We woke this morning to the mooing of cows. They had wandered up close to our caravan for breakfast. Doing what all good photographers would do I grabbed my camera and just moving closer as I clicked. I started getting the evil eye from one cow. When this cow wee’d it suddenly became a bull and I decided very quickly not to upset him.
Just as well Kurgan decided not to investigate these very "large dogs.” So after packing up we were back on the road heading towards Port Hedland. Because much of our state’s iron ore is shipped from Port Hedland everything is coated in a fined red dust.
The country side in the Pilbara Region of the state is markedly different to the top end. There is little in the way of trees and often there is just flat land for miles ahead. There are train lines crossing the road from time to time which carry the kilometres long ore trains to the port.
There are also a lot of heavy haulage trucks with HUGE loads to service the mining industry in this part of the state. The stretch from Broome to Roebourne has been the busiest part of the whole journey with regards to trucks.
In fact one such truck just about ran us of the road while passing us. The passing lane ended leaving him only part way past us and us looking at the dirt on the side of the road.
While travelling on this trip I have developed the habit of leaving my camera turned on sitting on a towel beside me. I try to remember to have it ready for fast photos as things happen when you least expect them . This large flock of birds came from no where and all the time I has was to put the window down with one hand and pick up my camera with the other. I enlarged the photo and saw that they were Black Kites. We usually see one or two of these birds around road kill but never this many.
Here is one of those LONGGGGGG ore trains headed back to the mine site from Port Hedland. It is hard to get good photos of these train as they are over 1 km long and have two diesel locos at the from then another two midway along the carriages.
Travelling along, in the distance we saw some smoke. As we to it, we saw a man with a fire extinguisher, trying to put it out. We have no idea what had happened.
As we pulled up to see if we could do anything the fire had taken hold. There was nothing we could do except put ourselves in danger. We saw the guy phoning emergency services so we continued on our way.
We stopped t Whim Creek Hotel, knowing it had closed recently. You are unable to approach it closely as they have put dirt ridges across the road. So sad to see a good pub die.
The hotel owner, Venturex Resources, has temporarily closed the iconic pub whilst it carries out a feasibility study into reopening the historic Whim Creek mine nearby for a copper and zinc project.
Halfway between Port Hedland and Karratha, the Whim Creek Hotel first opened its doors in 1886 and is the last-standing remnant of the original town of Whim Creek, which was founded at the time of the Pilbara's first significant mineral discovery in 1872. Lets hope it does re-open.
My first memory of this hotel was going into the hotel finding a kangaroo standing at the bar, I next saw the hotel in February 2000 while it was still suffering the effects of Cyclone John in December 1999. The whole of the top story had been badly damaged and many thought it would not recover.
We have camped up at the Harding River Caravan Park in Roebourne.Tomorrow we are free camping again before arriving at Carnarvon.
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