We woke this morning bright and early to the sound of the generators around us.  Quite glad to be moving this morning.  Not too far, only about 100m.  We’ll be closer to the loo’s and out of earshot of the gennies.

I poked my head out this morning and saw all our chairs wet.  I didn’t think we had rain last night though … the whole place was engulfed in complete pea soup fog.  A quick stroll down to the beach was a bit eerie and disorienting.  You only needed to walk about a minute down the beach to lose all frame of reference.  Luckily the fog was destined to burn off really fast.

We did the packup and setup in record time.  Had brekky and then did what we came here to do … absolutely bugger all.  Well almost.  Kel put on a load of washing or 3 since this park has had the cheapest washing machines on the whole trip at $2 a load.

I needed to call our insurance and see what the plan was, since they can’t call me … We went via the laundry, hung out some clothes, walked to the reception area, made a call for about 15 minutes, walked back via the laundry, took all the clothes off the line since they were dry already … and THEN did absolutely bugger all.

Well, almost.  High tide was at 12:30 and all the fisho’s were gearing up for the days chance at dinner.  There’s plenty to be able to catch out there, but it depends on the day.  Apparently they all either catch more than they can carry or nothing at all.  Since there’s no pool we headed down to take a look.

Absolutely wall to wall fishermen as far as the eye could see in both directions.  We flipped a coin and headed right, which was probably a bit of a mistake.  We had to drive 3kms down the beach before there was reasonable distance between us and the next bloke.

By this time the tide had turned and it seemed like today was a ‘no fish for anybody day’.  Many were already packing up and heading back.  We soon had the beach to ourselves as far as the eye could see.  It’s not a great swimming beach, but we got a cooling paddle in, which was all we were really after.

You can already see how much the tide has receded in about an hour

Not long after we were in the water, I thought I spotted a fin … and then another one!  Only about 10m away from us and not much deeper than where we were standing.  We were barely in knee deep water, but there were quite decent sized sharks patrolling the shallows.  Our first mistake was in turning right coming onto the beach.  That put us down the current from the fisho’s.  All that wasted bait was now attracting the sharks … and the kids flailing about would have been the dinner bell.

That was enough for lifeguard Kel … we were all out of the water.  Not even allowed in ankle deep while the sharks were there.  As it is though, the sharks aren’t the real issue.  There’s sting-rays to stand on, catfish with 3 inch spikes to stand on, six species of local sea snake to kill you … altogether, not a swimming beach … all eighty miles of it, but especially just down current of the fisherman.

So we drove back … and took the opportunity to give the Prado its first wash since leaving home.  This solved the dilemma of keeping cool since the kids got squirted about as much as the car did.  The end result was that the kids and car were cleaner, but not clean.  At least the salt’s off kids and car though.

Since we can’t swim, the decision was made to move again tomorrow.  There’s few stops along the way but we’ll probably head to Broome a day early and sneak in somewhere.

Mini ranger

Tonight I was keen to get photos of the sunset here, as it coincides with low tide … and the tide is a massive 6m one today.  Suffice to say the sunset was awesome as the photos hopefully show.  Due to the tidal flats we got to see the ‘Stairway to the Sun”.  I think this was much more impressive than Broome’s “Stairway to the Moon”… which you haven’t read about yet … I’m in Broome tonight writing this bit as we have Internet again.

While I had 30 minutes of light left, Kel and I headed out to sea to find out just how far the tide had receded.  About 1km out we were a bit puffed … there’s a few boggy bits.  Kel stayed put and I jogged out as far as where the waves started to lap the shore.  I logged the point on the GPS and plotted course for where we started.  Problem was that I’d forgotten to log where I’d left Kel and there was now virtually no light.

Kel and I found each other via sonar.  “Cooee!” … “Over this way you twit!”  It was completely dark by the time we got back to the high tide mark.  A total of 1.5km between low and high tide is just amazing.  We were both covered in mud up to the knees too.  That was the exercise of the day…

De-mudding in the showers saw us both squeaky clean for an early evening in.  A bit of TV saw us barely survive until 9:30.