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.”

Karratha, Dampier, Roebourne, Cossack, Pt Samson – 28 to 31 May 2010

Karratha, named for the original Station that had the lease before the town was built, is an aboriginal word meaning 'soft earth'. For us it was a pit stop, where we washed out the red dust of Karajini and John got some replacement bolts from the excellent Atom bolt shop.
It is a bedroom town for the port of Dampier, named for the English buccaneer William Dampier, and the main port of Hamersley Iron [a Rio Tinto subsidiary] for export of its Pilbara iron ore. 
It also exports salt and is the service point for the vast North West Shelf Natural Gas Project and the new  Pluto liquid natural gas project.  The scale of the onshore facilities are very impressive.
Driving through Roebourne, once the administrative capital of the North West, and Wickham, a mining service town for Cape Lambert, another Rio Tinto iron ore port, we came to Point Samson a small, very up market holiday town.   It was the principal Port of the area but traffic declined when the mining companies set up modern shipping facilities at Dampier and Cape Lambert. We stayed at the Cove Camping Park, a nice modern park within easy walk of Honeymoon Cove an idyllic swimming beach. There is a nice resort with a first rate restaurant Ta Ta's.   This was the time for seeing “The Staircase to the Moon” but we think the published times were somewhat inaccurate.



 
 
Point Samson is close to Cossack, originally known as Tien Tsin, and established in 1863 as the North West’s first port for the pastoral and pearling industries. Miners heading to the Pilbara Gold Rush also passed through here. There was a large population of pearlers operating from Cossack mostly getting mother of pearl for buttons and inlays. The pearlers fished out the area and moved to Broome.

Cossack has a difficult harbour, ships could only come and go on the high tide. The harbour silted up and wasn't big enough to take the larger ships being built at the turn of the century and in 1904 a jetty was built at Point Samson and all shipping movements relocated there. Cossack is now a ghost town although it does have a cafe courtesy of the shire. The buildings remaining have been renovated and there is a historical interpretation trail.   It was fascinating to read that the ships delivering mail would bury it near the rocks  on Settler’s Beach,  carving a mark on the rock so the residents knew where to dig for their mail.

Millstream-Chichester National Park – 27 May 2010

We took the Shire road from Karijini to Millstream-Chichester National Park.

The alternative is the permit road which is maintained by the mine. The permit road is 20 minutes shorter but one is required to watch a 20 minute safety video.

The Shire Road was well maintained and the grader had just been through.   Millstream-Chichester NP is along the banks of the Fortescue river.

Along the river lies the Millstream Oasis with a string of deep spring fed pools which come from an underground aquifer. This water supplies water for many towns in the Pilbara.
Originally some of this National Park was Millstream Station and nearby is the Jirrndawurrunha Pool. The original Station house is still there and is used as a visitors centre.  The Kitchen nearby was constructed by a local, who while doing a good job was slow.  The boss discussed speeding up and he quit, delaying the project even further.

In its hey day Millstream Station covered one million acres and carried 55,000 sheep and held the Australian record for the highest price paid for a fleece.

In 1980 the lease was resumed by the Government for its water reserves and part of the lease was incorporated into Millstream-Chichester N.P.
We camped at Millyanha Campsite.   On the drive from Millstream we visited nearby Python Pool, which must be spectacular when the water flows over the falls. 

Karijini National Park – 20 to 26 May 2010

From Tom Price we drove to Karijini National Park where we camped at the Eco Resort. This has permanent tents with bathrooms which function as hotel rooms. It has a restaurant and a small bar. There is a permanent tent site for bus tourists and there is a camping site for campers like us. This has flush toilets and showers which is exceptional for such a remote setting.  We met our friends Bill and Jane there and explored the gorges with them.  

Dales Gorge, Circular Pool, Fortescue Falls, Fern Pool 

 

Rio Tinto Gorge and Hamersley Gorge

Kalamina Gorge

The easiest climb and the prettiest gorge, looking like a Japanese Garden

 

Weano Gorge-Handrail Pool

   

Joffre Gorge

 

Hancock Gorge- Ladder and Spider Walk

                               

 

Karijini Park

Tom Price – 19 May 2010

From Exmouth we drove to Tom Price  located in the Pilbara, near the Hamersly Range. The Pilbara is the heart of Australia’s iron ore mining and  Tom Price is a key mine, owned by Rio Tinto. 

The town was named after Thomas Moore Price, Vice President of Kaiser Steel who played a major role in opening up the area.

He is reputed to have said he would take the dust from Tom Price as it was so rich in iron. Tom Price is the most affluent non metropolitan area in Australia as the miners are paid so well.

In common with all mining towns there is a nice caravan park with good water and grassy, shady sites at the foot of Mt. Nameless.   Mt. Nameless is “the highest 4wd accessible mountain” in Western Australia. 

Tom Price is the gateway to the Karijini National Park and we went on to Karijini to meet our friends Bill and Jane from Melbourne.  We all returned to do a mine tour of Tom Price mine run by Lestok Tours.