After a bit of wind overnight the sun had us up early from our roadside free stop and on the road at 7AM heading for Port Hedland. After negotiating several bridge reconstructions and a massive new interchange with so many cones and lights it was hard to follow where to go plus being the first car in the queue meant we were leading the way we ended up at the Redbank Bridge tourist stop.

This lookout on the bridge is above the salt mine here at Port Hedland. They pump huge volumes of water into holding paddocks and let the wind and sun evaporate it. They then have these special machines that skim the top layer off and put it into a massive stockpile. The stockpile has a huge D9 bulldozer on top pushing it all around and the Toll road trains go 24-7 transporting the raw salt to another stockpile on the main wharf for export and processing overseas. They export about 3 million tonnes of it each year from here.

That is a big pile

Road trains of salt

That was big but just beyond the bridge was something even bigger. The BHP iron ore train was waiting at a stop light to move past us. You could just make out the last car in the distance around the second corner. They are up to 208 cars long, each one holds 125 tonnes of ore, each car costs $6mil, up to 6 engines (not all at the front), the total length can be 3.75Km long and the journey from Newman takes 8 hours when loaded. There is some serious money invested in moving iron ore. But this was just the start.

Start of the train and first two engines

End, the start is almost middle top centre of picture

We eventually got to the visitors centre just before opening time and had to stand outside for the 4 minutes before the girls inside opened the doors. We quickly established there was not a lot to do in Port Hedland as we missed the iron ore tour by a day (only TUE & THU) and turtle season by a month (OCT-MAY). The town exists for mining and not much else by the looks of it. There were massive amounts of mine cars at the airport, every corner had some form of accommodation block or units on it and every car you passed was a mine car or somebody who serviced mine infrastructure.

We ventured down to the wharf viewing area just off a little park in town. Here we saw the biggest stuff it has to offer. 19 ships waiting off shore for their time slot at the wharf to fill up with iron ore. There were about 6 on the warf with some loading and all but one was going to China with the other to Japan. Huge piles of ore dropped from the trains and trucks everywhere. All the ships are under customs embargo while in port and we watched a customs boat watch the loading of cargo (food, wine and parts) onto barges to go out to the various ships.

Loading red gold

Just one section of the loading wharf area

Loading a barge with customs boat looking on

Dropping people off all day

A selection of ships off shore

We were to early for the turtle nesting season by a month but had a wander around the turtle nesting area and read all the signs. A short distance away was a lookout where we got a good view of the ships waiting off shore. We drove around to an outdoor display of old mining equipment that actually proved quite interesting. There was a tank converted into a bulldozer they used in the early days plus an assortment of very old trucks, trains and machinery. With little else to hold our attention we moved on and the thought of paying $52 for an unpowered campsite helped as well.

We did see a turtle though!

Turtle information bay on the beach

Valentine Tank becomes bulldozer

On the way out of town we spotted a touristy sign for the Fortescue Metals train viewing platform and did a rather high speed turn into it as I had a car right behind me. The lookout would have been Ok except there were no trains to see. I spied another road heading out to the coast to Boodarrie Landing and thought it might be a good lunch stop. After some heavy sand driving the road improved and we came to a boundary fence of the station still 9km short of the point. Here we did a quick internet search and found the tide was wrong and the track boggy and crossed a tidal river to access it. We gave up on that and kept driving till we got to a roadside stop for lunch. There was every manner of huge road train and equipment coming past to keep us entertained. We ended up at another free roadside stop just short of Whim Creek at “beer o’clock”. We have added a heap of stuff to our ‘must do list’ after some research and talking to people, so see you in another 6 months time……

FMG train viewing platform…..

Old stack at the HBI plant, site of a major industrial accident in 2004

Big stuff just kept going past