Blogs from Port Hedland, Western Australia, Australia, Oceania - page 4

We were both a bit worried about the journey today. It was the longest stretch we’d done before and although it was on a good road, we knew there was going to be very little on the 600km route from Broome to Port Headland. It was a long way, through barren red soil, and there would be no mobile signal either. In preparation, we filled up the water tank and diesel before setting off around 9.30am. Getting out of Broome proved difficult. You’d think that GSP would make it a synch but instead it got a bit confused and kept trying to direct us down roads that weren’t there. Eventually after driving around in circles and constantly being told to perform a U turn we gave up and started to drive into town until we finally ... read more

Had a slow start to the day as we were only going about 140 km’s so we left about 10.30am and headed off to Port Smith. From the turn off on the hwy there is 24 km’s of dirt, dusty and corrugated road some place crawling some doing 40 km’s/hr. Warwick made comment that at times it felt like he was skating while driving as the dust was so thick, sites cost $28.50 bit expensive but good entertainment. Now if you were a real keen fisherperson like our son in law Nathan than this is the place to be. Port Smith Caravan Park has a bird sanitary and that’s it. The camp sites had 2 blades of grass so Bailey not happy again. The people staying there say the fish are plentiful; some have come ... read more

In the morning we took the dogs to Cable beach for another swim, not a many nudist to pass this time. We didn’t stay too long as the sun was hot and strong. Took a drive around town and down to the harbour. It is an easy place to get around not to big. In the late afternoon Warwick went to fill up as the whole of Broome had a blackout and he replaced the dirty grease on the tow ball. We sat and had farewell drinks with Pete and Barb. These afternoon happy hour seems to last for several hours. ... read more

Tom's mum has been kind enough to let us upload all the photos here at there home in Port Hedland so here they are. Enjoy!!... read more

Rode 600 kilometres through not much other than scrubby grasslands (some on fire, of course), staying last night at a roadhouse (appropriately named “Sandfire”) that burned down several months ago, but was still operating out of a shipping crate. The campground was basic with only a few people there, but there were dozens of peacocks roaming around including some white (albino?) ones. Port Hedland, like Broom, is a rapidly growing town, not because of tourism; but because it has a humungous port handling iron ore shipped directly to Japan and China for smelting. The mines inland (up to 600 kilometres/400 miles away) have their own private railroad and the trains to the port are several kilometres (2-3 miles) long . . . The port loads on average two huge ore ships a day . . . ... read more