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Published: August 5th 2007
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On our day in Tom Price we did not go very far due to Bruce’s wing being clipped. We went on an organised tour of the Pilbra Iron Ore mine in the town. The town was built around the mine when Iron Ore was discovered back in the 1960’s when a couple of blokes doing a survey flew past in a helicopter and checked out some dark coloured rock formations. The town now has 4,000 residents, plus many fly in fly out contractors working at the mine. It was really interesting hearing about how they find the Iron Ore, then process it and get it on the train to Karatha. Pilbra Iron (a subsidiary of Rio Tinto) supply all the power to the town from their power station at Dampier, have built the railway line, supply most of the infrastructure, including paying for the doctor for the Hospital, whom Bruce was now on a first name basis with. The mine company also owns over 75% of the houses in the town, and rents them back to their staff at very reduced rent, with an average power bill for the miners being about $50 a quarter, compared to $900 on average for
Mine Operation
Rocks and ore are dumped into the piles at the right and then make their way through sorting and cleansing out (middle buildings) to the purified ore at the rear of the photo. Trains run under these stacks at 0.8km/h and are loaded via a gravity feed. everyone else. We found that even though the machinery and plant equipment were huge, it was interesting that the huge buildings still use the basis of gravity to sort, purify and deliver to the trains the Iron Ore. We are not sure why it surprised us, but it just did. Very impressive site.
Being a country town, there has to be a quirk somewhere and sure enough, one of the things we found the weirdest is that every week the only service station in town runs out of diesel at about lunch time, although usually about 10:45, the day before the truck arrives. You would have thought by now that the Mine company would have done something about this - like send a bloody rocket - as most of the people that need diesel work at the mine, but nothing has been done yet. Apparently it has been a problem for years.
Exmouth is another town built by business, well in this case Government. The town was built because of an Air force base and communications station in the area. The communication station is still there, but no longer run by the Yanks and Bruce had
Tonka Toy
Logan's next birthday wish. The trucks are diesel/electric, like most trains. Note the bloke in the rear axle doing maintenance. heaps of fun looking at all the aerials and trying to work out what they do. The air force base is there and is maintained but is currently inactive, although a large C-130 was parked there on our way out of town. The town has since evolved into a tourist attraction with Exmouth being about 50km from the entrance to Cape Range National Park and Ningaloo Reef. The reef is only about 100m from shore, closer in some areas, and has great coral, turtles and whale sharks. You can swim with the whale sharks when they are around from May to late July. We were booked on a tour for this, but the sharks and weather were against us. The sharks had disappeared for a few days, and on the day we were meant to go out, it was overcast and rained most of the day. So instead we hired some snorkelling gear and went to the reef ourselves. It was raining and close to jumper weather but the water was nice and warm. Bruce and I went in for about 30 minutes and saw a giant turtle and some great reef fish. Was worth it.
Apart from
Caption competition
This was a van we saw in Exmouth. See what sort of captions you can come up with. The 2 taken are: 'It rained overnight and the van shrunk'; and 'When I grow up I want to be a Jayco'. this there is not much else to do in Exmouth, except fish but with Bruce’s arm on the fritz, we decided to give this a miss. We ran into Amanda’s Mum and Dad again and spent the 3 days hanging out with them and Brian jumped in to do the hard yards to replace the cranking battery in the Prado which has been slowly giving up since Middle Lagoon (it’s the factory battery and has lasted 5.5 years, so we can’t complain too loud). Thanks to them, we had somewhere to sit when it rained as it would have been to difficult to put up our awning with Bruce’s arm. We also managed to catch up with Vin and Carolyn from our Manning Gorge trip. We caught up with them at an overnight stop just before Exmouth, and Amanda spotted their van on the way to the toilet, which was good because the next day we needed a jump to get the old girl going. We had a great dinner with them in Exmouth at Whalers restaurant along with Mum and Dad. The Seafood platter that I shared with Dad is a must for anyone visiting.
We are
now in Carnarvon after travelling from Exmouth today. Amanda has driven all the way since Tom Price, and Bruce is getting use to being the passenger. He is not liking it though, not one little bit. Today we drove back through the Tropic of Capricorn with a bit of a surprise. We did not realise how far south we have come, until we sore this. It runs across Australia and we passed it on the way up just north of Alice Springs, but crossing it still came as a surprise. Sigh, we have come to acknowledge that we are heading home, with just nightly stops left for most of the way. We are very disappointed because it feels like we only have just started our trip and getting into the swing and the rhythm. KK warned us this would happen and he was right. Bruce is looking to get a job winning lotto to maintain our lifestyle.
Now funny story for the day, otherwise known as the
“Bruce is in the shit again” segment. We had travelled from Tom Price to Exmouth having done over 600km, although the exact Ks wasn’t clear because the trip meter had reset
Emu stole my breakfast
This is the Emu that stole my peanut butter on toast this morning from the breakfast bar. All Bruce and Dad could do was laugh. when we changed the battery, even though we jumpered the batter during the switch. The trip from Exmouth to Carnarvon is about 360km. Bruce decided in Exmouth that we could get to Carnarvon without refuelling and the fuel is 20c+ per litre cheaper in Carnarvon after doing the math on range. To give you an idea on what happened, Bruce
used to be charge of making sure we had enough fuel. He got it wrong, well mostly. Just out of Minalay (or what ever the fuel stop was) the car came to a spluttering halt. The sub tank and run dry and we did not switch over to the main tank in time (Bruce’s suggesting that the panicking driver contributed to the slow switch, was very quickly vetoed by the Minister of making Bruce walk - if we ever get the bloody car going again). So with steam coming from my ears we changed to the main tank, and then started to prime the diesel using the finder primer under the bonnet and trying to start the car. After 5 minutes, we decided this was not working and put the jerry can of fuel into the sub tank to try
Naval Communication Centre - Indian Ocean
These VLF towers are huge, about 400 metres (1200 Feet) straight up. The US and Australian Navies use them for shore to submarine communications. VLF is the only data/radio frequency that penetrates the ocean surface, the catch is it is really, really, really slow. Normally it is only used to advise the sub to come to the surface to capture satellite traffic. that out, still no luck. After 40+ minutes on the side of the road, we flagged someone down to help. Apparently instead of just priming the diesel until you feel the pressure change as the book says, you do it a few times to get the fuel to the fuel pump, just turn over the motor and put your foot on the accelerator (the bit we missed) and it starts apparently. Apparently it does, thank god for that (thanks too Gary). So we were on our way again, and Bruce is barred from making predictions about how far fuel will get us, or when to switch tanks for the rest of the trip.
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