We woke up this morning to a small gift left by our bizarre friends. We didn't see them again even though we spent most of the day on
the beach windsurfing. David rigged up the 6m and stayed out for 1 ½ hours while I sunbaked (first time since
Shark Bay). Finally, I went out on his board and the rigged sail once he'd had enough and had a great sail. The water was so clear and the onshore wind meant we could sail up and down the white sandy beach.
We didn't particularly like our
camp site because it was dirty and smelly (no
toilets) and we'd done all there was to do here so we moved on towards
Cape Arid National Park. We didn't have a map for this park so we went to the
ranger station, which was on the coastline at the
Thomas River. Accessible by 2WD we found 2
camp sites, one run by National Parks and the other by the shire council (free). It was still quite early in the afternoon and we had set ourselves a challenge - to make the $30 cash we had on us last until
Adelaide (excluding fuel). We agreed to move on deeper into the National Park where all roads were 4WD only but before we left
Thomas River we went exploring (still with the trailer attached). We took a track leading to a beach, ended up in deep soft sand, and had to deflate our tyres just to get out. And of course, inflate them again to drive along the hard gravel access roads through to the other side of the National Park. We'd no sooner taken another turnoff and we hit deep, soft sand again and had to go through the deflate, inflate procedure for the 2nd time that day. It was about 6pm when we finally made it to our free
camp site at Seal Creek on the shores of the
Great Australian Bight. Our
free camp had
toilets, fresh tank water, free gas BBQs and good level
camp sites. All this, within walking distance of
the beach on the other side of the huge sand dunes.
We cooked our gourmet version of 'bangers and mash' again tonight with Thai sausages and sweet potato.