Denise and Barry's Caravan Travels: July 28, 2013

Wednesday we left Eighty Mile Beach and headed for Port Hedland. Port Hedland is one of the busiest Ports in Australia, with a good vantage point in the town to observe the massive ore-carriers and salt ships passing through the harbour. The massive salt piles meet you as you arrive in the town and is one of the major exports leaving the port. Iron Ore from Newman and Tom Price arrives by rail then it is loaded onto the ore-carriers that are headed for China. After checking out the town and stocking up with groceries we then headed south down the Great Northern Hwy for around 90 klms and stopped at the Peawah River Rest Area for the night. Just before the Newman turn off we met with a shower of Iron Ore Pebbles that came from a north bound Road Train, giving us a crack in the windscreen from the bottom that extended to the top plus a couple of star chips.The caravan did not come off unscathed with a crack in the front window as well, looks like a couple of insurance claims coming up.

On the way to Point Samson the next day we stopped off at the Roebuck Information Centre which is located in the Old Gaol Museum where iron bolts and rings can be seen on the interior walls where Aboriginal prisoners were shackled at night.

We arrived here at Point Samson by around 11am and were pleasantly surprised with the Cove Caravan Park, large concrete slabs for the caravan and awning area, large gravel area to park the car and really good amenities. During our stay here we took the opportunity to clean both the car and van as both had a good layer of red Kimberly and Pilbara dirt and dust, lovely to feel clean for a while not sure how long it will last.
Staying here at Port Samson enabled us to explore Karratha, Dampier, Wickham and Cossack. Cossack is an old Heritage Port with only a few well preserved buildings remaining, As the ships became larger this port was less utilised and the final death knell was when the town was devastated by a cyclone. Wickham was built to service the Pilbara iron workers and is the home for the massive port facilities of Cape Lambert. Karratha is a fast growing town with plenty of new housing developments and a good shopping centre and is home to many workers from the mining industries both iron and gas, there is an abundance of runabouts all shapes and sizes in the suburbs due to its location close to the coast. Only 20klms away is Dampier another large shipping port that houses the massive export facilities of Pilbara Iron, Dampier Salt and the North West Gas Shelf Project. Dampier is also the home of the statue of Red Dog, who was made famous by the novel and then the film Red Dog. We also went to the visitors centre at North West Gas in Dampier where we watched a very informative video on the building of the facility and the production of gas at the drilling sites offshore, the centre overlooks the Woodside operated Karratha Gas Plant which is the onshore production plant for natural gas.

After four very enjoyable nights at Point Samson and a see you tomorrow to Maree, Brian and their friends it was time to hit the road again and head south to Onslow. We stopped in at Karatha for a quick shop at Woolworths and for Bazza to visit the camping and fishing shop, where he once again was able to drool over the wide range of fishing gear that they had in stock. We had thought that we would stop for the night at the Robe River Rest Area, but the site was not appealing as it was too early in the day and there wasn't any shade, and we are a little over the red dust at the moment, so we continued onto Onslow. The Ocean View Caravan Park at Onslow it not much better than the free campsite and we have had to pay $45 for the privilege, a very tired, dusty and dated caravan park. We had previously booked for two nights but have now cancelled that booking and will leave here tomorrow, as the town has very little to interest us. Previously grey nomads had chosen Onslow as a destination unfortunately the town has changed the Discovery Caravan Park is now full of dongers and closed to tourist, there is a shortage of accommodation due to the growth in the mining industry in the area. We will now head down towards Exmouth maybe have a free stop along the way.