Pardoo Station

The gateway to piscatorial paradise

 We had stayed at Pardoo Station for a week a couple of years ago and decided to make this our most northern destination for our 2020 winter getaway. We had booked 2 weeks as soon as the WA Regions were opened and decided on arrival to extend that by another 4 nights.

Gotta go shopping!

Pardoo Station is a working cattle station about 130km north of Port Hedland at the southern end of 80 Mile Beach Marine Park. The caravan park is a real oasis in the dry, hot, red soil of the Pilbra with shady grassed powered sites, swimming pool, General Store, bowling green (sort of) and whilst we stayed -  fresh baked bread, rolls, croissants, and sausage rolls every day. Site fees are quite reasonable as well at $240/week during the peak winter season.

As there is no fuel at the Station we did a half day trip to venture further north (only 30km) to Pardoo Roadhouse to top up with fuel (and have a hamburger) and visit Cape Keraudren Camping grounds where we had stayed on our first trio around Oz in 2011 (and Mum and Dad stayed on their big lap in 1989). Its still a beautiful camping area with fantastic scenery but seems to still have those non-stop strong winds that plagued us in 2011, very limited facilities and it’s not all that cheap to stay (about half the cost of Pardoo Station).  Still extremely popular with the grey nomads though as all three camps at the Cape were near full on the day we visited.

Gunna bring my balls next time!

Back to Pardoo Station. As nice as it is Pardoo Station is mostly an angling destination and if your not keen fisher persons it is probably not a place you would enjoy for an extended visit as there is little else to do.

Dog discrimination!

With 5-7 metre tides and shore fishing options ranging from muddy creeks, sand flats, sandy beaches and rocky headlands a 4WD is almost mandatory and there are still many places that are “no go” zones on tides over 6 metres (there is a sign at the Shop saying minimum recovery cost it you get stuck out on the tidal flats is $800).  

So - it takes a while to work out where to be and when to be, but by talking to the locals and experimenting a little we soon worked it out. Places like Red Point, Pardoo Creek mouth, Banningarra Creek, Bones Beach were soon becoming fishing hot spots for us as we worked out the “when in the tide” to be there.

Enough to say that for the 18 nights we stayed we had fish for dinner every second night and still left the Station with half of our Engel full of fish fillets!

So if you enjoy fishing, easy 4WD’ing, 30C every day, and comfortable powered sites in a well-run park – Pardoo is probably for you. We have already booked for next year!

One downside of the Station is that drones are prohibited – so there is no drone footage in my video. I did a bit more experimenting with time-lapse on my DSLR and found a great site for sound effects and decided that my video should have an “Old West” theme – so turn up the volume a little and hopefully enjoy my video HERE