March but in comparison to beaches already experienced further North are unremarkable. This is unmistakably an industrial town that would be unlikely to exist were it not for the natural resources that could be extracted from it and you get a strong sense that once the mining companies conclude that it is no longer in their interests to continue in this area then nature would be left to try and heal itself . . . it was however possible to get a nice beer and a pizza so it served our purpose before heading inland to experience a landscape that had not been irreversibly altered by mans progress.

See Gallery Pictures Here