Barn Hill Beachside Station Stay

Well 3 gates to open and go through to get here, driving on red sand. Worth it, beautiful spot beside the ocean. The main 'negative' reviews we've been hearing - is if wanting power (we do for air-conditioning) it is very 'sketchy' and can keep cutting out, so you can't use too many appliances. We're OK with that 🤞we'll just use our gas for anything else. The camping price is up too, $48 per night powered - but for the amazing location we can understand that as well.
When we arrived it was out of office hours, so we follow displayed instructions and fill out a form and deposit it in their box, before wandering around the camp areas until we are happy with our site selection. We set up on site 56. All great - I'll be abit sad if someone sets up on site 55 - it'll block our view of the water. It's fairly quiet ATM so our view might be safe...
Once settled on our campsite, we relax and have lunch. Leftover risotto for me, sandwiches for Roger. Next when we get around to it, we'll walk down to the beach for a swim. Went and had our swim, very nice pottering around the rocks checking out small crabs and little fish. We come back to camp and read for a while, before getting ourselves ready to go for a beach walk to watch the sunset. This was wonderful - sunset beautiful and beach walk terrific for our Oceans to Outback challenge - we did 7.5kms.
On getting back to our caravan we sit outside for a while - gorgeous night with a lovely breeze, then we have showers (use our caravan shower - don't want any more sand from outside before bed) and Roger prepares our chicken surprise stove top casserole. Very nice with heaps of vegetables in it. We follow this with the remainder of last night's apple crumble for dessert. Tidy up, now to relax - we'll read our books in bed. I'm feeling 'out of sorts' - I received a phone message from TripADeal (Gabe and my trip to Canada tour operator) - knocking back my request for an Early Arrival. No use 'stewing' I'll just have to plead my case in writing once we're back with good mobile/internet service.
Thursday morning - lovely morning here. Roger only got up once throughout the 'night' - earlier morning really lol 5.30am as our power 'tripped' and power out - so Rog reset it to get it going again. We get up about 7.30am, Roger straight over to the cafe, opens 7.30am to 9.30am and 1.30pm to 3.30pm, to get a cappuccino and a chai latte. He then proceeds to defrost our caravan fridge/freezer. I make our porridge on the stove. After breakfast, we tidy up and finish cleaning the fridge and reset it up. We've decide we like this place enough to stay another night - so Rog goes and pays for that. Now he's set up his hammock in the shade and happily reading his book in it. I'm catching up on this and then I'll get relaxing with a book too.
Arh ha - it's happened today....people have moved onto site 55 and blocked my view, haha doesn't matter I've still got a side view and lovely breeze. Turns out these 'new' neighbours are really lovely, Paul and Dale, retired couple on the tail end of 3 months of travelling (with their very nice set up, Xcountry Extreme caravan at least 21ft and V8 Land Cruiser wagon). They are now homeward bound back to Perth and plan to stay here 2 or 3 nights before they 'go for it'. Spend our morning relaxing reading our books - then late lunch, leftover chicken surprise casserole for Roger, open toasties for me made with crusts, avocado, Rael's zucchini relish, salami and cheese. We decide to continue with our reading and relaxing - not sure we can even be bothered going for a dunk today! No, we decide to stick with our beach walk today. This time we head off to the left when we get on the beach - and walk to the 1st point, which at low tide we can walk about. Both Roger and I see the biggest crabs we've seen ourselves on the beach (see bigger ones for sale to eat) - they are very quick to hide so no photos captured! Roger goes back to the caravan as I decide to walk further, back to the right from entry point, to check out the rock 'ruins' and take in the sunset on the way back. When I get back, I find Rog has been locked out of the van as he didn't have his own keys on him! Oh well, he made the most of that, catching up with other campers and 'chillin' in the cafe area. We relax at our caravan, drinks in hand, watching the night sky afterglow of sunset, before Rog showers (in our van) then gets tea sorted. Beef tacos tonight. After this I shower in our caravan, then tidy up. Time to relax before bed.
Roger's up and getting breakfast sorted around 6.30am this Friday morning. I have a lie in until 7.30am reading my book. Then it's time for porridge and my cup of tea. Roger is very happy, he's in the process of securing our 2nd house sitting job - this one we'll do 1st as it's in Geraldton, 2 weeks of looking after 2 dogs and home. We go over to the Cafe and have cappuccino for Rog, hot chocolate for me ($11 together) and make the phone call to chat with Alise, to confirm we're happy to deal with 'pulling' dogs on their leads- that secures the job. So we'll be in Geraldton by the 24th of this month. Now back to our caravan to finish off pack up (Roger basically has it all ready to go) and we're leaving before 9am.
Just before we leave, Paul and Dale call by to say goodbye, and Dale gives me her written list of places they feel are worth a look. As I said - just lovely people.Läs mer