30th July 2013 2

26^th July 2013

Hamersley Iron as it was known then (now Rio Tinto) purchased Karratha Station and established the town of Karratha in 1968 to support its mining industry. The name Karratha is local language for Good Country.

  

Karratha is a bustling town of about 18,000 permanent residents and a large fly in fly out worker population, FIFO’s as they are known. It has a growing population with housing developments popping up everywhere. House and land prices are at extortion levels and rents are killers also, all related to the high earning capacity of the work force, which means anybody unfortunate enough to be stationed there eg school teachers or government workers, really do it tough. There is obviously plenty of money to be made as every house you pass has a big boat or caravan parked in its driveway (or both).

Although a large number of people live in various company camps situated between Karratha and Dampier some 20 – 30kls away the greater majority live in Karratha and I presume the camps cater mainly for FIFO’s.

Iron ore from Rio’s mines at Tom Price, Paraburdoo and Pannawonica is shipped out from massive loading facilities at Parker Point Dampier. Mineral salt is also produced at Dampier like at Port Hedland and is exported globally. Further out on the peninsula are the gas production establishments for the North West Shelf Project involving several companies such as BHP Billiton, BP Developments, Chevron Australia, Japan Australia LNG (MIMI), Shell and Woodside Energy being the operator. The place is colossal, you can see several flare stacks from quite a distance as you drive towards the location but you can’t see much of the workings, as you come over a rise in the road near the operation it is quite jaw dropping as a scene like something out of starwars evolves in front of you, it is massive and when you see it at night time it is just a blaze of lights.

According to a brochure I was given the gas plant covers over 200 hectares and produces 12,000 tonnes od domestic gas per day. 52,000 tonnes LNG per day. 4,200 tonnes LPG per day and 165,000 tonnes barrels of condensate per day.

All the gas comes from several offshore production platforms one of which also produces 30,000 barrels of oil per day from several oil fields in the region.

We did a conducted tour of the town, salt production and iron ore facilities and later drove back to check out the gas production establishment - it was all quite mind blowing.

24^th July - Stairway to the moon, this is a phenomena that takes place when the full moon rises in a direction that coincides with wet mud or sand flats (ie low tide). As the moon rises above the horizon it casts a path of light across the wet sand or mud and with the natural tidal depression across the flats it gives the impression of a stairway, very intriguing. According to the visitor information booklet we had obtained, this phenomena was to take place at 6:35pm and as we were in the vicinity (gas production plant) at 4:00pm we reckoned we could kill a couple of hours rather that travel back to our vans 30kls and then come all the way back. Around 5:30pm son David phoned for a chat and said the moon was still visible in Brisbane, by 6:30 pm it was almost standing room only on the beach with vehicles of all sorts including motorhomes lined up facing the sea like something out of a Mad Max weird invasion about to start. By 7:30pm apart from being starved and busting for a pee the bloody moon still hadn’t arrived and there was a general consensus of opinion that the brochure time was either wrong or it was the wrong month. Eventually, God knows what time it was, a withering cheer broke out along the bay as the moon finally poked its nose up over the horizon and we all forgot about our bladders.

We stayed at the Balmoral Caravan Park it’s well set out, big sites, nice wide roadways, good amenities and good water in fact I was allowed to wash both the caravan and car a first for the van since leaving Brisbane and didn’t it need it.

I had the Toyota serviced and mine wages were reflected by the hole in my wallet. Karratha probably has every service you can imagine but you can’t get a caravan or caravan fridge repaired.

So we are heading down to Exmouth where supposedly there is someone who may be able to help with my van issues.

Following are some statistics that I noted during out bus tour of Karratha and Dampier.

Karratha established 1968 by Hamersley Iron

Currently approximately 18,000 permanent residents

Water supply comes from Harding River dam

Annual rainfall is 255mm

Wet season Nov – April

No roof gutters on any houses, when it rains it buckets down.

Rents are $1500 - $2200 per week (basic 1960/70’s homes).

Homes $900,000 to purchase

Parker Point ore terminal

24 ore trains per day

236 ore cars per train

112 tonnes per car

Trains 2.3 kls long

3 locos pull each train

takes roughly 3 hrs to unload a train

Two stockpile areas 13 x 210,000 tonnes and 13 x 200,000 tonnes

Shipping:

Ships carry around 180,000 – 220,000 tonnes per trip

Ships take around 24 – 36 hrs to load 

Load rate is about 10,000 tonnes per hour

Shipping channel is 22kls long and dredged every 5-10 years

Ships are computer loaded to give minimum clearance to channel bottom eg: 100mm (4inches)

The large airport caters for 700,000 people per annum mainly FIFO’s

Workforce comprises approximately 6000 fulltime and 1000 contractors.

