Goldwire Rest Area

 Sun 29^th June 

It was a fairly uneventful day with a lot of km covered (about 500 and something) and most of it with the wind in our faces. At one stage we followed the widest load we have ever seen. There were three pilot cars, one about half a km ahead driving on the wrong side of the road, keeping oncoming traffic off the road and telling them on the radio how wide it was – 7.9metres if I remember correctly. Then there was one directly in front of the load and the third one was at the back, mostly on the wrong side keeping traffic back until it was safe to pass; and then it was done under the directions of front and back pilots. We couldn’t tell exactly what the load was, but it was some sort of digger on a low loader and it was accompanied by a second extended low loader with more of the gear. At one stage we crossed the De Grey River and the load barely missed the bridge railings. It went at an absolute crawl and all traffic was stopped at the bridge entrance until it was safely across- not that there was much traffic, just our two rigs and another caravan and one from the other direction.

We have been travelling parallel to the Eighty Mile Beach and at some stage want to go in and perhaps spend a couple of days. Everybody raves about its beauty. The wind was a bit of a deterrent today and we didn’t fancy being sand blasted. Most of the tracks in are 4WDtracks - a bit rough for the caravans. The spot we are in is a free camp just off the highway with a few trees for shade and shelter. It is a free camp with toilets and picnic tables and in all there would be about 30 vans in it. When we arrived it was about 3ish and there were a couple of men sitting by their vans playing ukuleles. One was a learner, but the other had made his own ukulele especially so it would sound better for jazz. He plays in a four piece band – a singer and 3 different pitched ukuleles. He played a few songs as we chatted – such a relaxing sound on a sunny day. We are parked by a small clump of bushes and low trees and there was a constant stream of small birds of many different breeds flitting about in them.