Barn Hill Beachside Station Stay is a part of the larger Thangoo Station that has been turned into a caravan and camping park. It is 138km south of Broome and requires a 9km drive over a corrugated red dirt road to get there. The dirt road was in quite good nick and the van handled it nicely.
Back in Broome, Rob had devised a new device to prevent the van’s internal doors from jumpimg off their tracks when driving over corrugated dirt roads. The device was basically a strip of old thong cut to fit snugly above the door but wedge itself into the pelmet so that it wouldn’t slide itself out when being bounced by the door. This little device worked perfectly with both doors staying on their tracks. Very satisfying…
So… after bouncing over the corrugations for 9km we pulled into the campground area to a fairly well set up bush camp with power and water available, a well built reception area with small shop, a grassy common area and a small pen with two goats in it. The season had ended for the year so the shop was not really operating but we knew that would be the case.
The only real restriction was that power was limited to 6amps per site so using the air conditioner was OK but only if that was all you were using. This was fine… you just learn to juggle your electricity use.
The showers and toilets were one of the best features being constructed of rammed earth with some of them having no roof so you could happily watch the sky while doing your business or taking a shower. It was quite an enjoyable experience… A bit like skinny-dipping with a privacy screen.
The weather was hot while we were there with every day in the high 30’s, which was fine but the wind, while not excessive was fairly constant. This was heralding the fact that we were now well and truly in the cyclone zone with the start of the cyclone season now upon us. Rob was tempted to get the fishing rods out for the first time but ultimately decided not to after watching others on the beach casting into the wind. Some were catching the odd fish but not enough to compensate for the effort required.
Our site ended up being one over from Ange and Chris, who we were camped beside way back at Lake Argyle. Like us they were recently retired (from Victoria) and were making their way around Australia. Nice folks who were in a similar size van and cruiser who seemed to have a similar travel style to us and enjoyed a good laugh and story swap…
Our days at Barn Hill Station were largely spent relaxing since there is nothing to see there other than the beach and the Lost City. We usually waited until the cooler temperatures in the afternoon and then took a long walk along the beach south to the point or north to the Lost City. The beach was sandy with occasional rocky areas that were exposed at low tide. Some rocks were covered in a thick green mossy seaweed.
In many places the white sandy beach butted up against red soil rock faces and dune areas. Amazingly the two colours don’t seem to mix with distinct delineation between the two. I suspect that the red soil soil is finer and lighter and therefore settles in between and under the coarser heavier sand particles. That’s my theory anyway…
Barn Hill Station was thoroughly enjoyable stay despite the season having closed down. It was nice to have a bit of isolation again after two weeks in Broome doing a fair bit of sightseeing…
Situated on the beach about 500m north of the camp site is an area called the Lost City. It’s an area that extends back into the dunes and cliff face that has been eroded away over time leaving a series of towers and columns that actually do resemble an abandoned city. In some respects it looks a bit like an ancient temple from an Indiana Jones movie sans the creeping vines and booby traps. It also evoked memories of the final scene of the original ‘Planet Of The Apes‘ movie where Charlton Heston discovers a crumbled Statue of Liberty on the beach beside the ocean.
The towers and spires are best appreciated from above so Rob put the drone up to get a birds eye view of the Lost City, the beach and the plateau area behind it. Rob’s still a novice at piloting the drone but still managed to get a decent panorama of the area. He also learnt that it’s a good thing to occasionally wipe the SD card in the drone so that you don’t run out of storage at the wrong moment.
A young couple at the campground showed us a thunder egg that they had found in the Lost City and said that you could find them scattered all around that area. Unlike east coast thunder eggs, which have a glassy centre or a cavity with crystals, the Barn Hill thunder eggs are a low grade iron shell containing sand. The shell is usually about 5 to 10mm thick and they are quite heavy. The young couple had collected a number of them and cracked them open to discover that they contained different coloured sand ranging from white through yellow, red, brown and orange. They had carefully emptied the contents of their eggs into a bottle in layers similar to the coloured sands souvenirs that you see in Tewantin, Qld making a great memento from their stay. We were satisfied with harvesting a single thunder egg and leaving it intact.
The Lost City was a completely unexpected bonus while staying at Barn Hill Station and it doesn’t appear to be well publicised as a ‘thing to see’. Like us when we arrived, when we met someone new we would ask, “Have you seen the Lost City yet?” To which the reply would be, “What’s that?” Perhaps they purposely keep it that way for exactly that reason…
Most of the Western Australian coastline seems to produce magnificent sunsets and Barn Hill Station is no different. Each evening treated us to a new and different visual treat as the sun hovered briefly above the horizon and slowly dropped below it producing the fiery oranges and purple afterglows that marked the end of the day.
It was impossible to stand there and not take a thousand photos of each day’s show.
Our last evening at Barn Hill Station delivered weather that was a little overcast compared to the other nights and produced a steely gray sunset where the sun’s glow was partially obscured by grey clouds. If only the camera could catch the full beauty of being there…
Sunsets are one of life’s simple pleasures and we’ve experienced a seemingly never ending supply of them. Starting from Port Germein in SouthAustralia all the way through the Northern Territory and across the top of Western Australia and down the Kimberly Coast. We never tire of them…