Port Hedland

We are a bit late posting this one - forgot to post it before we left civilisation for Karijini National Park for a few days - no internet, no phones, etc

Another eventful week has passed in the Pilbara.  We set off from Eighty Mile beach heading for Port Hedland but decided to look in on Cape Keraudren on the way.  What a beautiful place.  The 13kms of dirt road in is quite good and the cape area is a Council run camping area with several toilets and even a couple of Dump Points for vans.  Camping sites are on the beach, beside the inlet (boat ramp), or on the cliff tops at the tip of the cape.  We set up camp for lunch out on the cape and had a good time fishing off the cliffs over the high tide.  The fishing was good even though we caught and released.  The tides went from about 6m to 2.5m below the cliff top and there were very few snags.  We caught several golden snapper and tusk (parrot) fish and watched several large turtles swimming passed.  The turtles were nesting on Eighty Mile Beach at the moment.  The beach to the north was beautiful a very white and the water was much cleaner than Eighty Mile Beach.  The inlet to the south has mangroves and is good for crabbing if you have a tinny.  Cape Keraudren is also one end of the No 1 Rabbit Proof Fence with the other end being at Starvation Bay on the south coast of Australia 1,837 km away.  It is (was) the longest fence in the world built over 4 years from 1904 to 1907. 

Carol's first fish - a tusk fish

Watching the tide come in 50m from the van

Several storms blew nearby us just off the coast and the wind was strong and getting stronger so we elected to continue on towards Port Hedland in the late afternoon.  Cape Keraudren was a lovely spot but a bit less wind and we would have spent a few days there.  The drive into Port Hedland from the north has you driving pretty much due west and into the teeth of the afternoon sea breeze which, as we now know, is usually more than 40kph on a  good day.  This day was not a good day and was our first experience battling a strong head wind but really only cost a bit of time and some more diesel than usual.  Port Hedland is a busy industrial city with trains, road trains, 4WD’s and hi-vis shirts everywhere.  From just about anywhere you can see the large salt and iron ore stockpiles awaiting shipment and from the main street you see the huge ore ships being loaded only 200m away across the inlet.  The visitors centre is closed for renovations but there was a really helpful lady in the Art Gallery that helped us with lots of information about the region.  The Aboriginal Art in the Gallery is some of the best we have seen and other paintings of the Pilbara were very impressive. We knew a workmate of Ben’s from Blackwater and Dysart had moved to Port Hedland with his family and as we sat down to lunch in the Café outside the Art Gallery, the first person to follow us in was Luke and his workmates.  We had a good chat and arranged to visit their place to catch up with Cate in the coming days.

Iron Ore ship loading in Port Hedland

Refurbished Hotel 

1948 Super Leyland ore turck - 200+km road, 50kph empty,35kph loaded

Hedlands new sports club

Retired private rail engine

RIo Tinto Minerals Salt Mine 

Park with Pretty Pool in background

Following advice, we took the van out to Marble Bar for a night and was impressed with the area.  It is a smallish town but the geology in the area is remarkable.  On the way in through the hills and ranges we thought there had been bushfires over the hilltops but as we got closer it turned out to be huge outcrops of very dark red/brown ore boulders.  Marble Bar itself is named because of a ‘bar’ of mistakenly identified ‘Marble’ running through the nearby river bed.  Turns out the bar is Jasper and not Marble but by then the name had stuck.  The Jasper is in huge bands of multi coloured rock that has been turned on its side and forms a range many kilometres long.  The Bar is formed where the river has cut through the range exposing the full range of coloured bands running across the riverbed.  The colours range from white, green, red, grey, and black and looks most impressive when water is thrown over it.  Samples may not be taken from the Bar area but a site is set aside further along the range for fossickers.  Of course that was our next stop.  Further along the same road we visited a privately owned Gold Mining Museum located at the now closed Comet Mine.  Gold was mined but driving several tunnels into a hill and then mining most of the insides of the hill.  A large processing plant was built including its own diesel power station in 1937 and most of the buildings and machinery are still standing in place including the 80m high steel chimney.  The Museum contains a lot of history about the Marble Bar region and also sells polished samples of the Jasper and other coloured rock found nearby.  They also have a WW2 bomb recovered from the nearby aerodrome.  During WW2 a bomber airstrip and base was constructed near Marble Bar and Australian and US Landcaster Bombers were based at it and flew many missions against Japanese shipping and land targets.  The Airstrip is known as the ‘Secret’ Airbase as the Japanese never located it during the war despite them bombing many airstrips in the region including Port Hedland.  Little remains at the airstrip now apart from a few foundations from the buildings.  One of the surprises in Marble Bar is the Government Office building.  Constructed in 1895, the impressive row of stone and concrete offices is still in use by the Police, Mining Warden, and Courts.  We also drove out to look at a flying fox set up to send supplies across the river to outlying stations during the wet season.  The cable runs between hills and is several hundred metres long.  They lookout was a great place to see the beautifully contrasting colours of the area with pure bright white gum trees, to red dirt, dark red/brown hilltops, and mountain ranges turning to blues and pinks in the distance. You would have to be sick to need to sit in the flying fox basket and cross a flooded river 100m below and several hundred metres wide while suspended by one rusty steel cable. Ah, the good old days before helicopters.

