Dearly me it can be hard to get my driver out of bed. I guess it has a lot to do with comfort. We did finally get away about 11.30am. A new ship was being filled with ore, to replace the ship that left yesterday afternoon.

Love the way the locals have dealt with the salt pans on either side of the road on the Dampier to Karratha road. A great sense of humour.

It wasn't hard to say goodbye to Karratha, not a town that attracts visitors for long. There was a lot of heavy vehicle traffic between Karratha and Roebourne but after that we pretty much had the road to ourselves until we hit Port Hedland. So to pass the time I decided to keep a fresh road kill log – not everyone’s cup of tea I know.

Road kill stats are: cows x 6, wallaby x 1

There was one memorial that looked more like a gravesite.

Live animals were few and far between also, however a rather
large monitor, crows x 3 and a handful of horses and the obligatory cattle were
observed.

We intended stopping at Whim Creek pub for a quick one but we missed the turn and so on a whim we pushed on!

I gave up counting the signs to mine sites, sufficed to say there were way too many. Many man made mining hills were observed in the distance.

Road trains containing 4 trailers were de rigueur in and around Port Hedland, anything less than that clearly didn’t cut it. We spied a couple of ore trains with at least 100 ore trucks – everything is so bloody big up here. New roads and bridges appeared to be popping up like mushrooms, so if you want a railway overpass or some such thing, just find some ore deposits in close proximity! My camera shutter finger was almost worn out at the end of the day.

We only stopped in Port Hedland long enough to give the bus a top up ($1.64/litre – good value) and for Kimbo to give the windscreen a clean.

The countryside although sparse at times was ever changing; we never tire of what we see. It was refreshing to see green and water lying on the side of the road and rivers flowing.

We finally pulled stumps about 4.30pm alongside DeGrey River. We had a walk down to the bank but we couldn’t fit down there so we had to settle for a nice spot under a tree at the
top.

To say we were surprised that there was free Wi-Fi was an understatement. Many thanks to "Welcome Rest Stop" and the owners of the land. Very much appreciated.

It was a glorious late afternoon/evening and reminded us of why we do what we do. There was only one caravan at the water’s edge and a couple of backpackers is a much used Falcon
station wagon who stayed overnight. Those kids are made of tougher stuff than me, I could think of nothing worse than sleeping in the back of a car, with no breeze and an overnight
minimum of about 24 degrees.

I was lulled to sleep by the sound of the purring genny that was then drowned out by the snoring that was taking place next to me.