North West Cape

Two days of southwards travel from Karratha, we turned right and make our way north to Exmouth, near the northern tip of the North West Cape peninsula.  We were disappointed that we couldn't camp in the Cape Range National Park.  The campsites were all full at 10.30am, so we booked into the Exmouth Cape Holiday Park for 2 nights.

In the afternoon we set out to explore the area.  Our first stop is the Vlamingh Head Lighthouse.  The lighthouse was built after the cattle ship SS Mildura foundered on the rocks.  No human lives were lost but many cattle drowned as they tried to swim for the nearby shore.  The wreck can be clearly seen from the beach.




Near the lighthouse is an old radar tower surrounded by World War II sandbags.  On our way to the lighthouse we passed the ultra low frequency radio transmitters at the Harold E Holt Naval Communications Centre.  The many tall towers look like they could be communicating with another universe.

We drove back through the town and headed south towards the Charles Knife Gorge.  The road took us along the ridgeline with several places to pull over to admire the view and take some photos.  The scenery was spectacular and we looked out over the land where North West Cape oil was first discovered in the 1950s.

The next day we load up a picnic lunch and venture into the Cape Range National Park.  After checking out some of the campgrounds, we're not so disappointed that we aren't camping here.  (Today the campsites were filled before 9.30am!)  The campgrounds are pretty spartan and are cramped.  There are quite a few campgrounds, but they don't have space for many campers.  The main activity is snorkelling on the Ningaloo Reef which is a World Heritage Site.  The rocks at one of the beaches we stopped at were embedded with many fossilised shells.

The waters offshore are home to whales, manta rays, dugongs and whale sharks.  The reef has a huge diversity of corals and fish.  Snorkelling gear can be hired at the visitor centre.  Unfortunately we haven't come equipped for swimming so we have to be content with the static exhibits and video at the visitor centre.  The radio tower near the entrance has an osprey nest on its tip.

We didn't see any picnic tables (or even any shade) on our drive south along the coastline and after travelling about 35kms, we turned around after morning tea at Mandu-Mandu Gorge and a stop at Bloodwood Creek.





Just outside the park we stopped at the Jurabi Turtle Centre, an interpretative centre on a turtle nesting beach.  We had lunch under the shade sails.

We're starting to see some wildflowers and we've seen plenty of Sturt's Desert Peas and native hibiscus along the way.

Karratha and Dampier - Red Dog Country

Anyone who has seen the movie (or read the book) "Red Dog" will know the story of The Pilbara Wanderer, a dog who hitchhiked all over Western Australia (and is rumoured to have made it to Japan and back).  This amazing red kelpie is immortalised by a statue, erected by his many friends, at you drive into the coastal port town of Dampier.

Dampier is an iron ore and salt port town.  There is also a huge off-shore development of North West Shelf natural gas which is also exported on huge gas tankers.  A number of petroleum companies including Woodside, BP, Shell and Chevron jointly extract and export the various petrochemicals which are mined 135km offshore and piped to the processing plant near Dampier.  We called in to the Visitor Centre for the North West Shelf Gas Program.  We saw an interesting DVD which showed how the various components and gases are extracted.  The extraction plant is built on over 200ha of land.

Nearby Deep Gorge has many thousands of indigenous pectoglyphs, some dating back 30,000 years.  These are artworks "picked" out of the outer layers of the rock.  We went for a walk to see some but we must have taken a wrong path and missed them.  However the Visitor Centre of the gas plant has some replicas of pectoglyphs found during the site development.  Something to put on the list for next time.

The landscape is littered with iron ore - huge mounds of broken rocks.  Our route south from Port Hedland took us though mostly flat country with the occasional jump up or rocky outcrop.  The main iron ore mining sites are further inland in the Hammersley Range.

We've had to stay in Karratha, about 15kms from Dampier.  This is a mining town which is really going ahead with development everywhere.  Just outside of Dampier we drive past the Dampier Salt development.  The sea water is concentrated in a number of ponds in the bay and is finally pumped into evaporation ponds where the salt crystals are mined fro.  We stopped off at the Dampier Salt Lookout to get an overview of this project.

A Taste of the Pilbara

After a couple of days in Broome, we left the Kimberley and began our trek southwards along the Western Australian coast.








Our brief stop of at Eighty Mile Beach provided a welcome rest and time spent doing nothing.  This beach should really be called "220km beach" because that's how long it is.  A long expanse of fine white sand covered with seashells.

We had several lovely walks along the firm sand - it's firm enough to drive on - collecting shells.  We can only imagine how big the large cone shell must have been from the size of the pieces we found.  At high tide we joined in with the common activity - fishing.  No luck (our usual story) although Cherryl did almost land a good sized fish.




In the evening we were treated to more beautiful west coast sunsets.














We stayed at the Eighty Mile Beach Caravan Park, a large park with lovely grassy sites.  There is a War Memorial which has been dedicated to those who served in all wars, particularly the Vietnam War of the 1960s/1970s.









After our restful stay at the beach we travelled further south to Port Hedland.  This is a real surprise packet.  Unfortunately we've only got 2 nights here but we'll definitely be back because there's plenty to see.









The central town area has been well developed with plenty of gardens and there are sculptures in many of the town's parks.  Several buildings have painted murals on their walls.  There is an art exhibition on at the Courthouse Gallery, near the Information Centre, which features local artists.




Port Hedland, population around 30,000, is a busy place with it's main business centred around the Pilbara's iron ore mining industry.  The main companies are BHP Billiton and Fortescue Metals Group.  Gina Rhinehart's Hancock Prospecting, and Andrew Forrest's FMG are building some of new berths at the port.  In a few years the port's capacity will almost double.  The unfinished floating wharf will probably still be in the same state with its "naked" pylons for some time to come.

One of THE things to do here is to watch the huge ships coming in and out of the harbour.  The shipping movements are kept up to date on a board at the Information Centre.  






Many of these enormous ships can carry in excess of 200,000 tonnes of iron ore, which is mostly bound for China.





There are about 40-50 ships in the outer harbour just waiting to be called in for loading which takes 24-36 hours.  











It costs $100,000 per day for a ship to be waiting and some ships wait up to 10 days before they are loaded.










The difference between loaded and unloaded/loading ships is obvious by how low the loaded ships sit in the water.

As well as the big miners' iron ore, Rio Tinto have evaporative salt plants and salt is also shipped out of Port Hedland.  We saw several mountains of salt as we drove around.  General goods, like railway sleepers, are shipped in.

We got up close and personal with the ships in the harbour when we did the launch tour from the Seafarers Mission.  This excellent tour gave us an insight into the activities of the Mission and the lives of the seafarers who man these huge vessels.  As our launch sailed around the harbour, we picked up seafarers heading for shore from some of the ships.  Definitely a recommended tour if you're visiting Port Hedland.

Our time in Port Hedland was made especially pleasant as we met up with some fellow Bushtracker caravan owners who live here in Port Hedland.  We spent many very pleasant hours in Richard and Margaret's company and we're looking forward to catching up with them at the Bushtracker Owner Group Annual Muster near Geraldton in a few weeks.

We're back on the move tomorrow, further south towards Dampier.