Indee Station & De Grey River camping

Indee Station

We had just spent an amazing week at Karijinji & so it was time to start heading north again. We had to resupply in Port Hedland, but didn't really want to stay in town, so we had a look on the outskirts & found a station stay called "Indee Station" it had camping & a quick search on the internet didn't bring up too much except a review from a traveller saying it was okay. It was in the right place so we thought we will give it a try. We left Karijini after completing the walk to Circular Pool at Dales Gorge so were on a high. We had no troubles finding Indee station as it was just off the highway & it was an uneventful trip. We went through the station gate & towards the property & soon came across various roads that looked like mine roads & an airstrip, oh well it was pretty well sign posted so we kept going in, it was about 10km in. Just before the homestead we were confronted with what looked like a mining hardstand, dongers, offices & a workshop, weird, we continued into the homestead, surrounded again by dongers & demountable buildings everywhere. Not great, we headed into the homestead to ask about camping, they were friendly & said the had a campground out the back, okay we thought how bad could it be.....? It was $20 for the night. The lady led us around the back to an area of blue metal gravel with a couple of trees, right near the machinery shed & workshop, with junk everywhere & more dongers both new & old. Wow it was really really bad. We set up our trailer on the crappy rocky strip of ground, sure a rock would pierce the bottom of the tent floor at any second. We made the decision to definitely only stay 1 night & didn't even unhook the trailer, we got out the chairs & that was it & decided we would just have bacon & egg sandwiches for dinner so we didn't have to get anything out & so we could make a quick get away in the morning. 

They did have toilets & showers that were okay & a washing machine that we used, but it was really average. The generator ran all night. It seems they had started up having camping at their station, but then obviously got a better offer from whatever drilling or mining company is on the property & the camping money is just a bit of cash in hand & they haven't tried to look after that side of it. There is access to a big hill on the property that apparently has aboriginal etchings & access to the creek that you can go to, we didn't, but if they maybe had camping there instead they might have more satisfied customers. It is easily the worst campsite we have had for our whole trip. 

Indee station camping

So we left Indee station early the next morning, went into Port Hedland to resupply & left pretty quickly, as it was a crappy place to drive & get around. We planned to camp along the De Grey river for a couple of nights. 

De Grey River

This is a free camping spot on the De Grey River that we had found in the Camps Australia Wide book. You cross the river & then turn off the highway & there is camping between the highway bridge & the railway bridge right on the water. It was really lovely & we managed to score an awesome campsite despite it being busy. We set up camp & were really happy, compared to Indee station the night before this was great & free & right on the river. We could have a fire & we cut some wood close by ready for that night & got organised. 

As we had finished a lady was wandering through the bush muttering to herself, a little weird oh well. A little while later she came back near our camp, we said hello & she seemed okay & offered us a fish if she caught one as she was fasting & couldn't eat it. We asked what she was catching & she said catfish, so we politely declined, she seemed a bit strange, she continued to walk past our camp about 10 times that afternoon, muttering to herself. She seemed harmless though. We settled back for a beer & heard a weird noise, it sounded like a bird flute, we didn't think much of it & it just drifted into background noise. I asked Mat to please grab a couple of buckets of river water for hand washing, he came back sheepishly a minute or so later with no water. He said I can't get water yet, I said why?? On the sandbar up the river a few campsites away, a man was nakedly twirly whilst playing his flute. Yep that's right in the nuddie twirling around giving his all to his flute playing. Now when you hear something like that it is with disbelief, really?? I am ashamed to say I had to see this for myself!! I snuck up towards the water & wow all I can say is Mat wasn't lying. 

We had had an interesting day that is for sure! We cooked ourselves some dinner, had a few drinks & went to bed. About an hour after we went to sleep, we woke to loud thunderous hooves coming towards us, we had all the windows open in the tent & could see flashes of red & white as about 40 head of cattle stampeded, mostly along the edge of our campsite, but some through, kicking the frypan on the way down to the waters edge. Something must of spooked them, once they reached the waters edge there was no where for them go, so they rushed back past the campsite again. We were panicking at this stage, not about our safety but the solar panels were out. I don't know how, but they hadn't trampled them luckily & Mat snuck out to rescue them in case it happened again. The rest of the night was filled with cattle bellowing & wandering around as some of the cows had lost their calves in the chaos. Not a great nights sleep, what a day!!

The next morning we surveyed the damage, luckily only the frypan had taken a hit! After a slow morning of billy tea & toast we walked up to the toilets at the rest area & had a look at the river. On the way we met "crazy lady" as we had dubbed her & she wasn't happy she was muttering about something. When she saw us we said good morning & she said to us "you can tell you are from QLD" we said whys that? She said "you are always so sunny & bonny" as she wandered off. We thought it was probably a good sign that the crazy lady liked us, we weren't sure??

Unfortunately her day was only going to get worse & ours. We think she had a run in with some people camped beside her. Soon enough she was carrying all of her camping gear (she didn't appear to have a car) along the track up towards the flute players camp, we couldn't establish if they were known to each other or not, we think they were as he was camped in a rainbow hippy bus. As she stormed through the bush she yelled profanities & made up songs about Australians being not very nice people especially men & their attributes, with so many swear words I can't remember them all. This continued all morning while she carried all her camping gear up the track, swam in the pool in front of our camp & sat around a fire with strange smelling leaves thrown on the fire. Eventually after lunch she calmed down & we saw her wandering in the bush but didn't hear anything out of her. The whole thing just made us feel really uncomfortable so we decide this would be our last night (we contemplated packing up & leaving at lunch time). 

There were no further incidents at De a Grey river that afternoon & night, thank god. It was an amazing campsite, but full of crack pots. When we told other campers at our next campsite about what had happened I think they thought we were lying & crack pots too!!

So our final review on all that. De a Grey is a great free campsite right on the river. There are plenty of sites right on the river or in the rest area itself, we have been told it gets really busy & can have up to 80 camps in the area, it must get packed. Definitely worth a stop, just be careful who you camp near..........