After deciding to stay two nights at Balla Balla, we ended up staying for only one. Matt got stung by massive amounts of midgies (sandflies) on Sunday night (check out the photos to see how bad they were!), I was in bed thank god and didn’t get stung at all (or weed on, so we’ve found out from our extensive research on how to stop the itch and prevent them biting you). Matt tried some fishing at the “boat ramp” which was more of a mud pit with rocks, but got no joy. There were crabs everywhere, you could see little bits of red all through the mud, but they were only small (the ones we saw, anyway), so sorry Norma, we didn’t have any! : (
After a pretty quiet night, we headed off mid-morning through to Roebourne, then straight towards to coast to Point Samson. It’s a pretty sleepy little town (if you can call it that!) with two caravan parks, some houses, and that’s about it. The caravan park (Cove) is pretty new, I think only about three or so years old, so it’s pretty nice even if the prices are a bit steep!
We jumped on our bikes after unpacking, and had a bit of a look around the point, not much to see other than whales passing by, lighthouse, reef and the Cape Lambert port for iron ore (I’m guessing from Newman) with the massively long jetty. The jetty is apparently the longest and highest in the southern hemisphere (or maybe just in Australia…?) There’s an old jetty here as well, but there’s not much left of it – the weather up here gets a bit hairy when it’s cyclone time! We found the coolest raised deck-type thing as well (the photo is on the website – especially for you Lyn & Drew!), it’s on top of a bus parked in someone’s front yard!
Tuesday we went out to have a look at the abandoned town of Cossack. The town originated from pearling, and was abandoned after Broome took over as the pearling guru town. It was pretty interesting having a walk around and checking out all the restored buildings and ruins around the town. Matt threw a line when we’d finished looking around, but no luck. : ( We then headed back in to Roebourne to go to the tourist information centre that’s been set up in the old gaol, only to find that it closed at 3 and it was 3:20 by the time we got there! So, we went up to Mt. Welcome, then headed back into Point Samson.
Yesterday we had a bit of a lazy day, well I did anyway! Matt did a bit of work while I sat outside all day and read a whole book, for the first time ever (not I actually read a book for the first time ever, I actually read a whole book in one day – and no, it wasn’t a little golden book : P). We had a bit of a wander around the beach and rocks out the front of the cvp, then Matt went for a swim (surprise, surprise) at Honeymoon Cove. We wandered around to the marina (world’s smallest!), and had a bit of a paddle at the boat ramp. The marina highlight was the size of the chains we saw sitting on the side of the road, check out how big they are! Crazy!
Today’s been another kind of lazy day, we went to the beach this morning (both got sunburnt), then came back to do a bit of maintenance on the van, and have a bit of a tidy up ready to head off tomorrow. All the way to Karratha… (seriously, it’s only 60k’s from here! Hi Kez and Petie, we’ll be there soon!)
