July 12 ... Port Hedland

The Hamersley Ranges

The green and gold of the Pilbara

Garry and I were again really surprised today by the beauty of the landscape we travelled through. In our ignorance we had imagined the Pilbara to be a flat, dry, rather uninteresting area, when in reality, it is none of those. Leaving Tom Price we drove through the Hamersley Ranges and then we entered the Chichester Range, so we actually drove around or alongside mountains for almost the whole trip. There was always something new and interesting to see as we went through passes and across undulating foothills.

One of the many ridges we drove beside

Chichester Range

It was just over 400 kms to Port Hedland and our only "civilization" was the Munjina Roadhouse which was the best we have experienced this trip. We stopped for a delicious cappuccino and sandwich with many other travellers and mine workers. We were now on the Great Northern Highway, coming up from the south through Newman, and there was plenty of traffic ... mostly massive road trains and mine vehicles, sprinkled with caravaners.

Hillsides of spinifex

 The dominant vegetation was clumps of spinifex and when you looked at it on the hillsides it was just like the dot paintings of the aboriginal people. I like to think there is a connection there because I always wondered why they use dots so much.
And there were masses of purple mulla mulla everywhere, not just beside the road but stretching away onto the hillsides. My first "wild flower" experience, and it was beautiful. I took heaps of photos which Garry very nicely stopped for.

Mulla Mulla Wildflowers

It was pretty much a straight run into Port Hedland then, across some relatively flat land and wide sandy riverbeds, until we joined onto the North West Coastal Highway just south of here. Again on our drive we saw many stacks of huge rocks that were the end result of much weathering, more eagles and flocks of budgerigars, but no other stock despite excellent grasslands.

Port Hedland was another surprise. The weather was bleak and overcast so our first impressions were affected by this but the original township looked pretty bad. Due to the regular cyclones in the wet season and the penetrating sticky red dust that is constantly in the air because of the massive stock piles of iron ore right in the centre of town, they have built a new township 20 kms inland called South Hedland and this is where most of the 15000 people live. But we knew none of this and happily booked into the Park at Cooke Point which we soon came to think of as the most attractive part of the whole town.
On our way in we drove alongside the rail line (no long trains today though) and passed the salt works. The huge BHP ship loading centre is right in the middle of town (very ugly) as are the docks. We drove around town and I was quite shocked by the air of neglect and the poor standard of housing. Everything looked dirty and a lot of the trees were still damaged from the last cyclone. There were no shops but we did see some nice parks and sculptures. Quite honestly though, it looked like a real dump, but hopefully this image will be improved on tomorrow.
As usual, our first stop was the Tourist Office where we were disappointed to learn of all the things we could no longer do, which left us wondering how we would fill in our 2 days here! We decided to spend the first few hours of that time watching some big ore carriers come into port through a ridiculously narrow harbour entrance. And we have booked on a tour of the BHP site, so now we just have to spot one of the legendary ore trains!