Hi there. Really enjoyed the tour of the Dampier Port before leaving that interesting town. Photo is the on shore gas plant. After being signed in through security dress code and photo ID checked and visitor cards printed as per strict protocol we were driven to the control room for the whole port. The port has the most ship movements in Australia as it ships gas, oil, iron ore, salt, ammonia and also general cargo.The operations room works 24/7 and over sees all ship movements there and also Port Onslow 400km away by cameras and radar. The cameras are super hi tech as all you need to do is type a ships name into the computer and they search the port for that ship and zoom in on it. Its quite amazing with 5 big screens on one wall showing land, sea and ships and so much other data up dated by the minute. The manager explained all the operations and procedures which also included cyclone evacuation, all very interesting and we felt very lucky as the public normally never get find out this information.
Dampier is the largest LNG producing area in the world and as it's the clean burning gas the world wants the port business is very secure unlike the falling iron ore business. Next morning Wednesday after restocking the van we cruised on further south to next coastal town of Onslow and booked into a camp which houses all the workers that are building the new nearby gas plant. Very interesting! Fill you in on the next blog.
Catch you soon.
Xxx