Day 60 - Karratha, Dampier and the road to Ningaloo

Oceania
June 6th 2015

Published: June 6th 2015

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Rob and Lynns Bago bash

pardoo donga park

Our digs last night

A very big travelling day today! We've decided to make a fast track to the Ningaloo reef to get a good look around in that beautiful national park.

Our overnight accomodation was rather interesting, the amenities block is basically very very old dongas from a workmans camp. Tourists aren't considered high priority here I'd say. See the pictures for a gander....

Anyway we headed off pretty early. First stop was Port Hedland for breaky. This is a very neat and clean looking town, though very quiet . It's surrounded by the iron ore mine and Dampier salt mine. It also receives huge amounts of ore from other local mines and its shipped from the port. The trains that deliver the ore to the Port are seriously massive! We got held up at a railway crossing and I lost count at 130 ore trucks being pulled by 2 engines. Thats apparently a small one. They can be over 2 kilometres long and we saw one later in the day that certainly looked that long! Its amazing. The salt mines have huge mountains of salt. Looks very impressive!

We also decided to take a detour and drive to Karratha and

Pardoo dongas

Bit posh!

Dampier. These are also mining towns and large ports for transporting ore and gas. Karratha is a huge town, and quite wealthy looking. There are many housing estates and all pretty good quality by the look. Very neat looking towns too.

Dampier is also the home of Red dog, the statue! It is a beautiful beach area with the turqouise water you expect around here. Stunning. Boating, fishing and all water activities are available here. Its a super nice looking place and well worth the visit if you're up this way. Its also surrounded by the Dampier archipelago which is a group of fabulous islands that people go to for snorkelling, big game fisging etc. This is a beautiful part of the coast for sure.

Back on the road and heading south again, more red dirt, long roads and a lot of nothing else. Rob did very well driving a good long distance again. That also included manouvering around road trains and huge cattle that wander near and on the roads!

We've stopped at another 'donga' caravan road house called Nanutarra for a sleep tonight. Its a little smarter than last nights, not quite as grubby! But