Relaxing at Pardoo

After a bit of a sleep-in this morning we woke to another beautiful day on Pardoo station. Most of the morning was spent talking to the neighbours and I gave one of them a hand to fix the camera on the back of his rig.

I was also trying to find an explanation why the tide at Pardoo Creek turns about 3.5hrs after low tide yet the turn on top of the tide is spot on the published high tide time. It makes for a very strange tidal behaviour when takes the tide only 2.5hrs to come in but 8.5 hrs to run out.

All the locals acknowledged that tidal behaviour but none of them knew the reasons behind it. I was none the wiser but had it confirmed that I wasn't imagining things.

During the morning we also caught up with Uwe and Beate, the German couple that shipped their mobile home from Germany to Oz.

I had ordered a loaf of bread, freshly baked at the station but they were running late so we didn't get it in time before we had to go back to the creek for more fishing. So we left without lunch and thought that the low tide was worth a try. This time we were lucky enough to get some live bait from another bloke who was casting a net. We fished for nearly 3 hrs and watched as tide was coming in pushing us further and further up the bank.

It appears our fishing luck has totally left us (and everyone around us) - as we couldn't hook a single fish. People that went out on a boat had their bag limit within an hour. They felt sorry for us and gave a Blue Nose Salmon which I filleted and put straight into the car fridge.

The photos in this blog are taken at the fishing location, one at low tide, the other at high tide, to illustrate the change water level.

In the evening we had Alan and Judy over to eat the Salmon with us and later on we were joined by our German friends who spoiled us with german made dark chocolate. To finish off the meal we had Vanilla ice cream with Mango sauce topping.

Today was also the first day of WA school holidays and we've already seen a number of campers arrive this afternoon. I suspect the next couple of week are going to very busy and camping spots will be scarce.

Pardoo Station

Port & South Hedland are not really a tourist destination, just large industrial areas which surrounded the small town centre that houses a bit of support infrastructure.

We were glad to move on and an early start got us out of South Hedland around 8am.

In amongst the large road trains we followed the road along the coast. The road trains soon left the main road to go into the mine sites and by the time we were 100km way from Port Hedland there were no more mining road trains.

About 130km out of Port Hedland we turned onto a dirt road and after a further 14kms arrived at Pardoo Station which is close to the Ocean. Pardoo is a working cattle station on 500,000 acres of land stretching about 80km along the coastline. At the moment they run about 6000 head of Santa Gertrudis which feed on a variety of Spinifex.

The station enjoys excellent (but salty) water which emerges from a 90m deep bore into the Canning Artesian Basin.

Pardoo station used to be an outpost to the De Grey station which was established in the 1880's. In 1904 the outpost was sold off and became an independent station. Since then it had six different owners.

The caravan facility is great with some grassy areas and unlimited power available 24hrs - they've got a big generator! The station has a shop, restaurant and swimming pool. In the evening they cook a 2 course station meal for the station workers which is also open to park guests at $20/person and is pretty much an all you can eat affair.

We drove about 5km's on a station road to Pardoo Creek which is a tidal creek frequented by fishermen. We got there just on low tide which was about 5mt below the high tide mark. There wasn't much water and we saw the rocks on the creek bed bottom. Suddenly the creek started to run, quite strong, and within a minute or two the water was a foot deep.

As the tide was coming in with a great rush it brought lots little fish with it and the Pelicans followed along having a great feed. We also spotted some larger fish just below the surface with only the tip of their dorsal fin visible. A turtle was also partaking in the feeding frenzy and it was quite amazing to see this creek go from no visible wildlife to an absolute smorgasbord within the space of only ten minutes.

We received advise to fish in this spot around the high tide later in the afternoon. After lunch we went back and were amazed by the amount of water and the height of creek. However, the fish were on the bite before we got there and, once again, we missed out on catching dinner.

Although before we went to the creek I was assured that there were no crocs, the same evening we heard reports from other fishermen that there is croc lurking in the area and it has been seen at the fishing spot a number of times. Some people said wan't go back to fish that spot, whilst others said no more fish cleaning on the water's edge. One should always tanned a few meters back from the water's edge when fishing - there is no room for complacency.

We had a fairly late night as Alan and Judy, a couple from Bright, came over for a bit of a chat and to exchange some travel yarns. We meet them first at Cape LeGrand (Esperance) a few weeks back and have been catching up with them numerous times as they are travelling along the same track.

Unfortunately no travel map today as we've been without internet for a few days and therefore the recording was automatically deleted.

Flying the Mail Run

This morning I met a German couple who are travelling Oz for a year - in their own mobile home which they had shipped over from Germany!

After exchanging some travel information with them we drove into Port Hedland to visit Woolies, get fuel and look around. Back at the caravan we

enjoyed a brief lunch and then headed to the Airport.

We joined the pilot of a twin engine Piper Navajo on his mail run to a couple of remote cattle stations. The first station was Yarrie about 160km east of Port Hedland. The flight route took us along the De-Grey River for about 160km where we landed on a typical station airstrip made of red dirt. Yarrie station covers about 1 Million acres and they run around 12,000 head of Droughtmaster cattle, specifically bred for this arid region of Australia.

As the airstrip is a couple of km's from the homestead, they send out a car which receives the mailbag and also brings out the bag with new mail. The mail delivery happens only once a week out here but Australia Post is obliged to provide mail services to all Australians, no matter how remote they live. Yardie station is currently home to 14 people as it is mustering season. After a bit of chat we were back in the plane and headed further east at only 1500ft so we could get very close look at the landscape.

