Day 39 Port Hedland

Jacqui and I woke at 3:30am this morning and with only 3 other couples staying at the 80 Mile Beach Caravan Park, we felt confident to leave the boys to sleep in the van, while we headed to the beach on a Turtle hunt. As we walked past the dunes and onto the sand, we turned right and walked along the sand for about a kilometre. We found plenty of fresh turtle tracks where they had come up to lay their eggs but unfortunately, no actual turtles. Once we got back to the spot where we entered the beach, we kept walking so see if any had come up on that side of the beach and sure enough, the tracks leading back into the ocean went all the way to the waters edge, indicating that we’d missed a sighting by only a few minutes. Typical for us when it comes to sea creatures. Almost, but not quite. We are however very popular with non-sea creatures. We attracted a massive wasp into the caravan for breakfast and some subterranean creature decided to utilise our matts as a part of it's front door.
We packed up and were on the road by 8 and after an uninspiring drive, we arrived at Port Hedland at 11:30. As we got closer to town, we saw more giant ant nests on the side of the road and as you can see, the local artists have used the nests to make a cultural contribution to the area.
We found the only caravan park in town and we were a little surprised to find the Cooke Point Caravan park to be the most expensive so far on our journey. They charged us $72/night, even after the 10% discount for being a Big 4 member. I said to the lady at reception, “This is the most expensive Caravan Park we’ve stayed in during or 39 days since departing Sydney” to which she replied “Yes, we hear that a lot”. It’s far from being the best as far as facilities are concerned with a very small swimming pool, limited BBQ facilities in working order, and not even fresh milk available on site, but they’re proving every day that if you’re a monopoly, you can charge whatever you like.
At 4pm, we headed to Cemetery Beach to go Sea Turtle hunting. The lady at the information centre told us they like to come ashore just after the high tide so off we went and sure enough, we saw a stack of them just a few meters off shore. Unfortunately, they saw us as well and decided to stay in the ocean. After an hour or so, we headed off to re-supply for our planned visit to Millstream-Chichester National Park, tomorrow. We then headed back to the park for dinner, where we met some of the other campers, and then it was back to the beach to resume the Turtle hunt.
Again, we saw nothing. The tide was out so we tried to sleep in the car while waiting for the tide to come in but with the temperature still in the mid thirties, it wasn’t working, so by 10:30, we were all back in the van asleep. Foiled by the sea creatures again. Today was not our best day.
Cheers,
Jorg