Tuesday 3 September 2013

17 August 2013 – Tom Price



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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