Another day at Gladstone Bay, which is the proper name for this place. If it wasn't for the flies, they are horrendous, we would stay longer, as it is we intend heading out tomorrow. Not a lot to see here but it is a nice spot and apparently good fishing judging by the people with their boats and fishing gear. We walked out into the bay on the low tide this morning and witnessed a major bird feeding frenzy with hundreds of  pelicans and cormorants. As usual Elaine cooked a great dinner over the open fire, we do very well in the food department thanks to my wife's good cooking under not so perfect conditions.

We must have done something right to have the pleasure of enjoying days like these!

The day has been spent sleeping in, walking along the beach and relaxing. We are still at Gladstone and will stay again tomorrow and were lucky enough to get a present of some very nice mullet fillets from the camp host and have just finished a lovely dinner based on them.

Once again we had a campfire and were joined by some of the other people here, this is becoming a very enjoyable habit. All up there are a lot of vans here, maybe about 50 spread along about 3 kms of beach with some just a little bit away from the beach. One of the people here is an 85yo man who has been coming here for 50 years. He has set himself up very well including having built a stone barbecue and pizza oven at the site that he usually occupies and spends some of his days finding odd jobs to do on the station, such as reconditioning water pumps.

Today was very interesting. Last night we met a couple with a plantation just outside Carnarvon who some years ago switched from bananas to sweet corn and who invited us out to have a look. So we took them up on their offer and saw just how they do what they do. As we have already been shown over a banana plantation this was doubly interesting. Then over morning tea we were shown the photo album of his huge collection including medals, fob watches, rifles, pistols, swords and daggers. They were from all over the world and of varying ages, old ages! Really an amazing collection that I would like to see again with a bit more time to study the photos. They also had quite a collection of books. We have been invited back, to stay overnight if we wish, which we will probably do on our way back north.

After a bit of shopping, fuelling and dumping we left Carnarvon around midday heading south to the Gladstone Camp. Unfortunately the Tom Tom would not give us proper directions so I had to fudge things, but we did find the turn off and after 6 kms of unsealed, but not too bad, road reached the camp. This is a nice spot on the beach at the eastern side of Shark Bay and is set up with lots of sites spread along the beach on what is station property. There is a camp host and he welcomed us in and told us to park anywhere, so we chose a spot a little way away from the road in but fairly close to the old jetty.

Now the jetty is another story. The transport up and down WA in the early days was by sea and there are old jettys all along the coast that were used for this trade. The story in Shark Bay is that cargo boat used to anchor at the northern end of Dirk Hartog Island and smaller boats, called lighters, would transfer the cargo ashore all over the bay and of course pick up cargo, in this case cattle, to take back to the ship. The old jetty is still here.

Well here we are at Carnarvon after a pleasant drive down from Minilya. We have spent a very pleasant day with our friend Frank at his boat and will spend some time tonight with our friends, the DeBoni's on their plantation.

A nice cruise down the Northwest Coastal Highway today from our camp at Barradale to Minilya River and another nice rest stop. As we arrived today a man was installing new fire pits so we christened one of them tonight, as usual inviting some of our neighbours to join us. One of those neighbours was a young German couple travelling in a small van to see Australia. They turned out to be a nice, university educated couple but they have already had a bad experience with an overbearing, expecting too much boss. We explained that most bosses are nice people and that they should keep trying to get a job to help pay for their trip.

Back to the road south, there was a lot of roadworks today which is a good thing indicating improvements. I keep harping on this theme and it is pleasing to see the efforts being made to attract tourists to WA. The improved roads are one sign the other is the rest stops and we saw another example today. This was a shelter at a small rest stop near the turnoff to Exmouth, it had well presented and detailed story boards promoting the benefits of visiting North West Cape - well done but it is getting to the stage of needing a bit of TLC. I suspect that free camping grey nomads are not the major spenders in any region but the combination of travellers by all modes of transport are, in today's world important to the survival of large parts of this wonderful country of ours. All travellers are involved as they talk to other travellers and extoll the virtues of the places that they have visited or, horror, complain about those places. It doesn't matter what means of travel the word spreads and we all need that word to be positive. For those who don't realise it there is a wonderful variety of things to see particularly if you are prepared to look off the main road.

So finishes another nice day sitting around the campfire chatting with our new friends. Unfortunately we will go our separate ways in the morning but it is always nice meeting new people.

As usual we were the last vehicle to depart last nights camp which as I have already said was very nice. On the road we travelled past Nanutarra without fuelling up as they were expensive and we are hopeful that Manilyu will be better, although we can't go past there without topping up our fuel tank. Then we stopped and cut some wood for tonight's fire before reaching tonights camp which is the Barradale Rest Area, another of the Pilbara Regional Councils great camp sites. This is bigger than last nights camp and we have more than 50 vehicles here. There is a river alongside which seems to be standard for the rest areas, but the river is sadly lacking water. There is a little water but walking over the river bed it is a big river when it is running! Maybe it will be better on our way back.

Still at Robe River having overstayed our 24 hours by just a little bit, we will be heading off in the morning. I forgot to note last night that these rest stops are a project of the Pilbara Regional Council (aboriginal groups) to, amongst other things, help attract tourists to the area and is funded by Royalties for Regions.

I walked along the river today firstly disturbing an eagle with a corella that he was feasting on then as far as I could before running out of track. It is a rather pretty river with a fair bit of water in it, although it might only be a pool because I had difficulty seeing where the water came in and where it went out! Using river water we then cleaned the last few days mud off the van and got it looking almost respectable again.

Tonight Elaine had the usual fire and attracted quite a nice crowd to share a sundowner with us. Last night the area was fairly full, with about 20 vans in, then they all left this morning so that at lunchtime we were the only people here. Now there is once again 15-20 vans here.