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Day 78 Point Samson -> Port Hedland
Today 235kms / Total 13040kms*
* Cumulative distance extracted and updated from fuel log.
Back on the road today and off to the other major iron ore port in the Pilbara, Port Hedland. We’re also switching companies. Where Tom Price and Karratha/Dampier were Rio Tinto towns, Newman and Port Hedland are BHP Billiton towns.
Port Hedland is a rather strange town. It’s very difficult to find the centre of town as it seems to have grown like Topsy over the years since the iron boom hit. There is a satellite town called South Hedland about 15kms away which acts as a dormitory suburb for the main work force. There is a severe shortage of accommodation both here and in Karratha, and one of the places where this comes to the fore is in the caravan parks. The normal shortages are exacerbated by the annual migration of Grey Nomads/tourists escaping the colder climes of the south. Some caravan parks will not even take bookings in advance and just advise potential customers to turn up early and hope there’s a space. This ‘first in, first served’ approach is combined with a measure of ‘charge what the market will bear’ to ensure the highest possible income for the park owners.
While we like to be flexible and be able to change our plans as required if we find somewhere nice, we still like to know that there’s a site for us when we set out for a new destination. We found a park in Port Hedland that would take our booking, albeit at nearly twice the going rate for average parks in the eastern states. It turned out to be about the smallest plot we’ve ever stayed on, and the most expensive.
A gravel, not grass, site and very tight to manoeuvre into across 2 kerbs. The comment when we booked in was “If you park carefully, you might be able to erect your awning.”. I guess I don’t qualify as a careful parker. All this for $50/night. To add insult to injury, they also wanted to charge an extra couple of percent to put it on Visa, something that’s very rare in our experience.
To get over the steam coming out of my ears over the gouging of my wallet, we went into town and saw a bulk ore carrier leaving, accompanied by 4 tugs.
There were another 20+ ore carriers waiting offshore to be loaded.
Day 79 Port Hedland
Today 35kms / Total 13075kms
Just a quiet day today, taking in the sights and shopping. BHP HQ for the region is here, and has a quaint array of sculptures on its front lawn.
This BHP cow stands with an iron will and steely determination.
Only about 1km down the road, stands this loader and stacker, awaiting a call to duty..
Like Dampier, Port Hedland has a number of loading facilities, but these are situated right in town.
Note how high this ship sits in the water. 24 hours later,…
… it looked like this.
The loaders pour ore in at a terrific rate. Here you can see the stream of ore coming off the end of the loader into a nearly empty carrier. Most of the vessels that load here are between 60,000 and 230,000 tonnes.
Day 80 Port Hedland
Today 42kms / Total 13117kms
Another quiet day, getting ready to move further up the coast. We did a bit more in driving around the area, but found that most of the good views were on mining company land and were accompanied by various warning signs describing dire consequences if we weren’t on official business.
One lookout that we did get to looked over the salt farm. Again like Dampier, Port Hedland has its own salt works using evaporation pans to collect the salt. They also have their own bulk loader terminal in the port.
How many salt shakers would that fill? Not many, as most of this salt is used in the chemical industry.
Rather than ship the salt by train to the port (only about 5kms), they send it by road. Yet another fun vehicle with which to share the road.
As we’ve seen around Tom Price, the trains here are huge. While we got to see a couple of complete ones in Tom Price and Dampier, we never managed to see a ‘complete’ one (ie: The complete length of the train in one view) in Port Hedland.
Here’s one looking to the left…
…and looking to the right…
… but it was going around a corner and we didn’t get to see the end.
Day 81 Port Hedland -> 80 Mile Beach
Today 256kms / Total 13373kms
Today we leave heavy industry and the overwhelming brown of iron ore behind and head for quieter venues.
At lunch at a roadside rest area on the banks of the De Grey River, we were serenaded by a Western Blue-Winged Kookaburra. These are different to the ones at home.
We arrived at 80 mile beach and set up camp. Most of our fellow campers were fishermen and women, some of whom come here for months at a time. As neither of us have skill, ability or patience with rod and reel, we just relaxed and then went to enjoy the sunset from the top of the dunes with a glass of something cold in hand. Fortunately we bumped into Darryl and Sandra again, having seen them previously in Tom Price, Port Hedland and Karratha, so we had someone with which to share the sunset and a tipple.
They do a good line in sunsets here.
Day 82 80 Mile Beach
Today Absolutely ZERO kms / Total 13373kms
The high points of today were an insect, a lizard and another sunset.
No idea what it is, but it wasn’t happy having its photo taken. It’s about 75mm (3”) long and waved the pincers in a very menacing fashion.
This guy was cute and scampered around the grass on the dunes looking for ants to eat. At about 4”, he was a bit longer than the insect above.
Same beach, different sunset. Probably the same people still fishing, refreshing cool tipple now replenished.
Day 83 80 Mile Beach -> Port Smith
Today 255kms / Total 13628kms
Gotta keep movin’ on…
This time to a beach caravan park with a difference – it’s not at the beach. Port Smith seems to comprise the caravan park and a couple of houses. It’s 20+kms off the highway down a reasonable dirt road. It gave me a chance to try the efficaciousness of my yet-to-be-patented dust exclusion system (DES).
(Those not interested in techo-trivia can skip this bit)
Dust in caravans is one of the bugbears of getting off the main roads. Most manufacturers provide a scuttle in the roof that supposedly pressurises the van by scooping air from the movement of the vehicle. My experience of this was that it did a great job of funnelling all the dust from opposite direction cars and trucks straight into the interior of the van.
My solution was to find a way to pressurise the van so the dust didn’t want to come in.
In what can only be compared to the great light-bulb moments of the 20th & 21st centuries, I have attached a car air filter (removes the dust from the air stream) to a bilge blower (normally removes explosive gases from boat bilges but it’s basically a big enclosed fan) and piped the higher pressure air into the van from the van’s forward boot. I turn this on when we get to a dirt road. So far, the results are a little inconclusive (still some dust inside), but I feel the world will thank me when it’s perfected. Remember, you read it here first!
After we had set up the van, we did a bit of exploring around the local lagoon. The instructions to get there were of the “Just keep going down there. You can’t miss it!”.
‘Can’t miss it’, huh? Anyone see the sea?
The sand was a bit soft getting around the point next to the creek, but it opened out onto a lovely beach.
This was the best beach for shells that we’ve come across to date. I suspect Sue collected most of them...
Day 84 Port Smith
Today 25kms / Total 13653kms
More exploring around the tracks near the coast. We first checked out the area of the lagoon where all the fishermen put their ‘tinnies’ into the water.
Note to non-Oz readers: There are 2 definitions for ‘tinny’.
a) A (normally cold) cylindrical container for beer, or as in the case above,
b) A small aluminium dinghy with optional outboard motor.
We found this prime example of a Tinny Transporter at the shore.
Old Toyotas never die…
Due to the mangroves in the area, you couldn’t just ‘go to the beach’, but had to make a wide arc around the lagoon. The track was narrow and windy, but when we got to the coast it was worth the effort.
It reminded us of the coast near Tiwi in Oman where we used to camp.
Sue's still on her quest to collect every shell in Australia...
After our essential afternoon siesta, we went back to the lagoon and wandered around the edge of the mangroves as the tide was well out. A few shots of mangrovey patterns follow.
Industrious but shy crabs make sand balls.
Why do crabs only make their sand balls at the top of the ridges?
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