Tracks on remote beach lead Aussie caravan family to 'amazing' discovery: 'So lucky'
The incredible sight was accidentally captured by a family caravanning their way across the country.
A caravanning family making their way across the country stumbled upon an incredible "once in a lifetime" sight on one of Australia's most remote beaches. Tarhnee Rafter and her family were travelling along Eighty Mile Beach when they put up their drone and glimpsed the special sight of hundreds of tracks lining the sand.
It's understood the tracks were made by flatback turtles, Australia’s only endemic marine turtle listed as vulnerable to extinction. Remarkably, their breeding sites don't exist anywhere else in the world. The family were able to watch a female turtle's journey laying eggs in a nest in the sand on the remote beach before heading back to the ocean. Tahnee described the rare moment as "pure magic."
"How amazing, we were so lucky," she told Yahoo News Australia of the sighting on Tuesday.
A spokesperson for Australia's North West Tourism Board confirmed to Yahoo that Eighty Mile Beach, between Broome and Port Headland in Western Australia, along with Cemetery Beach are "two areas renowned for turtle nesting in the Pilbara".
"This happens every year during the nesting season October to March," a spokesperson said.
Aussie family manage one of Australia's most remote campsites
Originally from Redlands, just south of Brisbane, Tarhnee, her partner and their three children have been caravanning across the country since May 2023 after they caught the travel bug four years earlier during a six-month trip across the top of Australia.
With no end date for their travels in mind, the family have been stopping for work and for their children to attend school. During that time, they spent six months hosting a campsite in one of Australia's most remote locations – McGowan Island Beach camp, which is north of Kalumburu. It's the most remote permanent settlement in Western Australia sitting 550 kilometres from Kununurra.
"It’s been an incredible experience," Tarhnee said. "The only access to get food and supplies other than the community store was by a barge that generally came every two weeks from Darwin and beach-landed at the Kalumburu barge landing."
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She explained the land is under traditional ownership and is fully self-sufficient with solar power and bore water. The opportunity to camp "fell into" their laps when the previous hosts found the family on Facebook and put their names forward to the traditional landowners who "probably thought we were crazy enough to say yes."
The gig involved maintaining the water supply, checking in on campers, maintaining the land, as well as cleaning bathrooms. "We ended up having bushfires at the back of the camp, helping locals with car problems, and water issues but [all those things are] what made it eventful," she said.
The campers were "so lovely", she added, having travelled the treacherous Gibb River Road to get to the campsite, they "knew what they were in for".
4WD family in awe of Australia's stunning landscape
While there have been bumps along the road, Tarhnee said that getting to spend time with her children while they're little and the sense of freedom they get means she wouldn't trade it for the world.
"The sheer beauty of Australia has stunned us; some places we’ve stumbled upon are impossible to capture fully in photos. It’s been a journey of unexpected moments, personal growth, and meaningful connections," she said.
Now that the dry season is over and the wet season draws in, the family plans to head south.
"It took everything for us not to stay up there and experience a wet season in the Kimberley, however we are currently in Broome and spent a few weeks here doing maintenance and repairs and we will continue to travel south," she said.
They plan to stop in Karratha for work before heading down to Perth and South Australia. It was during this journey south they stumbled upon the epic turtle scene on Eighty Mile Beach.
Flatback turtle fast facts
Flatback turtles live in the tropical waters of northern Australia and are listed as vulnerable to extinction, and while crocodiles are one of their biggest predators, it's not their greatest threat.
Yahoo previously reported on an incredible scene where dozens of crocodiles were spotted waiting patiently along the sands of a remote Australian island. In the image, it appears the beach is otherwise deserted, but markings on the sand indicate that 100kg flatback turtles were nesting in the area, as they have done for generations.
There are signs of the world’s most destructive predator visiting the beach — humans. And while visitors need permission to set foot on the sand from the local Indigenous custodians, it’s littered with rubbish that’s travelled along the ocean currents. Sadly, it's a problem that’s not uncommon on remote Australian beaches.
Fishing, pollution, damage to nesting beaches, and poaching of eggs and meat are all listed as threats to the future of the turtle species.
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