Dan's oyster came straight back out

Cam's oyster - straight down, but I don't think he'll ever do it again

Dan's palm hut

Chili Beach coastline

Steve sawing down the coconuts

Day Five and Six – Chili Beach:

So many people warned us to not bother staying at Chili Beach due to the south-easterlies. Everyone reckoned it was blowing a gale. Well, being who we are we thought we’d check it out for ourselves.

Finding a perfect camping spot on the Southern Sites, we set up and the kids were in heaven. Beach at our doorstep, coconuts in the thousands for them to split open and drink or eat. No matter how Cam tried, he couldn’t quite climb high enough so Steve rigged up three tent poles together and taped a hand saw onto the end to be able to reach the highest coconuts.

The wind was quite calm and for probably the first time since I left Broome I actually felt warm. Hah! We all said. This is perfect. We built the now mandatory bonfire, cooked sausage sandwiches on the barbie plate and just as we were about to settle in for another one of our “cracking” fires the rain started pouring and the wind whipped up a fury. We battened down the hatches and had an early night. Again, my fleece came out and I was freezing cold. The camper trailer was rocking and rolling with the wind all night long, but at least we stayed dry. Not a great deal of sleep happened this night – except from Cam and Dan who slept like babes. I don’t think we’ve ever camped in the rain with this camper, so at least we know the canvas is being seasoned.

Today, we drove down to the community of Lockhart River to stock up on some food. Community kids never cease to amaze me. As soon as we got out of the car they were on us. “Love your car”, “Has it got a turbo”, “What movies do you watch on the DVD screens?”, “Where you from?”. They were full of joy and curiosity. They also thought it was quite hilarious pointing out the “white kids” in the supermarket. We also went to the Gordon Air Base that was first erected in 1942. A plane came in while we were there, so it was really cool to see it in action.

At low tide, we fossicked around the rock pools and granite boulders which was really relaxing. We shucked some oysters off the rocks and dared the kids to eat a fresh oyster for $10.00. Well, Cam slid one straight down his mouth, Dan started very coolly but soon spat it out in disgust. Terry tried doing some fishing with the kids down the beach, but it was blowing an absolute gale and they soon gave up. Dan made a shelter out of coconut tree branches so the kids have been playing survivor, hunting down a bush turkey that they thought Steve could cook for dinner.

After settling back in camp for cheese, crackers and ciders, the rain and wind started up it’s ferocity again, roasting sticks for the marshmallows were created and placed ready to use, but had to wait for now. Instead, we took the Frosts ghost crabbing – Cable Beach style.

Armed with snip-snaps (kitchen tongs) each and a bucket we headed down the beach. It was high tide so we only had about a metre of sand to search, but the crabs were out in their hundreds. The kids were squealing like crazy and I’m sure they could be heard for miles around, but they had a blast. They caught at least 50 crabs between them, and we let them all out at once and squealed some more when they crawled all over their feet. The tide was coming in really fast by this time so we decided to return back to camp. It was so dark, and there was so much squealing going on that we missed our camp entrance on the way back and thought all our thongs had washed away to ocean. The Gilligan’s Island jokes were being tossed around, until Dan started to believe that we would never make our way home again. It took some convincing and there was more than one sigh of relief when we finally found our camp entrance.

Tomorrow, we start the Frenchman’s Track. It has been the ruin of many a spirit, but then again, we may just conquer!