Long drive, Flat plains, Good samaritans

Today was almost a photo free day! Yes I know – it is shocking! I only took a couple of photos of Sand Fire Roadhouse because you just have to see it to believe it; I mean it is the only place to stop in about 300km or so with toilets, petrol and food but it has been reduced to a portable building with a lot of hot red sand in front of it and some petrol pumps. You have to walk around and through the rather small caravan park to get to the toilets which, and I can only speak for the Ladies, consists of two loos and two showers, a basin and handtowels. Walking across the hot red sand I could see how it got its name – Sand Fire, actually I could feel the heat from the sand on the ground. They were selling sandwiches and pies and cold drinks but there was nowhere to sit and eat it so we just sat with the car doors open, ate quickly and left. This was along the highway from Broome to Port Hedland which is really a very boring drive. The countryside for a lot of the way is flat with fairly open plains and not much to look at; we got excited when we saw a different feature in the landscape occasionally or a new flowering plant. Fin likened it to the Jerilderie Plains on the Newell Highway in NSW but I think it is worse because there really isn’t any town or much else between Broome and Port Hedland. A Traveller’s Tip here: take your own food and drinks (we always have our own drinks in our car fridge and some food too) and make sure you stack the CD player with music you want to listen to, to break the monotony.
The only interesting thing that happened along the way was that we were waved down by some people about 50km out of Port Hedland; they were Aboriginal people with the bonnet up, I think there was four of them. I was a bit hesitant but Fin said we can’t leave them there without seeing what the problem is since we carry spare petrol so we stopped. Fin had a talk to them and agreed to take one of them to South Hedland where he lives to get help. We moved some stuff around in the car and squeezed the guy in the back seat behind the driver’s seat. (I was driving and was thinking I hope this guy isn’t going to get nasty!) Anyway, he was quite harmless and tried to make conversation as we went along; asking where we are from, telling us where he is from, Derby, and places he’s been, football – West Coast Eagles of course! He has a strong accent and was a little bit hard to understand but we got by; he thought Fin was a nurse because he is travelling around, and maybe he thought the car fridge on the back seat carried medicine or something. So we dropped him at an address in South Hedland and that was that; I hope they got their problem sorted out. I would hate to have been stuck on that highway in the heat like that.
I started this post not long after we arrived at Port Hedland and had only taken the two photos of the roadhouse but Fin came in after his wander around the caravan park and said it was interesting around here with the ocean just next door virtually and the other side with mangroves so I took some more including quite a nice sunset. It’s amazing what a mining town’s air can do to the sunset!
My night finished really well with a webcam session with Tristan – it was great to see him after all this time but it made me a bit homesick. I suppose being away for Fin’s birthday today and mine coming up makes it harder too. I would like to see mum even though I talk to her regularly on the phone; it’s not the same. Oh, I know, many of you would like to swap places but it is a long time to be away so I am entitled to be a bit homesick once in a while. Still we are seeing some amazing things and having a great adventure that we will not forget in a hurry.
Oh, a funny thing that keeps popping up wherever we go is a bus saying: Golden Bus Ballarat. Now it has turned up where we are staying and the group had dinner at the sports club where we ate tonight. It turns out they are from New Zealand and have driven up through Ballarat, Adelaide etc and are doing a similar route to ours so if Fin becomes too annoying I can put him onboard with the other old people! After all, they keep following us so they probably are waiting for a chance to grab him since he looks like he belongs to their group. Hey! He’s the one that said he was nearly an old age pensioner today, not me!!