Day 30

Karijini - Karratha - Dampier - Point Samson

" if I had a little money, it's a rich mans world...."

We turned left at the T intersection between Port Hedland and Karratha. We originally weren't going to but we also didn't want to go " you know if only we'd turned left..." You never never know if you never never go right!

We turned left - yes it will eventually be a backtrack of about 500ks but we've got time and I was really wanting to see the North West Shelf operation seeing as its the biggest in the world - and they are only open to the public Mon to Fri.

So we left Karijini at about 7.45 and fueled at the Auski roadhouse . The drive to the North West Highway was uneventful although the scenery was ever changing and still spectacular .

Once we turned onto the Highway though it was a very different scene! We were back in road train territory - the Big 4 trailer ones and they were pretty much every vehicle on the highway too. Cayla even remarked at one point " I haven't seen a normal truck in ages !"

A couple of firsts for this trip today:

1. I overtook my first 4 trailer road train - yes with the caravan on!

2. We saw 2 snakes on the road (alive) - big ones too . One was definitely a python about 1.5 metres and the other was a large black one - bigger than the python ! At 90 k's an hour it's hard to refer to the Steve Irwin book of 'What snake is that....'

3. Road kill - not your standard kangaroos, but fully grown cows! Everywhere too. That's a lot of steaks!!

So as you know we turned left and drove on to Karratha and to Dampier. The North West Shelf project is huge. As one sign said, if they stopped production for 24 hours , the whole Australian Economy stalls! We all got a lot out of seeing how this massive operations works 24x7 and how that they need to extract the LNG and cool it to -161 degrees. It mostly goes to China and Japan but it does also supply 70% of WA's gas needs.

We left the NWS and continued into Dampier itself and drove around the town. We saw the Red Dog statue that the film is based on and we got to see the end of the line for the huge trains shipping the iron ore from Tom Price that kept our counting skills up the other night. We saw them loading a ship too with ore no doubt destined for China.
On the way out of Dampier we stopped on a bridge and saw the carriages stretching as far as the eye can see in both directions loaded with the stuff! The money in those trains.......wow.

We drove onto Karratha and did a drive by of the town - nothing exciting there to really comment on. By this time though it was 5pm on a Friday and we hit peak hour Karratha traffic. All sorts if mining vehicles with red flags on them going home for the weekend. I seriously need to get a red flag for the Disco -every other vehicle on the road has one with a flashing orange light too!!

We rolled into Point Samson on the beach just after 6pm. The sun had set for the day and we were pretty tired after another 600 k day. We checked into the Cove Caravan Park tonight and had dinner at the local Tavern as a treat .
Tomorrow we will backtrack and look at the smaller towns we passed today on our way to Port Hedland and beyond.