With a forecast top of 33 degrees here today it doesn't really seem like winter has arrived. Hello to everyone back home in the eastern States! We enjoy a relaxing day at Eighty Mile Beach which has an amazing array of shells to collect. At low tide Fraser and I explored the mud flats for crabs, sea snails and urchins.

We decide to head east and make it past Port Hedland to Eighty Mile Beach where we find a great caravan park on the coast. On the way we stopped at the Whim Creek Hotel and met a friendly talking corella called Harriet.

We find out that all of the National Parks (Karijini and Millstream-Chichester) inland from Karratha are closed until further notice due to flooding and road damage. We drove east to the "ghost" town of Cossack which was the first pearling centre established in WA, but was abandoned in the 1950's following the development of the Broome pearl farms in the early 1900's. Some old buildings remain. We also visited Point Samson where we enjoyed lunch at Honeymoon Bay....

We travelled to the Burrup Peninsula and found some aboriginal rock engravings on the rocks which are over 30,000 years old. There are over half a million engravings across the Peninsula. We then drove in to Dampier to view the red dog statue (have you seen the movie?) before returning to Karratha.

We set off for Karratha and find it's still wet in the Pilbara as we travel east. Many side roads off the highway are closed and mine vehicles we meet are all covered in red mud. Not sure if this is any better than red dust. Near Karratha we have to wait for an iron ore train crossing the highway (Mum would have beaten it to the crossing!). Although they travel at 60 km/h they are 236 carriages long and we had to wait almost 10 minutes for it to pass.