We have enjoyed four days soaking up the sunshine at 40 mile beach. Enjoying beach walks and generally just chilling out. One night we cooked up a Beef & Beer Cobbler and at first we thought it was going to be really bland, but after spending the time to reduce it, it was a very tasty and stunning meal.

When we had arrived at 40 mile beach, the caretaker asked us if we had filled our water tanks up with the water from the Devil Creek Gas Plant on our way in. As we didn't have plans on being at 40 mile, we had filled up both tanks at Karratha and on tasting the water it had a bit of a tainted taste to it. So we ensured we went through both tanks and filled up at the Gas Plant on the way out, this water, so they say, is the purest water on the West Coast, it is triple filtered and it is fantastic.

We travelled north back to Karratha, to see if Alan could get a haircut, one barber in the Plaza and at least 6 people waiting, so not wanting to wait we went shopping. After leaving Karratha, we headed south-east to Millstream Chichester National Park, we had 90 km of bitumen and on driving across a railway track we hit the gravel. The road was a shocker, DABUS was shaking and rattle and rolling, we couldn't even get up to a decent speed. On arriving at the entrance to the NP we decided we didn't need to put either DABUS or us through anymore s***ty roads. We moved on another 40 km and camped for the night beside a railway track. It was exciting having happy hour and hearing the rumble of an Iron Ore Train coming towards us. We walked up to the track and watched the trains travelling past us; it would take 4 minutes for all the carriages to pass us. Throughout the night about 5 trains went past and needless to say one of us dreamt about bloody trains.

Moving on the following morning a 40k drive and arrived at Pannawonica and caught up with Sheryl & Brian. We parked up on the vacant block of land next door to their son, Adam & his wife, Kylie's house. There once was a house on this block but it was destroyed by a Cyclone and never rebuilt. Sheryl informed us there were double g's, worse than bindii; they can pop the kids bike tyres, so a ground sheet was found and put down under the awning.

The following day Brian and Sheryl took us on a tour of Pannawonica. This is a closed mining town that has fantastic facilities for the workers. The swimming pool and drive-in are free. The drive-in has kids movies on a Friday night and adult movies on the Saturday nights. We went for a drive out to Pana Hill and saw the Pannawonica Weather rock. When we first drove into town, school had just got out and we both commented how surprising it was to see young children, walking or riding bikes unsupervised; we don't see that at home and it goes to show how much the kids feel safe and the community at large feel it's a safe environment for the kids. We enjoyed their family's company, sitting around the campfire at night and catching up on our travels over the last three years. Hopefully we'll meet again on the road, travelling back home.

The scenery from Pannawonica back out to the highway was breath taking and absolutely stunning. On reaching the highway we stopped just south of the intersection, at the Robe river rest area. Here we thought we would stop for lunch, but the rest area didn't look to inviting to us, so we drove down a track on the east side of the bridge and found a posse overlooking what little water was in the river. We decided this was a lovely pleasant spot to stop, so after lunch, Alan did an overdue service on DABUS, then we enjoyed watched the Supercars racing at Ipswich. We'll now stay here for two nights as we have phone reception and can watch the Supercars. Enjoying the birdlife, walks along the riverbed and serenity of this side of the road.