We left Barn Hill, saying farewell to our lovely neighbours who we'd spent the last few days with, and travelled 300 Km's south to 80 mile beach. Wow! What an amazing spot. The caravan park is immaculate, very well kept, pretty, neat and organised. Of all the sites in the huge park we ended up back next to our neighbours, Gill and Brian, from Barn Hill who also left the same morning! Hilarious! We were glad to have their company again, they are a great couple. After setting up and having lunch we drove down onto the enormous expanse of beach. Not only is it 80 miles long but when the tide is out it's also very wide! It's about 1km from the waters edge to the top of the beach where the dunes start! And ALL of this space is covered in shells. Beautiful, interesting, perfect shells. There are people and 4WDs everywhere, fishing and walking, collecting shells. We spent the first afternoon collecting heaps of shells. The dunes are fairly small and immediately beyond them are the flat plains of a cattle station! So strange to see.
Lachie and I had a very quiet second day, washing clothes and pottering about, washing and sorting shells, but mainly chatting to people who came wandering past to look at the shell collection and compare them to their haul! Ben and the boys drove 25 Km's! north up the beach to go fishing and still didn't get anywhere near the end! They didn't catch anything but came back with a few more pretty shells. We had afternoon drinks, nibbles and laughs with our neighbours, plus John and Val, our other neighbours from Barn Hill, they had arrived so they joined us too. Good fun., however we did get stared at by security for "communal drinking" which was apparently not allowed! The next day we spent the morning pottering again then headed back down the beach about lunchtime for the high tide in the hope of catching a fish. No luck again, but the other fisherman lining the shore didn't seem to have any either so that made Ben feel a bit better. Once back, neighbour Brian taught Jack how to juggle so he spent the afternoon and evening working on it. He was determined and diligent, it was great to see and I hope he keeps it up and can come home with a new skill. We had another Happy Hour with the neighbours and then had to say our farewells as we were moving the next morning. We do hope to see them again along the way as we move south.