Part Two: Eighty Mile Beach and Port Hedland

JULY 12, 13:

The Ochre Moon is a lovely B&B.  I recommend it to anyone traveling to Broome.  We had a great breakfast in the morning, and then Frank took us back to the airport to the car rental.  The first thing we did after we got the car was go to a grocery store and buy most of our food we’d need while at Eighty Mile Beach.  It was good that we did, too, as the little store at Eighty Mile Beach Caravan Park may have been convenient, it lacked variety and was about twice as expensive.  It was about as big as a 7-11.  Anyway, one night we did buy some sausage there, and cooked it in our cabin, and it was great… but we were glad we had the rest of our food already purchased.

After leaving Perth, we arrived at 80 mile Beach about 2:30 or 3:00 in the afternoon, and we were out on the beach by 3:30, and stayed until sunset at 5:30.  LOTS of shells!

Our cabin at Eighty Mile Beach Caravan Park.

Eighy Mile Beach Caravan Park was pretty nice.  Mostly campers (caravans), but they had about 15 or so cabins, too.  Our cabin was 2 bedroom, 1 bath, a full kitchen and a living room, and air conditioning!  No furnace… we were happy for the blanket, as it was chilly in the mornings!  We used the extra bedroom as luggage storage.

My huge volute I found and dug up!

The next morning, we were on the beach about 9:30 a.m., and stayed until sunset, with only one short break in the middle.  I found a volute about 10-12 inches long, 90% buried in the sand.  I unearthed it!

Part of the beach.  Some parts had even more shells than this.

One of the more shellier areas.

Poor little shark got stuck at high tide and died.

A living snail at low tide.

Dead sea snake.  So glad it was dead.

The beach is very shallow and the tide goes out forever!

Close-up of some of the shells we found on the beach.  I think
I'm going to make ornaments with the scallops I collected.

Good-night!

We got sooooo many shells!  John collected different kinds, and I collected scallops and jingle shells. If we were collecting arc shells, we could have filled a truck, but there were plenty of other varieties mixed in.  We gathered shells, then sorted through them back at the cabin, then brought back to the beach the shells we didn’t want. Such a fun beach!

Our "take home" shells from Eighty Mile Beach.
We didn't keep even all of these, but this was
after the first sorting.

Goodbye Eighty Mile Beach!

JULY 14, Last of 80-mile beach, drive to Port Hedland:

Packed up the shells we were keeping, which covered the whole kitchen table, checked out, then went out on the beach one last time.  I collected more scallops and jingle shells, bringing my total to probably 150 scallops and about 50 jingle shells.

Left at 2:30 to go to Port Hedland, a 3 hour drive.  We stayed at the Esplande Hotel. Very nice.  Got fish and chips for dinner.

The Esplande Hotel, Port Hedland

JULY 15, Port Hedland, church:

Drove to church in South Hedland.  A small branch, but they do have their own chapel.  31 people in attendance, 10 were visitors, us and a large family.  Very friendly.  We had a great time.

We walked along the port walk way and did a “preliminary” walk to the closest beach to see if there were any shells there.  We found some fun things, so we’ll go back!  Salami Pizza for dinner.  Very good.

This was a surprise to see!

This is the only place I have seen bi-colored  bougainvillea.

Pink and white bougainvillea .  Both colors are on one branch,
sometimes in one "bush" of flowers.  Gorgeous!

This was at the port, close to our hotel.  Lots of big ships.

JULY 16, Port Hedland, Pretty Pool.

We stayed in the room in the a.m. (high tide) John worked on the shells and I worked on my cross-stitch.  Left about 12:30.  Went first to the grocery store for lunch supplies, then to Pretty Pool Beach.  We walked all the way to the mangroves and found several volutes, and other shells.  Filled a quart size baggie!  Fun!

This is a rock- the shells are in-bedded in.

This crab was ready to take on John.

Almost time to head back to the hotel!

JULY 17, Port Hedland, Spoil Bank

Went out early to a new area, Spoil Bank, just at low tide.  The beach extended so far!  Google maps showed us in the ocean. Got some more volutes, small ones, and some small trumpets.  Yay!  😊

Went back to the grocery store to buy dinner- chicken wings.  Yum!

Spent the afternoon working on shells and cross-stitch and trying to identify the birds we took photos of.

JULY 18, Port Hedland, last day and night here:

We went out early to the same place we went to yesterday towards the end of our walk, our side of Spoil Bank and closer, to be able to be there at low tide.  Found a couple of great volutes and some other new shells.

Thankfully, this is just a life size statue.

A local told us it was amazing how many cars get stuck down on the beach!
The kids park their car, go out surfing, and forget the tide, t
hen their car is under water.

The top half of a large trumpet.  Wish we had found a whole
one this large!

Guess there was a convention.

Back to the hotel.  Did our laundry, ate lunch, cleaned the new shells, and packed.  Leaving tomorrow after breakfast.

The Esplande Hotel was very nice.  It had a great breakfast every morning, and very nice rooms.  The laundry was free; you just had to share 3 washers and 3 dryers with the rest of the hotel.  But that was very nice to have that available.  We only ate from the on-site restaurant there twice- both times pizza.  We got fish and chips or burgers the other nights.

JULY 19, Heading to Broome.

Our original plan was to stay a shorter time at Port Hedland and stay a couple of nights at the Pardoo Roadhouse.  The Roadhouse is a Caravan Park, like 80-mile beach was, but extremely small, the cabins were duplex style, instead of each cabin separate, and only about 50 yards from the main highway.  We had not had much luck in our communications with them, so after we drove by on the way to Port Hedland made the final decision not to stay there.  We are so glad we didn’t!  As we drove back to Broome, we were going to go down to the beach at Pardoo, but it ends up that that  beach was accessible only from a 13 km dirt/gravel road, twice as long as the road to 80-mile caravan park.  We decided it wasn’t worth it, as it would be very difficult to be better or even much different than 80-mile beach park.  So on we drove.

That highway from Port Hedland to Broome can be very dangerous because of wild life crossings, mainly kangaroos and cattle.  It’s especially dangerous after sunset, so we always made sure we were at our destination by sunset.  We saw kangaroo roadkill, and had to come to a complete stop once to let the cattle cross the road.  Thankfully, our trips to and from Port Hedland were safe.


Back to Broom and the Ochre Moon B&B!  Dropped off luggage and groceries, then took our car back to the rental agency at the airport.  Whew!  Done with left side of the road driving!

We walked back to the B&B from the airport, which took about 45 minutes.  We needed the walk!

Good-bye Port Hedland!