Travels in Oz: Day 46 Karijini to Port Hedland

Today we headed off to Port Hedland. The scenery as we left Karijini was magnificent. The Hamersley Range is amazing in the shapes and colours of the mountains.

Scenery as we left Karijini

Amazing rock structures

More amazing scenery

We stopped at Auski Roadhouse and put in enough diesel to get us to Port Hedland as it was $1.91 per litre. We travelled on the Great Northern Highway until we reached the North West Coastal Highway about 42 kms out of Port Hedland. We booked into the Cooke Point Holiday Park and before we went to our site we washed the caravan. It was a big job with both of us working on it but we eventually got most of the red dirt off the van. We then set up and realised how humid it was. Peter went and had a shower and was as wet from perspiration afterwards as he was wet from the water when we were washing the van. The temperature was 36 degrees with 87% humidity and was just awful. It was a pleasure to get in the air conditioned car to have a look around.

As you come into Port Hedland you pass a salt mine with all the condensing ponds as we have seen in many other places in WA. Port Hedland has a population of 15,000 and there was major expansion in 1965 with the development of the iron ore deposits. The population went from 1,200 and the port handled 100,000 tonnes of cargo that year. Some of the longest trains in the world are here carrying iron ore from Mount Whaleback at Newman on the BHP Billitons Iron Ore Railroad and are up to 682 carriages long. The area of Port aHedland is divided into three - Port Hedland where the port facilities are located, Wedgefield, an industrial area and South Hedland. South Hedland was developed 20kms south when the booming coastal town of Port Hedland ran out of suitable building land in the mid 1960's due to the large expanse of tidal flats surrounding the original town.