Eighty Mile Beach Caravan Park is half way between Barn Hill Station and Port Hedland by 250km in each direction. It is a remote campground set directly behind the dunes of Eighty Mile Beach. Despite being so remote it is fully serviced with power and water and the park office also has a very well stocked shop with all sorts of essential groceries and even a good range of meats. It was the perfect spot to split the drive from Barn Hill Station to Port Hedland and we opted for a four night stay there.

We did have a lunch and fuel stop at Sandfire Roadhouse. It was an entertaining fuel stop. Rob was filling the cruiser and some locals pulled in behind. Unbeknownst to us, a couple from Barnhill Station had pulled their caravan in from the other direction. After Rob paid and pulled away from the pump the Barnhill couple pulled up to the pump, which caused a minor fracas when the local couple objected loudly that they had been there first (which apparently they were’nt). It didn’t get beyond the stage of verbal abuse but the Barnhill campers held their cool and joined us later at Eighty Mile Beach Caravan Park with a story to tell.

The campground was quite large and the sites were very generous in size with the standout feature being green grassy sites, which was most welcome after having spent a lot of time on red dirt and gravel in the last month.

Like Barn Hill Station, you have to turn off the highway and drive 9km to the campsite on corrugated red dirt. The road was in fairly good condition when we arrived and once again Rob’s sliding door ‘anti-bounce’ devices made from an old thong held the doors securely in place. A design engineering masterpiece…

As it turned out, Ange and Chris (from Lake Argyle and Barn Hill Station) were also there, as were an assortment of people who were at Barn Hill Station at the same time as us. Jo turned into social engineer and organised a happy hour at one of the camps BBQ areas, which happened two nights in a row. Many stories were swapped and quite a few beers and wines were consumed at sundown… which is just the way it should be.

Eighty Mile Beach is exactly that… just one great long beach. Far longer than Barn Hill Station beach. That’s all there really is there but it has two massively attractive features. It is a shell collectors paradise and briliant beach fishing. Rob finally broke out the beach rods and got them wet. The first he tried soft lures, which yielded nothing but the second day using a triple-gang-hook rig with mulies (pilchards) for bait landed three excellent Blue Threadfin Salmon.

Fishing on Eighty Mile Beach was very reminiscent of fishing for tailer on Fraser Island many years ago. The Blue Threadfin Salmon are very similar to tailer except that they dont bite as hard and you need to let them hook themselves rather than jagging back when you feel the bite. Rob lost his first two fish that way until he learnt to let them take a few chomps first.

Unfortunately no pictures were taken of the three that were caught but suffice to say we had fresh fish for lunch and dinner that day. The Blue Threadfin Salmon, despite having similar characteristics to east coast tailer were a much better eating fish having a whiter, firmer flesh and a slightly sweeter taste. Nothing like fresh fish caught off the beach and eaten straight away.

Whilst Rob was busy fishing Jo spent most of her time scouring the beach for a particular type of shell found here called a ‘cake urchin‘. Cake urchins are a hollow egg shaped shell with a star pattern etched on the top as series of small dots. They’re totally amazing… Jo found two of them not far from the campground on her morning walks along the beach and also found a number flat discs with similar patterns.

The beach is literally littered with shells deposited along the tidelines stretching as far as the eye can see in either direction. The beach width here varies greatly with the high and low tide differences similar to places like Barn Hill Station, and Broome.

On one walk she also passed a set of turtle tracks on the beach from a female making the trip to the dunes to lay eggs. It was coming into turtle mating season as we arrived and it was good to see that the turtles are doing what comes naturally and that the rangers were marking the egg sites to ensure that they are left to themselves and not raided or inadvertantly walked over or driven on.

On one beach walk we came across an Osprey. We recognised it from the bird show we had seen at the Northern Territory Wildlife Park we had visited in Darwin. They are a species in their own right having the characteristics of falcons, hawks and eagles. The distinctive feature is a specialised claw that actually locks around a fist so that it is unlikely to drop it. The downside is that whether or not it catches a fish it has to rest and wait for the claws to relax and unlock before it can try again.

Another nice feature of the campsite was a war veterans memorial that was a neatly kept and fenced lawn area with commemorative memorial and a flag, which was lit at night in accordance with correct flag flying protocols.

So… for a place that is so isolated we had a very full four days that were very memorable…