Friday 5th October: Port Hedland – Millstream National Park 322km Wendy lead

As Greg starts work at 7:00 we had an early start to the day. A bit more of a look around Port Hedland; harbour, sea front, BHP loading plant, railway marshalling yards and salt works before parking up on the Beach front for breakfast. Leaving Port Hedland along the Great Northern Highway we soon moved onto the North West Coastal Highway before finally turning off to Millstream National Park for a late morning tea stop. Thankfully hills and escarpments now added some depth to the scenery. Meandering through the park we stopped at Python Pool for lunch where a sudden gust of wind caught our awnings, bending one of our polls and breaking a lug off one of Russell & Kath’s supporting arms. – Buggar! Continuing to the south side we came across the area where the bush fires had been and could even see smoke still rising. This is the fire we could see from Mt Sheila a week before. We were lucky as the park had just reopened the day before. The bush fires would have covered thousands of square hectares and its pattern was interesting. One side of the road burnt, the other not. Even a meter wide path was enough to stop its progress. We found a lovely shaded spot next to a river bank to set up camp for the night. Meet up with a young Frenchman touring on his own. His father was French/American and his mother a Kiwi. He had started off with his girlfriend and a mate, but the girlfriend had returned to France and his mate had meet up with an Aussie girl so he had been left on his own.