There is so much of our natural resources being shipped out of the country. Its when you arrive at the ports of Geraldton, Dampier, Karratha, Port Hedland you see how much is sent away. It hasn’t been unusual to see 10 or more ships anchored outside these towns waiting to be loaded and numerous ships in the ports being loaded simultaneously. But as you look around it is rare to see much evidence of the actually mines. There is so much richness of resources in the whole of the Pilbra and I don’t think we need to be too worried about running out any time soon!

In Port Hedland it was most evident. In the main st, of the town, at the post office you can see the ships coming and going, and getting loaded. Trains with 36000hp almost 4 km long with 208 wagons carrying 26000tons of ore rattling in 24 hours/day. Road trains with 4 trailers going around round abouts and trying to cross busy roads. Quite a spectacle.

Just in Port Hedland, last year they sent out close to 300 million tone, and on top of this another 3 million tons of salt harvested in the town.

To get some perspective on the amount of iron ore that needed to be delivered to the port last year, I calculated how many loads our old prime mover and semi trailer (27.5 tons/load) would need to deliver. Just for interests sake and to see if I should put in a tender to BHP for next years delivers. Our poor old freightliner would need to deliver 19 loads each minute for 24 hours/day, 365 days a year.  Maybe I wont put in for that tender!!!!

The kids have enjoyed seeing all this. Everything is on a massive scale, trucks, trains, excavators, bulldozers, etc. etc. There have been a few places we have been able to stop and watch the action and wave to the drivers. They are always happy to honk their horns at the kids and give a big wave. Noah has now changed his drawing habits from sea creatures to trucks and trains and ships, and his lego is now always big machinery!

After 10,000kms you would have thought we’d have learnt to look a bit more thoroughly at maps before heading to the next place. There have been a number of times we have headed off after a lazy morning only to discover after a few hours of driving that we have still got lots of kms to get to our destination!!! So once again after a couple of hours travelling and a few enquiring questions “Are we there yet?”, we discovered we had embarked on a journey of close to 600kms. So the dvd player got a workout, all food supplies in the car were devoured and in the early evening we arrived at Point Samson.

A small, sleepy town surrounded by massive industry and ports, trucks and trains. (See our next planned blog)

The caravan park set up their water park twice especially for our kids (as they were the only kids in the park)

Noah caught the only fish which he was super proud of, even it was tiny!!

We also went for a day trip into Milllstream. An old station that is now a National Park, which was beautiful. Python Pool was so nice, but we were there a bit early for a swim (9am), and there was some algae in it which was a bit average, but the 50 metre cliffs were stunning. We then went to the old homestead, which had lots of history and an interesting walk looking through the eyes of a little boy who used to live here in the early 1900’s. There was some crystal clear creeks and beautiful old gardens as well.

We then went to the Fortesque river for lunch and the kids enjoyed feeding the fish their crusts. The fish came right up to us all as we fed them. Mainly catfish.

One of the highlights for the kids was following the train lines back into Karratha. Noah counted 8 massive trains carting iron ore into the port during the day.

We also saw a little Memorial for “Red Dog” from the movie made in this area.

After our extended stay at Coral Bay we went to Warroora Station for 2 nights. What another stunning place to visit. We got to stay no more than 20 metres from the waters edge. It is unbelievably green in this area and the station had lush grass a foot high everywhere. I suggested to Bec about moving here to milk some cows, but we are yet to agree that it would be a good move for us!! I think she is definitely the wise one here!!

Well it seems that we might have finally found where the fish have been hiding, or more likely we have learnt how and where to catch some fish!!
Noah is my fishing buddy and really enjoys trying his luck. Some of his regular statements are.
“I caught the biggest fish”, “I caught the ONLY fish”, “Have we caught the most of anyone EVER?”, “Can we show our fish to Everyone” I think we might have to work on tempering his gloating and pride, but then again, I think that’s all part of fishing isn’t it?? We have caught toadies, bream, flathead, tusk fish, Longtom,Salmon crabs and others I don’t recognise.