Salt Production

Operating area 10,000 hectares

Production 4.2 million tonnes per annum

Salt is grown on crystals and harvested once a year

Harvesting rate is 1,600 tonnes per hour

Average evaporation of production area is 420,000 tonnes of water per day.

Amount of salt deposited in crystallisers 270mm per year

Ships loaded at 2,500 – 3,000 tonnes per hour

Salt harvested is used mainly for chemicals, industrial use and road de-icing in Europe.

     

  

30th July 2013

22^nd July 2013

We camped at Sherlock River enjoying the peacefulness for two days then moved on to Roebourne and carried out the normal things – water and washing etc. Roebourne is now a very small settlement but was once a thriving community benefitting from the busy old port of Cossack some twenty odd kilometres to the west. Cossack was once designed to be the principal port for WA during the halcyon days of Pilbara gold rush and pearling industry circa 1865/70. By the turn of the century pearling had moved to Broome and the gold rush had diminished. All that remains of Cossack now is a few preserved old stone buildings. With the demise of Cossack, Roebourne also gradually diminished into what is now a one horse town desperately clinging on to survive. The visitors centre here is in the old goal and by the size of it there must have been a lot of bad buggers around mind you I think a lot of our indigenous people were incarcerated for very little in those days when black-birding was rampant and control of the savages was considered paramount, which often meant imprisonment for very little and permanent neck and leg irons while incarcerated. Just out of town there is the modern version with its razor wire and modern buildings, it also is a large establishment with a large extension being built next door. Even with a diminished population law breaking obviously hasn’t followed suit and I would venture to say a lot of the inmates are of the same variety as the early ones unfortunately. While at Roebourne we took time to drive out to Cape Lambert where iron ore from Rio Tinto is shipped out and although we couldn’t get really close we could see that it is a huge operation probably even bigger than Port Hedland. Once again numerous iron ore bulk carriers festooned the horizon waiting patiently for their turn to berth.

We only travelled 25 kilometres to our next destination at Cleaverville Beach, 12kls from the highway down a gravel road to a stretch of coastline, here we selected a site behind the dunes to gain some protection from the freezing easterly buster. I have mentioned before how the easterly here is like the westerly in Brisbane lovely out of the wind but bloody cold in it. It blew that hard at night I had to lower the TV antennae to stop it rattling. During the day it wasn’t so bad once the sun heated up and by early afternoon it would drop off all together and become hot enough to seek shade. We camped for 3 days, local government runs the place and it costs $11 per car per night, you have access to a couple of clean long drop toilets and there are a couple of waste dump points for caravan/motorhome cassettes, plus rubbish wheelie bins but no water.

Monday 22^nd July

School holidays are finally over, today we headed back to Roebourne where Nancy needed to check something with the small local hospital and then on to Point Samson on the coast for one night for all those domestic things again.

Tomorrow we travel 50 odd kls to Karratha near Dampier where I have booked the car in for a service on Thursday. I’m also hoping to get some work done on our caravan fridge, driving 12 kls on the dirt to Cleaverville Beach shook the flu off the back so the fridge has to come out to replace it, bloody pain but at least it’s still working.      

Free Camping Pilbara Region

Beautiful Ghost Gums

Corellas preparing to roost for the night 

Doing it tough at the Sherlock River free camp

Noisy buggers

Evening calm Sherlock River

Never ending ore train

Sturt Desert Pea amongst another variety of Wattle

Marble Bar

Jasper - Marble Bar

Our van in Marble Bar caravan park

Enroute to Marble Bar

Free camping

Chinaman's Pool Marble Bar

4 trailer road train

1 of 17 varieties of Pilbara Wattle

Glad it didn't rain

Busy building their nest

I think they are Grass Finches 1/3 - 1/2 the size of a sparrow

Bea Bea Crk Pilbara

Three engines hauling iron ore from Tom Price

2.5 kls long

just as well I had somewhere to pull off, note the cracked screen bottom right

Free camping Bea Bea Crk Pilbara

Ancient creek bed Bea Bea Crk 

Harsh country

Bea Bea Crk beauty

Tom Price Area

Look at the size of these brutes compared to the workmen

Tom Price area

Tom Price pit

Puts it into perspective

Pilbara from Mt NoName highest point in WA

15th July

13^th July 2013

Back in Port Hedland. We seem to have been going round in circles.

After Tom Price we retraced our steps back to Port Hedland to stock up and take on water etc then back up the coast slightly and into Marble Bar, famous as the hottest place in Australia and now back out to Port Hedland and tomorrow we recommence our journey south.

