To Karratha

01/07/2011
From Tom price it was our intention to head north, but we have opted to return by the route we came in on, back to the coastal highway. We free camped at House creek bridge, the same place we stopped at previously and as then there were just a few other vans.
We enjoyed Tom Price and Karijini Park, it’s just a shame that the 2 were so far apart, still Tom Price alone was worth he visit, for being such a quirky town, despite there being a big mining presence. It brought home to us, the mining connection, as there are tours of Rio Tinto iron ore mine. They were very impressed when we informed them at the visitor centre that we were shareholders in Rio Tinto, but they lost interest when we let slip we had a whole 11 shares! There is a single track railway to take the ore away, and the train we saw this morning was nearly 3 kilometres long with 3 loco’s pulling and 2 pushing. Our shares probably represented a grain of dust in one of those wagons.

02/07/2011
Our destination today was the small mining village of Pannawonica , at the end of a 50K road, just one road in and out. The campsite had a reasonable write up in our “Camps Australia book 6” so we went just cos we liked the sound of it. P a n n a w o n i c a good ehh!! When we got there, campsite, there wasn’t, just a load of grubby red portakabins for miners. There were a few nice houses there to be fair. 50K back to the highway and we are free camped, with no phone signal, by the side of the beautiful river Robe, and the not so beautiful North west Coastal Highway. The local sport here is for the Road Train Drivers to give us a full blast on their air horns as they rattle past our campsite at 120kph. It’s going to be a fun night.

03/07/2011
Having been the source of entertainment for most of W A’s hairy arsed truckers overnight (the last air horn blast was at 5 30 this morning), we have moved on.
We are now in the large town of Karratha, a service town for the local industrial projects around the Pilbarra, close to the main iron ore export port of Dampier. Although we haven’t explored the town properly yet, it looks very busy with both tourists and mining community filling up the towns shopping mall. Karratha seems to be a good central base for days out, hopefully without too much driving. We will see. We were really pleased to arrive to get all the red dust out of our van, clothes and bedding and hair! We felt really grubby.

04/07/2011
A dull morning in 2 respects, it’s cloudy with rain forecast and we have a major shop (Dull!) ahead. Used up all our supplies whilst out in the bush and now everything needs replenishing. After a flog round the supermarket, and a row with the Orientals in the coffee shop, we headed out to Dampier. The row was over the length of time it takes to pour 2 cups of coffee, after 15 minutes and no coffee, we demanded our money back and left. Dampier was pretty much what we expected, a bit like an up market Avonmouth, with huge cargo ships full of iron ore, ready to take off to somewhere. An enormous gas plant providing liquefied gas to someone and salt flats with enough salt for every chip shop in the world.
By 4 o’clock the rain was hammering down.

05/07/2011
Today was the day for cultural experiences and visits to places of historical interest to further our educational yearning for all things Antipodean ……….In other words the weather was crap and we couldn’t get to the beach!! It threatened rain all day so we took shelter in a couple of Museums in nearby towns. First up was the Old Gaol at Roebourne, which operated in the mid to late 1900’s, and didn’t lock anyone up unless they were Aborigine. In the cells there were all sorts of leg irons and neck chains on display alongside lots of photos of inmates, all very interesting…..unless you were an Aborigine.
A bit further on is the historic town of Cossack, famous as the home of W A’s first Pearling industry where it seems the Japanese Pearl Divers drowned for fun, pearling being such a dangerous occupation that life expectancy was very limited. Nobody lives there now, especially the Japanese, every one moved out in 1950 as the pearl grounds were over fished.