Colours of the Marble (jasper) Bar

Typical Pilbara, white gums, rocky landscape, blue skies

Comet Gold Mine - 3 entries to underground mine in hill to right

Aborigines in neck chains in 1898 - they don't look like dangerous criminals !!

Marble Bars Solar/Diesel Generating plant

Govt Buildings constructed in 1895 - probably using labour in neck chains...

Warmest Welcome from Australia's Hottest Town (160 consecutive days over 100 deg F)

Towards Marble Bar from atop the ridge of Jasper

Looking along the ridge (note layers of Jasper sitting vertically) towards the Marble Bar

There is a good little van park in town which was quiet and grassed with good water and power and enough TV channels to allow us to watch our money disappear in the Melbourne Cup.  Electricity in town is supplied from a Solar / Diesel Generating Station on the edge of town.  There are 1,350 solar panels mounted on axles so that the automatically follow the sun and collect energy during the day.  Electricity is stored in a huge battery bank and the diesel generators pick up the slack at peak times and at night.  More than 40% of the town’s power comes from Solar and being proud of being called Australia’s Hottest Town they have plenty of hot clear days. They have the record of having 160 consecutive days of temperatures above 38.4 deg C (100 deg F) back in the 1920’s but we found the weather to be quite comfortable because the humidity is so low and we had a nice light breeze most of the time even though it was over 40 deg during both days.

They say bad luck comes in threes well it did this week.  We won $0 in the $100m lotto, zero in the Cup, and the fridge in the van decided to take a break in Marble Bar.  For a few days it seemed to be not consistently cold and even on gas, the freezer was cold but the fridge wasn’t.  So a phone call to a repairman and back to Port Hedland to have it looked at. There a couple of gorges that would be worth a visit near Marble Bar but with only an esky for cold food and Karajini National Park next on the list we never got to see them this trip.  The drive back in to Port Hedland was made in the morning with the offshore breeze (wind) helping us this time. What a difference and what a pleasant drive shared with several dozen road trains running between the mines further out and the port.  Ore from Telfer Mine 200+kms past Marble Bar is trucked to Port Hedland by road trains with 4 trailers behind a prime mover which manages to sit very close to the speed limit.  We passed 3 road trains hauling diesel to the mines and passed several dozen ore road trains in a couple of hours and the road is in great shape.  They roads are all very good with very few (none) potholes and even the dirt roads recently graded so it is easy to tow the van around but I would not want to overtake or be overtaken by one of ore road trains at speed.  The last trailer does appear to wobble about a bit at 100kph on some of the empty ones.  We couldn’t help but notice the real estate prices in Port Hedland.  Just outside the van park there was a house with a For Sale sigh out the front.  It has no grass and the windows and doorways are shuttered up with wooden shutters.  The advert acknowledges it needs some TLC but it does have 4 bedrooms and a pool out the back on a 801sq m block.  It sold in a couple of days for $1.2M!!!  House rents vary from $800 to $3,500 per week for a 3 or 4 bedroom house and the FIFO villages are huge with thousands of rooms.  Our van park is about 10% tourist and 90% permanent cabins and vans.  Tourists (us) pay $46.25 (with our Big 4 discount) a night while permanents have to ‘Lease’ as site at $400pw + electricity + a $1,600 bond + 2 weeks lease ($800) in advance; oh, and you must pay $50 to have the lease document drawn up.  Good old supply and demand at work here.  During our stay there have been only a couple of empty sites each nite and Luke told us we were very lucky to get into this park.  It is nice with a pool, clean amenities and beach access but the roads are very narrow and the access to the sites is tight.