Day 38 80 Mile Beach

They say “It’s been a slow day when you resort to posting photo’s of shells”…………………but not so, say I “if those shells were found by a much loved and devoted member of your immediate family”.
As might be expected, we took our time getting out of Broome this morning. We’ve had a fantastic 10 days and between Broome and Cape Leveque, I think all of our individual highlights, (apart from the helicopter ride over Uluru), have come during this 10 day stopover. We finally got away at about 10am and slowly made our way out of Cable Beach and on to the highway towards Port Hedland. It was a completely uneventful drive other then that we managed to drive for 3 kilometres past when the on-board car computer said we should have run out of petrol. I’m not sure how far we could have gone because at the 0 + 3 mark, we arrived at the optimistically named Sandfire Roadhouse. Upon questioning the attendant, we discovered that the Roadhouse shop, restaurant, and caravan park had all burnt to the ground in recent months but we were still welcome to purchase as much fuel as we wanted at $1.56.9cpl, and the 600ml soft drink was cold and $3.60 a shot. So much for lunch.
We drove the extra 55km to 80 Mile Beach and after setting up the van in a record 25 minutes, we spent a lazy hour exploring the beach. We found great shells, a dead snake, and a dead catfish that we thought about claiming. We also found Turtle tracks. From October to May each year, Turtles travel from all over the world to lay their eggs at 80 mile beach and it was so easy to see the tracks they’d left as they dragged their cumbersome bodies up the sand to lay their eggs.
Unfortunately we couldn’t swim in the ocean due to the frequent croc sightings and the deadly Irrikanji jellyfish. Never mind!
Once darkness set in, we took our torches to explore the beach in search of turtles but all we managed to find was a large and unfriendly Crab. It’s becoming more apparent each day that we’re not really good with sea creatures, of any type.
Cheers,
Jorg