Gnoorea Point (40 Mile)

 

Having a cuppa at the main camp area

40 Mile (aka Gnoorea Point – pronounced “new-re-a”) is a beach campsite about 65 km south of Karratha very popular with the Grey Nomads as an alternative to Cleaverville. With the Karratha Shire now mandating a maximum stay of 28 days in any 3 months at any of its camping areas many folk who used to stay at one of these sites for months now stay 4 weeks at each.

One of the attractions of this camping area is the unlimited availability of free (gold coin donation for RFDS) pure RO water at the Devils Creek LNG Plant which is situated at the turn-off to Gnoorea Point (raised over $4,000  so far this year and over $45,000 since it started) So - showering every night was not a problem. A lot of the folk I met at the Devils Creek water tap had large water bladders which they filled once a week. The availability of water like this is unique to Gnoorea Point in the Pilbara camping areas.

Carpet, fire, footy on TV and sand fly repellent!

40 Mile has two main camping areas – one at the Point surrounding the “caretaker” site with room for a hundred of so vans if you include the extended area to the east, and one smaller area on the way in with room for around a dozen vans. We chose the smaller area as friends from Collie were staying there for two of the seven nights we planned to stay. Didn’t have the views over the Indian Ocean like the Point but was nicely nestled behind the dunes and only 45 metres to the beach where we could swim and the fat whiting lurked. Nice spot with clean dunnie and dump point. 

Only downside was the sand flies on the beach and mangrove areas – Linda was scratching herself mad after multiple bites, yet I did not get a bite. I have a theory that beer is a sand fly repellent if ingested in sufficient quantities each evening?

Its tough on dogs in the Pilbara!

It’s funny how quickly you acclimatise to the warmer temperatures when you have been north for a couple of months – it got up to 38C while we were here but at night quickly plunged to 20C so it was on jeans, coats and light the fire!

Sad fisherman after last fish for 2020 trip

We didn’t end up staying the full 7 nights as originally planned as after 3 days of over 35C and 38C forecasted for our last day we decided to head south one day earlier (even having a swim didn’t help as by the time you got back to the van you were dry and hot again). Our trip south was going to be a rush compared to our trip up with 6 one-nighters before arriving at Mingenew (inland from Dongarra) for a few nights (forecast 3C this morning!). 

Gnoorea Point is a nice spot to swim, fish and relax with reasonable facilities and that magic fresh water supply nearby.  Short video is HERE