Sandfire, Eighty Mile Beach, Cape Keraudren & Port Hedland

Sandfire is just a roadhouse,

around 330km from Broome, heading south along the Great Northern Highway, simply a place to stop on the way to somewhere else. It is situated on the edge of the Great Sandy Desert, a huge expanse of outback Oz.

Eighty Mile Beach runs along the Indian Ocean, either side of Sandfire. It is famous for its white sandy beach, fishing, shell collecting, sunsets, sunrises and its solitude.

Cape Keraudren is situated at the southern end of Eighty Mile Beach and is stunningly beautiful, a coastal reserve, with camping sites and white sand beaches, vivid blue sea and creek water.

Port Hedland in the famous Pilbara region, is a complete contrast to the above, being the major Australian port for exporting iron ore to China, Japan and Korea, effectively what has sustained the Aussie economy since the first boat sailed in 1966. It is now a highly industrialised and efficient operation run by BHP Billiton, with 12 trains, each over 3km long, arriving each day with over 200k tons of raw material to be transferred to one of the 850 ships, each over 300m long,

that leave annually, worth over 3 billion Aussie dollars. The Pilbara supplies 34% of the world’s sea-borne iron ore trade.

Port Hedland is also a favourite location for witnessing the phenomenon of Staircase to the Moon, on three days each month when a full moon rises in the evening to coincide with an extremely low tide and the reflections on the exposed mud flats create the illusion of stairs reaching to the moon.

On our return from Cape Leveque we spent one last 24 hours in Broome at the Blue Skies resort, witnessed another perfect sunset with Gene & Julian and watched the surfers taking advantage of the decent conditions in the morning,

before heading off on the 3 hour drive, with little traffic but constantly changing landscape, to the Sandfire Roadhouse. It is reminiscent of the Nullarbor Roadhouse where we stayed last year but wins out by having a camel,

a bull, wallabies and bats, plus peacocks and geese wandering around the caravan site and outside the basic motel rooms.

The following day’s 350km drive to Port Hedland included 20km detours to Eighty Mile Beach, which has more sea shells and exotic pieces of coral than we have ever seen in the world,

and Cape Keraudren, where we had a picnic next to the creek and found it hard to tear ourselves away from the extraordinary beauty of the place.

Much of the journey to Port Hedland also crossed the Great Sandy Desert, with views far into the distance in all directions.

At Port Hedland we are staying at Cooke Point caravan site, close to the recommended spot to see Staircase to the Moon, which coincided with our visit. We got in place on the sand overlooking the beach with a bottle of white wine about 40 mins before the due time (19.06) and the crowd grew to at least a hundred by the time we could see a glow in the distant sky, then the moon peeped through and as it rose into the night sky the stairs began to form until there were about a dozen clearly visible – quite a dramatic spectacle.

The last 3 nights illustrates the wide variety of places we stay, a huge room with every facility imaginable, followed by the most basic motel room on the edge of a desert, then a small (but well-equipped) cabin on a caravan site! All part of the Oz travelling experience, which we love so much!