Whim Creek , Port Hedland and Marble Bar – 1 to 2 June 2010

Whim Creek was situated on the North Coast Highway between Roebourne and Port Hedland. It is a worked out gold and copper mining area. Cyclones and time mean nothing remains of it but the pub. It is a nice stop for a meal or cold drink to break the journey.
From Whim Creek we traveled to Port Hedland.

Port Hedland is where the ore from BHP Billiton’s Mt. Whaleback mine is loaded for export, mostly to China and Japan. The Information Centre provided a tour of the Port.

It was fascinating to learn that to dump the ore from the rail cars they are rotated, track and all in the dumping shed. The cars couplings rotate and two cars are emptied at a time. It makes sense is it is quicker and there is less room for human error.    
   
Port Hedland also exports salt evaporated from the sea. We probably use some of that salt in winter as it is mostly used for salting roads.
 

We managed to see the stairway to the moon from the beach behind Port Hedland Caravan park.

From Port Hedland we drove to Marble Bar, situated in the Shire of East Pilbara, as the signs proclaim “the world’s largest shire – with bugger all in it” and “Australia’s hottest town.” It holds the record in the Guinness Book of Records for having a temperature over 100F (37.8 C) for 160 consecutive days from October 1923 to April 1924.  The town’s temperature is over blood heat for 6 months of the year.

Marble Bar gets its name from a Jasper Bar over the Coongan River.  An early pioneer mistook it for marble.
The town is powered entirely by solar power.  We visited the nearby Comet mine an old gold mine.  Most of the residents spend the three cooler months fossicking.

Tricia likes the pioneer memorial wall. A local grader driver kept grading up bones as he graded the roads. These were from people who had died on the track and been buried by the next passer by.  He researched as many of these people as he could and a memorial wall was erected with a plaque for each person he was able to discover.
Many gold seekers and other workers died a lonely death in this very unforgiving country, the pioneer wall memorializes some of them and is very touching.

The government buildings, built in1895 of the normal high quality in gold mining towns of that era are still in use today.   Regrettably the Iron Clad Hotel had recently closed because in the owners absence on a trip to the UK, the manager had absconded with all the alcohol.  As the song says “there’s a nothing so lonesome, morbid or drear, than to stand in the bar of a pub with no beer.”