Barb & John's Hols: Lap Around Australia ..Port Hedland

Port Hedland

We drove from Sandfire Roadhouse to Port Hedland without incident. Phew! The couple who'd parked opposite us at Sandfire in their motorhome had recommended to us to stay at Cooke Point Caravan Park in Port Hedland, as some of the others were in "dodgy" areas of town and some had trains or road trains going past all night and all day.

A white peacock at Sandfire

Cooke Point Caravan Park from the mud flats

The singer at caravan site was terrible! He could sing well
enough, but padded it with unfunny chatter.

Pretty Pool mud flats

So here we are at Cooke Point. The caravan park is nice enough, with clean amenities and so on, and the staff are very nice and helpful too, BUT .... the access to the caravan sites, and in fact all the access roads in the park, are incredibly narrow or tight. We had a devil of a job getting in and properly aligned on the cement plinth, and yes the marriage-saver jockey wheel was used! We felt pretty shattered until we watched several other people do it .... and even the most experienced drivers found it tricky.

There were sweat and tears, though no blood (just), to
achieve this state of tidy parking

Camp kitchen

We went for a drive into Port Hedland town to go to the visitor centre. The ladies in there were most helpful and we are now armed with heaps of brochures for the next few weeks of our trip. Port Hedland is very spread out and is broken up into several widely spaced suburbs. Port Hedland Historic West End is right at the entrance to the port. It's really just a couple of streets in the main centre of town, then Marapikurrinya Park and Finnucane Lookout look over the entrance to the port.

At the other end of a long beach is an area called Pretty Pool (where our caravan park is). South Hedland seems to have the most development and the biggest and newest shopping centre, then there's Wedgefield, which is a big industrial estate. This is where we had to take our caravan for Bridgestone to replace the two tyres. There's also Redbank and Port Hedland Airport. In amongst all this weave endless road trains and long trains - perhaps a kilometre long - carrying iron ore to the port. The port never stops, they work 24/7.

John playing it cool with shirt hanging out

Modest boab with bulk carrier in the background

Barb was there too!

Er .... a line of piles and a floating pontoon

The museum in Port Hedland

Look carefully and you'll see silhouette sculptures of various
workers. The one on the left might be a sheep shearer on his bike.

The coastline right outside the caravan park

Barb and the mud flats

Our first full day in Port Hedland was largely spent sorting out the caravan's tyres and doing grocery shopping etc. The people at Bridgestone tyres were very professional and it was all done very quickly. The worst part was returning to the caravan park and having to do the awful parking all over again. We enlisted the help of the park manager this time, but even he had trouble. I don't think we'll ever return here because of the difficult access.

Yay for Bridgestone!

John and I had heard about the Seafarer's tour of the harbour from some lovely people we camped with back at Mary Pool. We went to the Seafarers' Centre and booked for the tour at $45 each for seniors AND they even recognised Barb's National Senior's Card.

The Seafarers' Centre and bus

View from the carpark. Thde anchor appeared to be of
wrought iron. That makes it pretty old.

Inside the centre

Internet access and contacting home is very well received
by visiting seamen

Oh - Barb was still around ...

... as was John

We arrived the next morning to do the harbour tour. The Seafarer's Centre is run by a Christian organisation who saw a need to care for the sailors who were coming into the ports and had no way of getting off their ships to access town for shopping and to use phone and internet to contact their families back home. Most of the crews are from the Phillipines or other places in Asia.

The group go out to all the ships in the harbour several times a day, picking up crew members or dropping them back to their ships after taking them to the shops. They also provide shore facilities and internet and phone opportunities. There are also pastoral counselling services provided to the men.

The bar!

They take small groups of paying public like ourselves along on the boats so we can see the boats in port up close and learn about the activities of the port. It's absolutely mind blowing and we thoroughly enjoyed the morning out on the water.

These ships are BIG! There is only a 300 metre wide channel into the port ships can only leave for an hour or so either side of high tide, and it's one way traffic. Arriving ships, unladen, enter at outside the departure window. There are lots of tugs and support boats assisting and the boats are guided in by local pilots who are choppered on and off the boats. When the boats arrive empty, they sit very high out of the water but they are soon filled to the plimsoll line with iron ore (or salt or magnesium or lithium). When they are full they sit very low in the water and it is quite a tricky job to guide them out, hence they are turned round on arrival, unladen, so they berth facing the way out.

About to tour the harbour

Bush hat and life jacket. Très chic

John thought this tug was huge, for a tug

Picking up crew from one of the ships in port

These ships really are huge - a quarter of a million tons

Happy sailor

And another happy sailor

We did say they are huge

The channel out of the harbour

Barb regaining terra firma

We've enjoyed seeing Port Hedland and all the activity that goes on here. The trains are soooo long! As are the road trains carrying ore. And we were amazed at the huge mountains of stockpiled salt and the massive salt pools beside the roadway (what happens when it rains on all that salt?). It really is an interesting place to visit.

Ore train - one small part

A larger part, bit only a part

Piles, small mountains, of salt for export

On our final night in Port Hedland we went down to the beach to try to view the Staircase to the Moon. This event only happens with a full moon rising over very low tides on the mudflats and occurs only a few times a year. Sadly today was quite overcast even if it didn't actually rain (Barb did manage to get a load of washing dry). Alas it was too cloudy to see the rising moon. We did however see a beautiful sunset and twilight, and we did see the local evening markets. We got to chat to some nice people who were also waiting for the moon and who like us are heading to Karajini tomorrow. All is not lost!