Up early we departed the
beloved Karijini National Park this morning, bound for the iron ore mining town
of Tom Price. We had booked a 10am tour
of the mine to learn lots of new things.
We drove towards Tome Price mostly across flat land as well as past
quite a few big mountains, none bigger than Mt Nameless, the highest point in
Tom Price. We arrived at the Visitor
Information Centre with plenty of time to spare,running into Peter and Karen
from Swan Hill (another couple who we’d previously run into at Port Hedland but
officially met in Karijini). They too
were booked in to the same tour of the Rio Tinto mining operations. We had quite a full coach full of people as
we made our way to the mine, all with our safety helmets and glasses in hand –
very cool!! Our tour guide fed us lots
of facts about the mine during our tour such as it being approved as a mine
back in the 1960’s (so it’s really not very old), there are about 35 haul
trucks that operate 24 hours a day every day of the year which move the iron
mire from the open pit to the production area, the cost of a single haul truck
tyre is in excess of $60,000 each, the workers are made up of approx. 20% women
and 80% men and there are 236 carriages on each train which takes about 1.5
hours to load and it is then transported by rail to Cape Lambert. The many facts of the mine are mind boggling in
particular about how large this operation is, the money that is put into the
entire operation and the plans they have
to expand the production. I have already
tried to talk Zoe and Samantha into getting a mining job (just for a few years)
once they are out of school and before they follow their intended professional
paths. The tour was an eye opener for us
eastern-ers and the kids were particularly happy when all the big trucks passed
honking their horns and giving them a wave.
It was amazing how small these trucks looked in comparison to the
enormous pits that they were mining from.
At the end of the tour we were taken back to town and ducked into the
shops to pick up some groceries for our next big adventure when we were heading
to Millstream-Chichester National Park.
After finding the caravan park and setting up camp (still with the lovely
Woods’ family), we had a bite of lunch, got some washing done while the kids
played darts and made paper aeroplanes.
Whilst we were all flitting about we got talking to another family that
had been on our tour and was also camped in the same caravan park (and they had
the same caravan as us). The Harvey
family were one of the nearest to home family’s that we’d met on the road
yet. Heath and Mandie are from
Blacksmiths Beach and have two lovely daughters, Tarly and Shae, only slightly
older than our two girls and now all children and adults were getting along
famously. In the afternoon, we decided
to drive up to Mount Nameless to watch the sunset and check out the Rio Tinto
mine from way up high and watching the trains in the far distance as they
travel hundreds of kilometres to and from the mine to the coast. The sun was setting with a haze over the
mountains, a little different to over the ocean but still very pretty. Once that sun was gone though it got quite
cool and we headed back to camp for some pizzas and more chatting, this time
with the kids watching tv outside our van while the adults enjoyed a bit of
warmth inside. Josh had been worried
about a brake problem that he was experiencing the last couple of days so made
a call back home to Cameron to see if he could shed some light on the possible
problem. After checking out the car he
realised that Cameron was right and we actually had a problem with the wheel
bearings. When the car was jacked up,
the front driver’s side wheel was wobbling about quite a bit. So, this meant no sleep for Josh tonight, he
was understandably worried about this and wanted it fixed before driving off to
another national park the next day.
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