Point Samson

We left the sleepy little town of Onslow this morning and tracked South East to get back onto Hwy #1 (North West Coastal Highway). For this first leg we had a reasonably strong headwind which pushed our fuel consumption to 28lt/100km. As soon as we got onto Hyw #1 and turned North East our consumption dropped back to 20lt/100km which allowed us to go past the Fortescue Roadhouse without stopping.

Behind the roadhouse is a large number of Dongas (transportable buildings with single accommodation rooms) to house workers from the nearby mines. Almost next to the roadhouse is immensely wide Fortscue river bed with the river only using 20% of the width at the moment.

Fortescue Metals is the largest Iron ore mining group in the Pilbara with Andrew Forrest as it's major shareholder and CEO. Once we passed the roadhouse the traffic volume increased significantly with lots of mining vehicles and trucks travelling to/from Karratha which is only 100km away.

There are mining sites all the way along this stretch of road and we've seen many mining villages (large collection of Dongas) along the road.

We had a refuelling stop at a locality called "Travel Stop" on the Hwy near the turnoff to Karratha. Another 40km and we got into Roeoburne, an Aboriginal settlement. As today is Saturday we noticed that most of the population seemed to be out at the footy ground.

We left the Hwy for a short drive North, past the little town of Wickham and onto Point Samson - a small place on the water (see first photo) with a total population of about 400.

After the caravan was setup we drove the short distance back to Wickham to resupply at the local Woolies. The first thing we noticed there were the security screens on every window of every shop - I'd say they've got a problem with alcohol in the area which consists of a large percentage of indigenous with the remainder made up of mine workers, most young males. There are 3 signs on the building advertising the Bottle Shop and one sign that says "Woolworths".

Back at the caravan park I went for a quick walk down to the beach which is just behind the park but the water was a long way down which reminded me that we are now entering an area with some of the biggest tides in the world. Today the tide difference was over 4mt.

Although we have seen Sturt Desert Peas on the side of the road for the last couple of weeks, today was the first time that I managed to get a snapshot (photo 2) of this very pretty plant.

Here is the link to todays travel map.