Saturday 29^th August 2020: Happy birthday to David for today. Today we are moving from Pardoo back to Port Hedland – booked into the Discovery Caravan Park which is the old Cooke Point Park where we have always stayed on other trips.  It is bound by the sea on one side and Pretty Pool and its mangrove tidal creek on the other and after dark has views across to BHP lit up like a city. Being a bit early we go down to South Hedland to see the Big Wheelbarrow and then do a shop at Woolies before settling into the Park. Towards evening we do the sea with the tide out and the Pretty Pool walk right around the exterior of the Park. 

Shay Gap playground

Sunday 30^th August 2020: We are just killing a couple of days in Hedland before we do the Rio Tinto Salt Tour on Monday afternoon. This morning we do a major clean on the exterior of the motorhome as it is covered in red dirt and a gum that we’ve got from being under trees. After lunch we do a bit of touring – down to South Hedland to find Shay Gap Memorial Park -a lovely shady park with impressive playground equipment – 7 different stations - but no mention of Shay Gap at all. The back streets of South Hedland aren’t very inspiring and it is like a rabbit warren the way the streets go around in circles. 

We decide to go back to Port Hedland – about 10 kms over that impressive road system of bridges over the rail lines – to have afternoon tea at Dome as it overlooks the Port Area, but it is closed until further notice, so we end up at the Silver Star rail carriage where we went on the way up – it is lovely outside under the shady trees. The tide is out so there isn’t any ship movement. We were commenting on how everything is covered in red dust and how stressed all the trees look and lack of gardens and then we drove back along the coast and came to Cemetery Beach which is grassed, with a couple of lookouts, playground etc and the houses from here back to the park are of a better standard, so that’s the other side I guess.