A further 50km East and we landed at Warrawagine station which has a couple of dirt airstrips that are bigger than Albury airport. The station also covers about 1 Million acres but they run 25,000 head of Droughtmaster and employ 30 people. Currently their crew was camped for mustering about 2 hrs away from the homestead. The mustering at this station is done with a couple of helicopters, some buggies, motorbikes and horses. They have their own cook with them and have their own trucks to bring the cattle back to the yards near the homestead.

A truck on a station is not just a normal truck, it's actually a road train with 3 double decker trailers. One person from the station drives to Port Hedland once a fortnight to buy food. Their fruit and veg is bought directly at the market in Perth and shipped to Port Hedland. A typical shopping bill at Woolies is around $2000 and going shopping means leaving the station at 5am and returning well after dark. They buy no meat as the slaughter all their own.

The kids on the station receive their education via school of the air which is no longer via 2-way radio but via a satellite internet link.

Warrawagine station doesn't have any neighbours to east, where the station ends is start of the dessert which is home to millions of camels. Whenever they come across a camel they shoot it and eat it - apparently camel is very nice eating. Linda (who lives on the station) used to have a pet camel but it got out and ran away.

Mustering is big out here, it starts in April after the wet and finishes in September. Linda reckons the best time on the station is the wet season when it's quiet and there are only 4 people on the station.

All Pilbara stations have many mining tenements on their pastoral leaseholds. Most of the rock around here has 3 distinct layers, the first is iron ore, the second is copper and then comes Maganese. There are also some gold deposits. Many mining claims are pegged out but are not currently mined. The mining operations use the stations access roads and airstrips for which they pay the station owner but station owner's have no right to the proceeds from mining activities.

The flight back to Port Hedland took nearly an hour and we got a great view of the town and the port facilities from above. Port Hedland airport has many airliners coming through to transport the mining workers. The airport carpark is full of mining cars which are very easy to spot with their flag and yellow/black number on the side.

Tomorrow we'll move onto Pardoo Station, then 80 mile beach, Port Smith Lagoon and finally Barnhill Station before we get into Broome. I'm not sure if we have any phone reception between Port Smith and Broome so you may not see an update to this blog for a week or two.

For those interested in todays flight: here is the link to the flight map.

http://www.spotadventures.com/trip/view/?trip_id=263968

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.

Fishing John's Creek

I was woken at 4:30am this morning as the wind suddenly came up and built in strength until every gust shook the caravan. Ilse and I went outside and retracted the awning which stopped the caravan shaking and is also a good precaution to prevent the awning being ripped off by a gust - better safe than sorry.

While on the subject of winds, I noticed that buildings are constructed to cyclone standards. Houses seem to have a special metal frame with a lot more metal than back home. The caravan park ablution building roof frame has heavy trusses welded from RHS with lots of bracing and very solid I-beam going around the base of the roof line. Purlins seem to be spaced at about half the distance of this at home.

Even with all these building standards if a cyclone goes right through it will still be very destructive. And it's not a matter of "IF" but more of "WHEN". All towns in this area have been hit by cyclones in the past.

Once we had the awning rolled up we went back to sleep and didn't get up until 8am. The wind was blowing fairly strong and we were almost cold although the temperature was above 20DegC. It was an overcast day and there were showers on the weather forecast.

Ilse did some washing and I did a bit of work before we drove to Woolies in Wickham for a few supplies. A quick drive though Wickham showed us that most houses are rented by mining employees working for Rio Tinto. The company makes many contributions to the local community and schools so life is a bit more bearable for their employees.

Every house that doesn't have a fence has heavy security screens on every bit of glass around the house.

After lunch we went fishing to John's Creek where the tidal change causes a strong flow under the bridge which restricts the amount of water going in and out of this estuary. The flow is so strong, it reminds me of the Kiewa river above Mt Beauty. We fished from an hour before the top of the tide to an hour after and expected a little bit of slack water at the to of the tide. However, the tidal changes here are so rapid that we had no slack water at all. The tide literally turned from running in to running out in a matter of seconds - and this is no exaggeration.

Although the kids had great fund catching lots of little fish on bait the Barra continued to allude us and we went home fishes yet again.

Cossack

We enjoyed a lazy Sunday morning in bed and slow start to the day. The nought was cool an in the morning a fresh breeze blew up and I decided to take down the awning whilst we went exploring.

We drove a short distance to the historic settlement of Cossack which was established in 1863 to service the gold rush in the Pilbara. The wharf was built on an inlet which is reasonably well protected from the winds and the settlement formed around the wharf. Over the years the pearl luggers came and made Cossack their home but eventually moved onto Broome and the Cossack was finally abandoned in 1950. The old buildings are in reasonable condition and give tourists a glimpse of life in this remote area over a century ago.

The old wharf wall is still intact and provides a great fishing spot. We joined in the fun and tried to catch dinner. Although we fished a couple of hours before high tide, which is supposed to be the best time, there was no dinner fish caught. Not by us and not by anyone else on the wharf.

Of course, she who catches all the fish, caught the biggest fish (see picture) for the day, a Striped Scat (I think).

After fishing we checked out

Readers Head lookout which provides and excellent view of the area and it's tidal creeks. No wonder they have crocodiles here without he muddy bottom and mangrove covered creek areas.

On the way back we stopped at John's creek for a few casts as we observed someone catching a Barra. Needless to say, apart from some more little fish, there was still nothing to put on the dinner plate.

At the caravan park we also met the couple from Bright which we got to know a few weeks back in Esperence and have seen a number of other times since.

After lunch we went for a look at the Point Samson boat harbour and Samson Creek to see where we can fish tomorrow. We decided to have a few more casts but today wasn't our day. As the sun set and the sand flies took over the area we went home in a fishless state.

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.