We were back on the road shortly after sunup so as not to get too hot and bothered by the morning sun. We continually hear on the Western Australian weather of “scattered showers and thunderstorms” in so many places and yet the last rain we have experienced was in Darwin which is a shame as a nice refreshing shower of rain would go down a treat. The scenery was once again rather monotonous with it flat in all directions and only scrubby plant life visible, something we both found quite surprising. The “Yuk - what do you think that was?” road kill game was even fairly predictable with lizards the predominant unfortunates although the odd steer (easily identifiable), bird and kangaroo provided some variety.
By late morning we had arrived at the Pardoo Roadhouse. The turnoff to our stop for the night at Cape Keraudren was just up the road and after filling up with water and fuel that is where we headed. It was 11km of wide dirt road out to the Cape and it was not too bad apart from some sections of rather juddery corrugations and the obvious side effect of the Beast and Van being a nice shade of dust red on arrival. Once checked in we found a spot to camp that would give us some breeze, shade and a view of the sea and the long white expanse of 80 Mile Beach to the North. It seems strange but after all our time on the road this is only the second overnight stop where we have been right next to the ocean.
The location itself is quite nice and we were hoping to swim as there are supposedly no stingers in the area but as luck would have it there had been a report of a Salty hanging out in the mangroves in one section of the park area – to swim or not to swim, that was the potentially life threatening question…
Life changing decisions like swimming aside we decided to go for a night walk to 80 Mile Beach as this was “just up the road” from where we were camped and we both agreed a walk would do us good – especially in the cool of the evening and we were hoping we might luck upon some turtles hatching as this happens at this time of the year in this area. A part moon was expected but as it had not showed we took a couple of led torches with us to minimize the likelihood of us tripping over a rock or the like.
Well a couple of hundred metres down the road we heard this scrabbling sound coming from the grass and alongside the road. On came the torches and sitting looking at us was this very cute kangaroo. No drama – just a kangaroo so off we went. Thing was the kangaroo followed us. When we stopped, it stopped. When we walked it hopped along right behind us…Being stalked by a kangaroo was a new thing for both of us. The thing was that if we shone the torch on the road just in front of us the roo would hop right up to that spot, albeit less than a metre from us. On we walked trying to get away from this roo but it was some 500 metres or more before it tired of the game and went on its own way.
The roo drama over we plodded on down the road only to be confronted by large yellow eyes peering at us from the darkness – big cow, bull, steer bovine animal type eyes. No wonder the roo had done a runner. They were huge… The strange thing was none of these beasts were evident in the camp area during the day. It was if they snuck in at night to chomp on the grass. Well they were harmless but there were lots of them all down the road that we had to shoo out of the way and worst of all we knew we would have to face them on the return trip.
After a long walk in the pitch black along a dirt/sand road we were starting to think we were lost so gave up on our attempt to get to the beach in the dark. No hatching turtles were to be spotted that night. We did however see something strange in the way of these white hermit crabs running all over the road and munching on cow pats if they were lucky enough to track one down. Really weird as we were nowhere near water. The trick was not stepping on them in the dark as hermit crab road kill was not something that was on our agenda.
Saturday we enjoyed our fabulous view of the ocean and beach generally had a rest day other than going for a drive to 80 Mile Beach along the road that we had so miserably failed to negotiate the previous night. The beach itself is long, wide, white and backed by dunes and when the tide turns the water goes out a long long way…
