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Noy's 4th Walkabout
We drove most of Tuesday, calling into Dampier to find that what the Rough Guide said of it was true..."not much to detain the traveller here"! We did see a couple of the massive Iron-ore carrying freighters being loaded on a jetty and the salt works and an ore train at LEAST a kilometre long! Sadly the road to Hearson Cove (recommended by our friends Merv and Jennifer in New Zealand and a site from which to see the "Staircase to the moon" which occurs only once a month and tonight was THE night!) was unsealed and in such a bad condition that we turned back after the first 300 metres. It wasn't worth punishing the van and the contents (including us!) that much! Then we drove into the campsite in Karratha where some very nice Barramundi and Chips were cooked on-site for us. See? We don't always live it up like you think! On Wednesday we uploaded the photos for last week and then drove non-stop to Port Hedland, a mere 230kms. PH is not a normal tourist stopover, except for the beach and another "Staircase to the moon" vantage point - but if you like big boats and the longest trains in the world then this is YOUR scene. Fortunately for Jill Richard had already discounted waiting until the following afternoon to do a "Port tour" (yes, they DO have such a thing!), so we went to a vantage point near the mouth of the port to "snap" a big boat being loaded - we're not sure HOW big it was but "VERY" springs to mind! The long train may prove more of an elusive prey as we'll leave in the morning for a 600km dash to Broome and if there isn't one on the line at the recognised lookout then we'll drive on with that scalp lost to dame fortune.
It was not lost, however, because at 09.00 on Thursday morning Richard was on the lookout at Redbank Bridge when a train weighing 16,000 tonnes (yes, you read that right! - 208 trucks weighing 76 tonnes each plus FOUR locomotives) and 1.5 kilometres long (each truck 6-metres long plus 1-metre clearance between wagons (at least) trundled past and into Port Hedland. It took 15 minutes to go by! Even more awesome is the fact that it takes at least 15 of these trains to fill ONE ship and the ships turn around in 24 hours! The trains used to cross the main road into Port Hedland at a level crossing; the bridge Richard stood on was opened in 1973 when they realised it was easier to get into town if you were a lump of iron ore than if you were a person! That done the rest was plain-sailing - 600 kilometres of what the Rough Guide described as "a journey of mind-numbing boredom interspersed only by road trains and road kill"! It was right; when we got to Sandfire Roadhouse (roughly halfway) a lady commented that her car thermometer showed 37C...and it sure felt like it. We celebrated our arrival in Broome with a glass of Chardonnay (what else?) from our fridge and then prepared to dine out under the stars whilst getting a second performance of "Staircase to the Moon". This time everything was right; the location, the meal, the didgeridoo playing an aborinal lament as the moon came up...and even the photo we submit for your delectation looks quite good, doesn't it? We went to bed content with our efforts and in the knowledge that we were going NOWHERE in the morning! But not before Richard had found an intruder in our en-suite...a beautiful tree frog! He plopped onto the toothpaste tube out of nowhere but had moved before Richard could get back with the camera; so the photo we got for you is not as charming as it might have been!
On Friday morning we took out time getting up and ambled around Broome getting a feel for the place and trying to understand its history. It's very much seen as the centre of the pearl industry in the early 20th century - a lot of Japanese divers sacrificed their lives diving for pearls off the shores around Broome; nowadays it's just cultured pearls which are their industry as we were to find out on our Saturday afternoon tour; but first another splendid sunset on Friday night, which found us at Cable Beach to watch it. They say this beach one of the top 5 in the world but in our humble opinion Whitehaven Beach in the Whitsundays (also Australian, bear in mind!) is way ahead of it.
We'll fire this card off before we leave Broome as our next sight of civilisation may not be until we get to Darwin a week on Sunday! So this comes with our love to you all from a very warm (but not humid at all) Broome - now for the last slog to Darwin but not before we've flown out to the Bungle Bungles (already booked for next Wednesday!). R & J xx
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