21st May 2012 visit to Point Samson

  We went out for a drive to check out the surrounding area Cossack and  Point Samson.


Cossack is located 12 km from Roebourne, it is an historic ghost town at the mouth of the Harding River...The townsite was officially declared in 1872 and by 1887 a horse drawn tramway had been built connecting the port with the town of Roebourne.


Cossack's importance at this time was twofold. It became the port for the pastoral industry which, by 1869, had over 39 000 sheep in the Pilbara. This role also brought hundreds of prospectors through the town when gold was discovered in the Pilbara in the 1880s.Cossack's life as a town was relatively short-lived. 


By the turn of the century the pearling fleet had moved north to Broome to take advantage of the pearl beds in the area. By 1910 the harbour had silted up and the once-thriving community had become virtually a ghost town. In 1910 the municipality was dissolved.


Quickly Point Samson became the main port for Roebourne.


People continued to live in Cossack until after World War II, but the failure of attempts to ressurect the pearling industry saw the virtual disappearance of the town. 


In 1976 a committee was formed to restore the town as a kind of museum.


We visited the some old buildings in the area ....the Court House ... we held a "mock court" and put John in the docks..hehehehe

 We then moved on to Port Samson which is a small fishing town that was once the principal port for the Roeburne district. It has a large commercial fishing fleet which  still operates out of the town. 

From there we went into a little town called Wickham for lunch I was so surprised to see all the shops and even the supermarket with steel cages on all the windows and doors to safeguard against break-ins...

20th - 21th May 2012 Roebourne via Karratha and Dampier

Traveling to Roebourne today and going via Dampier still not much on the roads in between...we stopped off at Fortescue River bridge .. which I was surprised to see water in the river almost all the rivers are dry and only see water in the wet season...

Took advantage of the back drop to take some pictures of the rigs...

We made a detour  into Dampier....which is located just 30 minutes drive west of Karratha and is the gateway to the Dampier Archipelago, a fascinating group of 42 uninhabited islands located just off the coast. 


For a single purpose town, designed and constructed by the Hamersley Iron Mining Company, Dampier is a particularly pretty settlement of some 2000 people. It nestles on the edge of King Bay and has beaches fringed with palm trees...In spite of the chronically low rainfall and the high temperatures... the town has a pleasant greenness I suppose the result of lots of watering etc...which makes the place for a "company town" very nice.
The town's impossibly regular design reflects the fact that it was specifically constructed in 1965 as a port and processing centre to meet the needs of Hamersley Iron mining operations at Tom Price... But in 1968 it had outgrown its original plan and with the increasing population was moved to Karratha.


Travelling the North Coast Coastal Highway out to Dampier runs through harsh desert landscapes and runs beside the huge salt pans which are part of the Dampier Salt Company.. which is Australia's largest single salt producer with over 9000 hectares of salt pans producing over 2.4 million tonnes of salt each year.

Whilst driving to check out the beaches etc..the side of the roads are covered in salt...and  someone has made some features along the way...

 Shark fins

Titanic

Dampier is one of the largest ports in Australia. In 1989 506 vessels were loaded with over 49 million tonnes of iron ore from the Hamersley mines.. making it the largest tonnage port in Australia.


Hearson's Cove is a popular tidal swimming beach, it is a great location for viewing the "Stairway to the Moon",  which occurs at full moon between May and October. We are hoping to view this in Broome

Driving through Karratha we viewed the massive port loading facilities, huge stock-piles of Iron Ore and we saw a train nearly two kms long.... I couldn't get it all in the camera.

Whilst driving out of Karratha we witness yet another amazing sight... huge helicopters erecting power lines... !!! these pilots must be very talented to do this sort of thing.. amazing to watch...

We camped at a Caravan Park tonight for 2 days at Roebourne.

19th May 2012 Robe River

19th May 2012

Up bright and early and on the road heading to Robe River today...

Michael transferring fuel from his spare tank.. into his main tank

Red bull dust everywhere but something we have to get used too... it's into everything...

I took some shots of a dragonfly which was having fun on Michael's  UHF aerial..for Mychele she loves dragonflies...

Down by the river we captured the thousands of wild budgies coming in for a drink, they stay in large groups to ward off the Kites (Falcons) from catching them...amazing to watch they fly so fast in huge flocks...

Just amazing the things you see on the road....

18th May 2012 Meeting up with Michael & Lois

Today we left Exmouth and travelled back to the highway where we were meeting up with Michael & Lois...our travelling buddies for the next 6 months or so..

We met Michael and Lois 2 years ago at Camden they are the ones that made our minds up to buy a fifth wheeler after seeing their rig...They have the same one as us only a little smaller, and they also pull it with an Iveco truck..They come from Western Australia and  when we told them we were planning on doing the trip over here they invited us to travel with them... which is great because they know all the good places to stop and see...Plus the bonus is they are a lovely couple...:)

We arrived at our meeting point at lunchtime... then we travelled on together to a bush camp  another 60 kms up the highway to Barradale Rest Area where we camped for the night. We have 1370 kms to travel before we get to Broome so we will be doing overnight bush camps for this next week...

The highway is so changeable... one minute green and bush land then the next open spaces of nothing but red dust !!!

You see the strangest things on the way in the middle of nowhere

17th May 2012 Visiting the Gorges

While visiting with Bernadette and Peter they asked if we would like to spend the day with them today visiting the Gorges on the east side of Exmouth.

Heading out we first turned off too Shothole Canyon...The unsealed canyon road provided access into one of the  many spectacular gorges in Cape Range..... it was a lovely nine km drive into the heart of Cape Range driving through a steep canyon with walls either side, The sheer canyon walls exhibit colourful rock layers which gave me plenty of opportunities to use my camera ...finishing at a secluded picnic spot with a lookout.

After leaving there we drove out and turned onto the next road leading to Charles Knife Canyon... this time instead of driving through the gorge we drove on top of it...which gave us  awesome views back into the Charles Knife Canyon, the gorges and Exmouth Gulf.

We finished off in town and had a nice late lunch before once again saying our goodbyes...till we run into them again on the road somewhere...