Port Hedland

The wind blew very strong all night and picked up in the early morning hours. The craven was shaking even though the awning was retracted! There have also been a few spits of rain but nothing serious. At 8:30 we drove 20km back to Roebourne where we got onto the main hwy to continue or track northwards.

A couple of hundred km's up the road we came to the road intersection where the mid western hwy joins the coastal hwy. The mid western why goes to Newman and is the main connection for many of the inland mines that are too small to have their own train line. Between this intersection and Port Hedland the road was full of Road Trains interspersed with other mining vehicles. A very busy section of road, especially when one considers the remoteness of this location.

By 11am we had arrived in South Hedland, about 20km away from Port Hedland, and drove to the only caravan park in town. We were told that they had no free tourist sites but could accommodate us in the "resident" section of the park, that's where all the long term residents who work in the area are staying. This park has over 200 site for permanents and only a handful for tourists. That's just one indication of the type of area that we have now entered - everything revolves around mining which is HUGE out here.

After setting up the caravan we drove to the South Hedland shopping centre to stock up on supplies. Back at the caravan we have a quick lunch before heading out to explore Port Hedland

The first thing we noticed on the way in were the endlessly long trains (see photo) transporting iron ore from the inland mines to the port. The longest train on record had 682 carriages, a total length of 7.3km. The average daily trains have 230 carriages (2.5km long) and are pulled by 4 locos each producing 6000HP - that's 24,000HP to pull one train!

The ore in a single train is worth around $7 Million, they have about 8 of them arrive every day - that's just for one mining company!

The port loading facilities are huge and dominate the skyline of Port Hedland (see Photo). They can load load a ship in only 35hrs. There are about 8 ships in port at the moment being loaded and we counted another 16 a few km's offshore waiting their turn. There are two mining railway lines coming into town, one is BHP's and the other Rio Tinto's. In addition to to the trains there are hundreds of 4 trailer road trains rolling into town day and night.

All this wealth brings lots of social problems. Housing is very expensive with rents of $1200/week for a small dog box and over $2000/week for a modern house with 4 bed rooms, 1 bathroom, study, carport and pool. With those rents the cheapest house is in the high $600,000's and a modern home is well over $1M. A permanent caravan site is $230/week and that's cheek compared to Karratha where they charge over $400 per week for a caravan site plus electricity.

Public drinking is causing problems as a large part of the mining population consists of transient workers without their families and not much else to do on the days off.

The housing and social problems that come with mining are causing the big protests up the road near Broome where Woodside are starting to build a gas plant 40km North of town at James Price point. The people of Broome can see that 8000 miners coming to town will drive their current rents from $500/week to over $2000/week and make houses totally un-affordable for anyone outside the mining industry.

Although Broome residents' efforts to fight the big oil and gas producer reminds me of Don Quichotte fighting the windmills, I do hope that they succeed and Broome doesn't turn into a mining town.

Here is the link to today's travel map.