Exmouth to Broome
The kids flight from Exmouth was delayed further, and this meant they missed their connecting flight from Perth to Sydney. So it was a long day for them, finally getting home around midnight.
After they left, we headed east and then north towards Broome.
We received some excellent promotional drone photos from Camp Easy Ningaloo of the setup they did for us at South Lefroy Bay.
View out from inside Alexis and James tent
Justin, Mel and Casper's tent in front of our van
Drone shot of our campsite, quite something!
Our first night after leaving Exmouth was a free camp called "Over the Hill, Bush Camp". The entrance was a bit tricky to find but with good instructions on Wikicamps we found it perfectly.
It had a great view over one of Rio Tinto's mines and courtesy of the mine, had excellent mobile phone service.
Great outlook
Perfect Sturt Desert Peas were abundant here. Jayne's favourite flower
Our next night was at Yule River free camp - a really good camp in the trees by the river. We again had issues with our water pump, but this time we actually found a last leak, and with this fixed we've had no issues with pumps since. We had multiple issues with the water and it was good to finally resolve this.
Port Hedland has a really busy and interesting port so we stopped off for morning tea and some shopping before going further north.
The ships there are very majestic
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A ship coming in to be loaded with iron ore
Our last night before arriving at Barn Hill Station was the Stanley 24 Hour Rest Area. It even had some concrete slabs which allowed us to unload our caravan boot and get the last (we hope) of the Ningaloo sand out of our van.
Barn Hill Station Stay
We stayed at Barn Hill for 3 nights on a ridge site overlooking the ocean.
On previous stays we've driven 30 kms up the road to the Eco Beach Wilderness Lodge for lunch, so decided to go again. To get into/out of Barn Hill you need to open and close 3 cattle gates, then another 2 getting into Eco Beach. It's not hard, but trudging around in now red dirt gets a bit annoying.
The view is lovely, but after each getting two completely raw barra burgers for lunch, we decided we won't bother going there again. If we want raw food we can eat it at our caravan and nobody has to cook!
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Nice View
Barn Hill has some great walks and rock formations on the beach
Sunset from our camp site was always good
We saw the Lunar Eclipse at Barn Hill and the "Blood Moon"
Broome
After 3 nights it was time for us to travel 120 kms to Broome, one of our all time favourite spots.
Our first night we headed down to Cable Beach to watch the sunset and camels
A quintessential Broome photo - Cable beach sunset, camels and pearl lugger in the background
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Breakfast on Cable Beach
Morning coffee and cake at Roebuck Bay
They are doing major works all over Broome, and it looks like a construction site at the moment.
They've finished all the work down at Roebuck Bay and now have a whizz-bang playground and picnic area
Sand sculptures in Broome
We went to the Broome Fishing Club for dinner. The food was great and really well priced. It had a great atmosphere and full of locals. It's not really advertised for tourists but we were very welcome there.
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They're having really high and very low tides here at present. So one morning we went for a ride along Cable Beach.
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We were lucky enough to cross paths with Merv and Jen again and had sunset drinks on Cable Beach.
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Tomorrow we leave Broome and head north up the Dampier Peninsula. We have a few favourite camp spots up here, and they're all part of Aboriginal Communities.
