Weipa – 31 July to 2 August 2011

We went to Weipa to visit our friend and one time plumber Peter, his wife Pauline and daughter Annette.

Peter was on a trip around Australia when he was offered a job in Weipa. He said he would if they could give him a house for the coming wet. They had a house for him at 7.00 a.m. the next morning and he has been there ever since.

 

Weipa is like all mining towns. It has very good facilities including a nice camping park with a swimming pool and a good supermarket and Pharmacy. It is a good place to purchase things you might have forgotten. It offers a very good range of sports and the big thing up here and through all the Cape is fishing, which is excellent.  The caravan park is right on the beach, but as this is the start of crocodile country no matter how tempting the water one cannot swim.  It seems terrible until one remembers that the coast could be covered in resorts if not for the crocodiles.

Bauxite for Aluminium is mined here. It is sent away washed but unrefined. We did a tour through the Bauxite mine, following the process from the mine site to the loader for the rail cars to the port for shipping to processing plants.

It was also Tricias Birthday and John very ingeniously managed to fit her Birthday candles on the end of a zucchini.