Tha eagle was not willing to let go of his fish, even when I was coming close…

There were 75 km left to Port Hedland, and I was ambitious to get there today! This would mean paddling into the night, but although nobody was expecting me I knew where I wanted to go – to the campsite on the eastern end.

Paddling into the night towards a town is always quite exciting, to spot the various lights in the darkness and to figure which may be which spot. And it was not as depressive as to paddle towards an unlit remote beach, as light means people and hopefully a hot shower!

I was crossing Breaker Inlet without any problems, the shallow parts were already mostly before the Inlet, before I was even landing for the night.

The shallows of Spit Point weren’t a problem either on my tide level.

During the day I was calling Greg and we tried to get hold of Sheree Alsop in Port Hedland, who was commenting on my blog about offering accommodation. Unfortunately she left only her work e-mail, and as it was Sunday, we couldn’t catch her!

So I still headed at night towards the campsite, about Greg found out they unfortunately couldn’t offer accommodation either – fully booked on high season!

Can’t help them then…I happily put up my tent at darkness on an dry sandbank on what looked to me like an island, and walked through waterless sand flats on low tide toward the campsite at about 9pm to sneak in for a hot shower – ahhhhhhh! Just what the doctor ordered after 75 km!!!

I was in cell phone range, and couldn’t fall asleep without a long phone call to Greg and checking e-mail…at about midnight I eventually came to rest. But as I was planning to have a rest day tomorrow for shopping and picking parceld from the post office, this was ok…

Text message from Freya:

20.18 118.38 Port Hedland.  6:30 am to 8:30 pm, 70 km. I paddled into the night toward the lights of Port Hedland to arrive on a beach up in front of the campsite. Nice shower first, then update :-)) Some more whales in the distance today!