We had planned to stay in this area for a couple of days, and initially planned to stay at the same caravan park for this time. But because we had found the Harding River Caravan Park quite run down and a bit smelly, we thought we would move to a different one – weren’t sure which one yet. So it was another packup this morning. We left the van park about 9.30. We drove to the Roebourne Visitors Centre where I went in to get some information and book in for a tour the next day which I had heard about. This whole area of Roebourne, Cossack and Point Samson were the earliest settled areas of the NW of WA. There was a lot of interesting history here, as well as the modern changes from the Rio Tinto iron ore industry which had commenced at the Pilbara in the 1970s.

We then drove the 19km out to the coast to a little town called Point Samson. It was the youngest of all 3 towns there. It had a little cove called Honeymoon Cove which we had read was very pretty. We stopped to look at the town beach first and had a walk out along the mudflats as it was low tide. We then drove to Honeymoon Cove and changed into our swimmers to swim there. But when we actually walked down there we noticed there were some rocks in the middle of the bay and it would have been a bit dangerous. We wondered why it was said to be such a nice swimming beach. (Later in the day we realised it was probably because we were there at low tide). We were all a bit disappointed and decided we should look somewhere else for another swimming beach.

We looked at the map of the region and decided we should try the beach near Cossack – called Settlers Beach. We headed back that way. We passed by Wickham on the way to Cossack, and they had put monuments of a big dump truck and a railway engine at the entrance to that little town. We stopped and took photos and read the information. Then we continued on to Cossack and Settlers Beach. We found Settlers Beach to be a lovely swimming beach. All of us (even Michael) ended up swimming there. It was a lovely temperature.

We then had some lunch and started driving towards Karratha, where we had decided to stay at the Big 4 caravan park. It was only a half hour drive to Karratha. We found the park and set up. We were able to choose a site right next to the playground and near the amenities, so that was good. There was a pool there also, so the kids went for a swim that afternoon. Then it was an earlier night for everyone tonight.