Gorges, iron ore and leviathons of the sea

July 30

What a wonderful few days we’ve had, camping in Karijini National Park, walking, driving, marvelling at its wondrous gorges and pools and meeting other campers from all over the world. The gorges suddenly appear in a landscape of undulating, spinifex-covered hills and low scrubby vegetation.

And what gorges they are. People had told us that the

Spot the walkers at the base of this gorge.

Pilbara was much more spectacular than the Kimberley . . . and we were pretty impressed by it . . . and they were quite right.

Our one regret was that with only two good knees between the two of us, we didn’t go leaping down the rocky paths to the pools in the gorges. If we’d been 30 years younger (and with knees in better nick) we would have joined all the young people making it to the gorges and splashing in the pools.

As it was, we did a lot of rim walking and visited all the major places of interest in this very large national park. It doesn’t take bookings, so we were very lucky to have arrived around 2pm on the first day, and there was still one vacancy . . . just for us! Every day, the volunteers helping the ranger with this task of booking in campers put out the Campground Full sign around then, with people told to go to an overflow area and come back early the next day.

This they did every day, with about 20 motorhomes, caravans, camper-trailers and vehicles with tents waiting when we finally left one morning around 8.30am after 3 nights there.

The reason we were so late arriving from Newman, about 200km away, was that just as we were about to leave that mining centre, we discovered there was a mine tour we could do . . . so along with about 20 other people, we were

Inside a loading scoop above the Newman

open cut mine.

equipped with hard hats, safety glasses and high-vis vests before piling into a bus and going out to the BHP Billiton Mt whaleback site.

It was fascinating, looking down into the enormous open-cut pit (around 5km x 2km) and hearing about the operations going on down there. A couple of the 2km long iron ore trains that travel from Newman to Port Hedland were in while we were there and we heard all about their loading procedures and their operations, with just one train driver in one of the lead locos, and the two locos in the middle of this huge train controlled remotely by him.

We were thrilled to find that when we left Karijini and got back on the Great Northern Highway, heading for Port Hedland, we drove through a wonderfully wide gorge called Munjima. It was a majestic experience.

We stopped before that mining port town to spend the night at Indee station. It’s a cattle station that has welcomed guests for some time and the highlight of each day is Happy Hour at the homestead with the owners. There were geese pottering about and a group of poddy calves who wandered around welcoming pats from the campers, mostly in caravans.

So on we went to Port Hedland, staying at a caravan park with one side facing the beach and the other, where we had a site, looking down at a mangrove creek and across some waste land to the enormous port operations. At night, when all the lights were on, it was a veritable industrial city.

On our way into the town we had paused at a road overpass where one can look down at the enormous ore trains

rumbling in day and night from the mines. It’s also a good place to view the salt operations by one of Rio Tinto’s companies. Salt is evaporated in a series of enormous ponds, then pushed into a huge pile, from which a loader takes great scoops to load three-trailer trucks heading for the port.

We saw one of the huge bulk carriers being shepherded into the harbour channel, and later discovered we could do a launch tour of the ships in the harbour, run by the Seafarers Centre, which looks after the sailors coming ashore for a few hours.

Ready for a few hours ashore.

So on August 1 we went from ship to ship (among the 14 or so berthed for loading), letting off some Russian men at one, laden with shopping including a case of beer, and taking on lots of Chinese and Filipinos at other ships. Most of these huge vessels only have 20-25 crew and the Seafarers Centre helps them with any problems, changes their money (usually US dollars) and takes them to the local shopping centre.

It was a fascinating hour or so on the water and we enjoyed seeing the huge port facilities from that perspective. The majority of ships were being loaded for BHP Billiton, with some for Gina Rinehart and others for Fortescue (Twiggy Forrest). We counted up to 13 bulk carriers standing well offshore, waiting for their turn at the loading berths . . . and still the ore trains rumbled on in, bringing more riches to the port.

Next stop for a couple of days: Karratha.