Degrey River

Our camp amongst the trees

Degrey River free camp is about 70 kilometers north of Port Hedland on the Northern Highway. Highly recommend by some close friends of ours we planned to spend a week or so there. The free camp is an extensive area but there are only limited sites away from the main road, under the trees and close to the river – the majority of the sites are more in the open and subject to dust and road noise. If you’re intending an extended stay at any free camp and are looking for some “prime” real estate you need to plan ahead – best to arrive at the site between 09:00 and 10:00 on a weekday and not in school holidays. As luck (and good planning) would have it as we drove in at 09:15 a van was just pulling out of a level site, as far away from the road as you can get, and under the trees near the river – and a bonus they left a big pile of wood!

De grey ones

When we were there the River was running and the water was cool and clear. After reading the “Crocodiles have been sighted here” sign and having a warning about bull sharks from our friends we carefully picked a spot to have a cooling dip for an hour each day. Found a spot where there was a 100 meters either side of very shallow gravelly water. We spent many an hour soaking and fossicking thru the gravel for pretty stones.

Upstream from railway bridge

The bird life on the river was brilliant and in particular large flocks of wild budgies were constantly nearby and this gave Wally our travelling budgie a chance to learn to speak “budgie” again.

Steak and chips tonight

Only downside to the area was that the long drop toilets we blocked most of the time we were there. Think this was caused by fellow grey nomads and back-packers not liking to “look down the chute” and ling the top of the long drop toilets with paper and thus blocking the whole system. Didn’t cause us any problems as there we are fully self contained and there were two working dump points at the site and lots of bins.





Great spot – we will definitely take a break here when we next travel this way.