Friday March 12th—Day Eight

My outback experience is quickly coming to an end!Today we left the National Park after a quick visit to Fortescue Falls for our morning "shower".We slowly began the long journey back to Perth eventually stopping in a town named Newman.Newman is a VERY REMOTE mining town with the bare essentials, a grocery store, post office, bottleshop, and a couple bars.We did a little sight seeing tour of Newman, visiting the visitors' center, Mt. Whaleback (the open pit mine—there is also a closed mine called Orebody 29) and lookout point where I was informed that we were 1050kms from Perth!!I love car rides.We pitched our tents in a caravan park for the evening and spent the afternoon being lazy around the pool and enjoying the luxuries of civilization (aka showers and working toilets).I definitely think the shower ranked within my top 5 showers of all time… I could just feel the outback dirt being washed away!

In the evening we played some cards and drank some "goon" (boxed wine that is really cheap… it is actually illegal to buy it in Newman except for two days a week because of alcohol abuse by Aboriginals) before heading out to the local bar.We arrived around 9:30pm and they had apparently just finished last call and were getting ready to close!!!They decided to stay open a bit longer since there were so many of us, but still shut up shop at 11pm!The bar was interesting… very bright and big considering the size of the town.I talked with a miner who had been working in the mines for 4 years now.He told me how he works for a couple weeks down in the mines and then has a week off where he drives home to Perth to visit his wife and kids and then heads back to the mines.Sounds pretty exhausted, but I guess he doesn't mind since he's making around $180,000 a year!