Cape Kerauden - 30 September 2013

The plan on leaving Barn Hill was to head for Eighty Mile Beach, but that seemed just too close so we pushed on to the very start of the beach at Cape Kerauden, which is a Coastal Recreation Reserve with some camping areas right on the beach. These have drop toilets but no showers or drinking water so the price is consequently quite low. The camp sites used to be behind a sand dune, but the cyclone of 2010 blew and washed that all away.
Nature is not the only thing which is changing things here though, as the council is busy paving the access road and intends to grant leases for tourist accommodation, so if you want to see this place in it's present pristine state you had better hurry!
Cape Kerauden is the official start of salt water croc teritory, so the Ranger advised against swimming as there had been a recent siting. That plus the cloudy water which was likely to conceal stone fish and stingrays were reason enough to stay high and dry - way too far from civilization for any Steve Irwin antics.
So what's it like? Well it just doesn't measure up to Ninety Mile Beach on the Prom - Ba Boom :)
What's it really like?
WINDY. BLOODY WINDY. So bloody windy that we had to take the awning off the camper, all the while struggling to stop it becoming a kite and flying away! Even then, we had to pile stuff onto the floor to weigh it down to stop it being lifted by the wind howling underneath.
Apart from that though, it is a beautiful part of the world so it is a pity to think that they are going to prostitute it before the altar of commercial tourism, like so many other places which were so special back in the day before they were completely overrun. (I'm starting to sound like a rabbid greenie.) There are long, long, long white sandy beaches littered with shells of all designs colours and sizes. There are rocky outcrops covered in barnacles. There are crocodile tracks. There are sand crabs and hermit crabs galore. The hermit crabs are especially active at night. There were literally thousands of them scuttling across the sand. They even came as far as the camp area and were crawling between our camp chairs and feet. Where were they all going and why????? There are sqillions of birds, and even a fox which sat itself down in the dark looking at us eat diner, no more than two metres away. Amazing! Shining a torch on it made it move off a little, but it kept coming back. Only the flash of the camera scared it off until after we went to bed. There were prints in the sand outside our door the next morning - cheeky bugger.
There was a relatively recently retired couple camped next door who had been traveling for a year (well three days short of a year but close enough for jazz) and had ony made it as far as here from Perth in all that time. How they were going to get to Broome by the 14th for their daughter's wedding I just don't know.

 

The Ranger's Dog???