While at Tom Price we were able to join a mine tour that we all found extremely interesting (well I did), Nancy took lots of photos so I presume she found it interesting also, ( yes Nancy is still alive Myra, although she tempts fate at times). The other thing to do at Tom Price is to drive up an extremely steep and rough track to a communication tower, low range low gear but once there you have a panoramic view of the region for many kilometres. There wasn’t a barber or hairdresser in Tom Price so my locks were left to grow longer, but I did manage to get that gas bottle filled for $45 and a slow leaking tyre repaired, turned out to be a screw in the thing.

Leaving Tom Price we doubled back along Karijini National Park Drive to link up with the Great Northern Highway, that’s the road that runs from Perth straight up and through Newman (as in iron ore mine), to Port Hedland. Roadtrains of four trailers carrying 140 -180 tonnes of ore thunder along this road from various unseen mines to the Port 24/7. A little out of Tom Price we overtook an ore train and waited at the road crossing to photograph it. Dumb as, we parked the wrong side of the line and had to wait 15mins while it passed.

Here are some stats I gleaned during our mine tour relating to Tom Price town and Mine.

Population about 5,000 and still growing,

house block go for about $220,000.

2 Primary schools and one senior high school.

Situated in the Hamersley Range it is 740 feet above sea level and is the highest town in WA.

Winter temp 0 – 28C Summer average 35C,

average annual rainfall is 300mm.

Tom Price was an American responsible for finding and establishing a profitable iron ore deposit in the Pilbara (he was also a mate of Lang Hancock). Price could see the potential for a great mining industry in the Pilbara he lobbied his company hard to persevere with the project and continue exploration, he was also instrumental in convincing the Western and Federal governments to support and promote mining projects in the region and eventually build infrastructure. The main deposit was discovered in 1962 by geologists Bill Burns and Ian Whitcher who landed their helicopter on what was to be later know as Mt Tom Price, it was a finale last minute close look at a promising visual seen from the helicopter, at the close of an extensive and not so promising exploratory expedition. When they landed the geologists realised they had hit on a bonanza as what they could see was almost pure Haematite (iron ore) and subsequently a lease was taken out that covered 13 x 8 kilometres, the original company was known as Hamersley Iron. By this time Tom Price had returned to the states and died of a heart attack shortly after being notified of the find. In recognition of his tremendous work and the respect people had for Tom Price, both the mine and town were named after him.

 Rio Tinto owns the mine now including the extensive private rail complex that hauls ore to Dampier and Cape Lambert. Rio blends ore from 14 mines within a 200 kl radius of Tom Price to ensure consistency and quality of graded ore. Trains that haul ore to the Ports are made up of 236 wagons pushed and pulled by three locos 116 tonnes per wagon, 26,000 tonnes per train 4 trains per day all up Rio ships out 235 million tonnes per annum and will eventually bring this up to 300 million tonnes (when the market picks up again)

I could waffle on with a lot more specs but you are probably bored senseless already.

Back to the Great Northern Highway we pulled into Auski Roadhouse for fuel, this is where all the road trains and transporters pull in for sustenance and a break, shower etc there is also a small caravan park attached for those that want to stay overnight. Would you believe the place was started by a couple of Aussies and Kiwis, hence the name Auski. Then on a few kls to a free camp site called Bea Bea Creek where we camped for a few days killing time while school holidays are on – you can’t get near the coastal areas. This camp site was very relaxing, plenty of reading done, bush walking, collecting wood and a nightly fire where we found even more things to talk about.

We returned to Port Hedland for one night, did our washing, topped up with fuel, water and groceries then headed back out to Marble Bar stopping one night next to a picturesque river on the way. Marble Bar is just a whistle stop, the one and only caravan park is good for a one night stop over, very basic. We completed all the touristy things in a couple of hours and the Jasper outcrop that was mistaken for marble hence the town name, does exist and is not only unique it is quite spectacular to an old rock hound like me.

We spent two nights free camping on the return trip and then into Port Hedland again for an overnight stay and usual things, washing, fuel, water and groceries.

14^th July

South bound we free camped for a night a few kilometres south of Port Hedland at the West Peawah River (no water) and then moved on a mere 53 kls further south on Monday to the Sherlock River a nice spot and a wide tree lined river (permanent water), here the bird life was plentiful for a change, destructive and noisy white corellas, gradually demolishing the tree they choose to roost in, they are nothing but environmental vandals, white egrets and heron stand perched on tree limbs well above the water on ridiculously thin legs but never loose their balance, pelicans, unusual looking ducks, cormorants and even a couple of black swans gracing the water. Other than the odd vehicle passing over the bridge not that far away and the squabbling corellas, it is very peaceful and a pleasant place to kill some time.  Having a signal is a bonus

Dales Gorge Karijini National Park PilbaraS

Sweet fresh water squirting out of rocks like a drinking fountain

Enroute to Tom Price