August 14 to August 20
Entering the Pilbara Region the road trains became more
frequent and the mine vehicles more common. Port Hedland is an impressive town,
everything is big! As it has to be as the major port for BHP, Rio and Fortescue
for iron ore export. Port Hedland is a big town, the (fairly) recently
developed South Hedland has obviously been planned for massive expansion, and
the town spreads some 15 kilometres long and wide. Since the mining downturn
the development has halted and the housing market has plummeted, but it is now
open for travelers again. At the height of the boom a caravan park site (if
you could get one) would be $50+ a night all year round.
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| Rio Tinto's Port Hedland Salt Mine |
We chose to stay at the Racecourse, which is open for
self-contained vehicles at just $10 a night.
I had booked the motorhome in for a wheel alignment on
Monday, and the facility can align wheels for mine trucks. Nice to be almost
too small after no one in Broome could do it because I was too big! I also
organised an Auto Electrician to sort out the air con switching, and they did
it all at the same place. A quick call to their recommended tyre place and I
got all three jobs done in the one day.
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| Fortesque Falls, Dales Gorge in Karijini National Park |
Port Hedland is so industrious with the port loading
facilities, rail hub and salt mine (in the middle of town) working 24/7, the
nights are a continuous hum of industry. We enjoyed walking the foreshore and
viewing the port and massive iron ore reclaimers in action, and the salt mine
operation. We checked out the mining museum and walked up to the water tower to
view the port lights at night.
On Wednesday we departed Port Hedland to drive south to
Karijini National Park. The Park is 350km out of our way, but on everyone’s recommendation
we had to go there. Karijini is famed for its gorge systems formed on the
Hamersley Range plateau. We reached the Munjina Roadhouse for lunch when the
“Andrew tyre valve stem curse” struck again. After a weird run in February in
South Australia, and now two days after new tyres, a valve stem failed while we
were (fortunately) stationary at the roadhouse at 2pm. We are 280km from Port
Hedland and 160km from the town of Tom Price.
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| Circular Pool, Dales Gorge in Karijini National Park |
After much negotiating with the NRMA, the RAC (Western
Australia’s roadside assist) sent out a guy from Tom Price at no cost to me, or
should I say to the tyre fitter in Port Hedland! Fortunately (always look on
the bright side), they sent out a tyre fitter from Tom Price, I had a spare
tyre valve stem (wonder why?), and the roadhouse had a “bead breaker” in an old
shed. By 5:30pm we had replaced the stem, with the tyre supplier so thankful
for getting it sorted (his tyre fitter didn’t replace that valve stem!!??), he
paid for the overnight powered site at the roadhouse.
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| Reflective magic, Karijini National Park |
Thursday morning we were off to Karijini National Park, only
60km from the roadhouse (which also had an industrial hum all night from the
diesel power generators, we felt right at home). After arranging park passes
and a camp site for the night at Dales Gorge, we were off to hike gorges! As we
have found everywhere in the North, the poor wet season has not been kind to
the gorge attractions. Again we found the waterways very low and the waterfalls
dribbling. Much of the attraction of the Karijini gorge systems is the colourful,
smooth, eroded sedimentary iron stone formations of the walls. After little
rain and the recent (and current) strong winds, the gorges have a general dull,
red dust colour.
After sounding a bit negative, we were actually pretty damn
impressed! We met a couple the week before in a camp who said they hadn’t said
“wow” so much when at Karijini, and I found myself doing the same thing. We
(well, Leah did the Grade 3 trails) hiked the whole area throughout the day.
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| Full moon camping at Karijini National Park |
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