Port Hedland (3 nights)

Port Hedland gets on average 13 days of rain a year, we were honoured to be here for one of those days.  It started at 11pm on our first night with a hiss and a roar (high winds) and lasted the rest of the night; the tent did really well! The next day was drizzly and still a bit cold so we stayed another night and today is glorious sun again.  The big natural disaster risk up here is cyclones, there are signs all over the place with the CYCLONE STATUS, and they currently say “ALL CLEAR”.  There are also cyclone welfare centres and muster points dotted around the place.  Houses have either window grills or shutters or big wide eaves.  There is no guttering given the lack of rain and they would just blow off in a cyclone.  The external walls of the modern houses are clad with corrugated iron.

Yesterday we went on the historic town tour and learnt all about the establishment of the town, the exports from the port (mainly salt and iron ore), and various landmarks and historic buildings. The guide has lived here for 50 years.  The iron ore is transported in from the mines within the Pilbara area by road train (a truck with 4 trailers) and train (120 wagons!) and then loaded onto massive ships that take it to Singapore and China.  You can see about 20-25 ships waiting out at sea for their turn to be guided very slowly (by a series of tugs/pilot boats) into the port for loading.  It takes about 30 hours for each ship to come in, get loaded and go back out again, with what looks like 4-5 ships being loaded at a time.  This is going on 24-7 so not the best place for a light sleeper!

Ship being piloted back out to sea, spot the waiting ships in the background

"Like palms, we will bend but we won't break" Cyclone George 2007

If you just drive in and out of this town and didn’t stay you could be left with a negative impression (red dust and rust) but if you look around you will find heaps of art installations (murals and sculptures galore), great parks/reserves and informative plaques around the town. The wee museum in the old Dalgety building is quite interesting and has an exhibition about the SS Koombana, a passenger ship that went missing between here and Broome in 1912, the wreckage has never been found.

The news of MH17 is shocking, there were 28 Australians on-board so the impact here is massive and the news coverage of the personal stories is so sad.  Other news here is the removal of the carbon tax and potential now for removal of the mining tax, attempts to get the economy moving again.  ‘Wicked’ hire vehicles are currently, and justifiably under fire with their outrageous slogans painted on the side of the vehicles.  They made a slogan targeting one vocal opponent and sent it down to where she lives, one of her friends spotted it, shocking behaviour.