Day 41 - The Lake Ellendale Rest Area to Derby (166km/3hrs)

We had a lazy start and the kids went for a walk to find Millie the cow to feed it some carrots. They also had some more fun with their bow and arrows.

We left the campground at 8:45am for our short drive to Derby.

When we arrived we went to Woolworths to stock up and then we went to the visitor information centre for a look around. Drove to the caravan park and waited in the big queue to check-in. Set-up and had lunch and then we drove to the Jetty.

Derby has Australia’s highest tidal range and today’s low tide was 2.29m at 12:44pm and high tide was 9.70m at 6pm.

The jetty is massive and whilst we were there a fuel truck spent about 2 hours filling up a cargo boat.

The boys did some fishing which was very interesting to watch as it was low tide so they had to let out a lot of line cause the jetty is so high. Luckily they didn’t catch anything as I don’t know how they would have got it up! Bronte sat with another couple who were finishing and played with their dog and I enjoyed watching all the kites (birds) flying around and the quick moving tide. It’s amazing how quickly the tide comes in.

The boys didn’t have any luck so we went back to the caravan park for an early dinner so we could get back to the jetty for sunset. Unfortunately Rog was helping someone so I missed my sunset arriving just as the sun disappeared for the day.

The boys had another fish and we were able to see the water level at high tide which was amazing but it was windy and cold so we didn’t stay too long.

When we got back to the caravan park the kids were visiting one neighbour patting their dog, the neighbour behind us was talking to Rog and the neighbour next to us was chatting to me. It was so funny all the different conversations happening at the same time and everyone was up for a chat but we were hoping to have an early night - which didn’t happen!

Last night at the caravan park an 11 year old aboriginal girl from Perth (plus younger kids) broke into a couples caravan and stole their car keys and they tried to steal the car but couldn’t drive it properly and ended up running into another caravans slide out injuring the lady inside. The men who owned the car and caravan ended up restraining the girl until the cops arrived. This all happened around 3am and there was lots of yelling and screaming so we were glad we missed it. Unfortunately it sounds like it’s a common occurrence.

So this was the hot topic around the caravan park so everyone was on edge not knowing what might happen tonight. Rog & I had a very restless sleep and poor Bronte woke up very scared thinking someone was trying to break into our van so we were awake for hours with her. Eventually we all got a couple of hours sleep.