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.