30^th July: Port Hedland

I have heard many say that they avoid Port Hedland as there is nothing to do here. Well, we have found it a most enjoyable place to visit. Today, we went on a tour of the harbour with the Seamen's Mission, an Anglican organisation originally but now also involving the Catholic church. They care for the seafarers from the ships in harbour, taking them shopping, providing comfortable surroundings away from the boat, cheap telephone and internet arrangements and in times of personal crisis, providing couselling and any other help they might need. They also sell ,at shop prices, toiletries, food, souvenirs, clothes and bedding etc that the men might need.

It was a great tour. They took us by bus with the seafarers to a launch which took us around to each ship, dropping off men and picking others up. We were able to see the harbour closely as well as these enormous ships, learning much about the Mission, the ships and the port. The ships come in empty and over 24 – 36 hours,they load 200,000 + tonnes of mostly iron ore. There are 16 berths and as one ship leaves, another enters. It costs the company $100,000 a day to have them sitting offf shore and so the turn around is snappy. Our guide told us that 1 centimetre length of the loaded ship weighs 250 tonnes and is worth $20,000. And these ships are 300 metres long! Huge money!! BHP has 8 docks, Andrew Forrester has 4 and Gina Rinhart is building a new one which will take 3 ships. The rest are used by other miners to transport copper, salt, chromite etc. Fuel is also landed as this whole place runs on huge amounts of diesel. With 16 tugs buzzing about, all the water taxis, it is a busy stretch of water. We left after watching a massive ship be guided in and turned to berth. Quite an operation!

An empty berth ready for two new arrivals. Those gantries load the ore.

 

We were very impressed with work of the Mission, a visible expression of the love of Christ. One captgain told us it was the best Mission in the world.

In the morning, we stopped to look over the salt works. Water is pumped in, allowed to evaporate and then salt is graded into piles and scooped up. It is for chemical production and hardening of steel. You can't see it in the photo but a bull-dozer is pushing that pile around to make room for more. It is loaded into Toll trucks, taken down the road to the port and loaded into ships.

The evaporation pans - or at least a couple of the many!  Good use of a mud flat!

The drama of the day was Glen biting into an Arnott's Gingernut and snapping completely off a tooth – one that has had root canal and is dead. He is gappy now. He has a dentist appointment tomorrow. I don't think much can be done! I told him he should dunk Arnott's. There are too hard!

I forgot to mention yesterday (Thanks Denis, for reminding me) the best kept secret of WW2: a secret air-base 35 kms out of Marble Bar, at Corunna Station, housing 4000 men and a large number of Liberator Bombers. They flew missions up to Java in surprise attacks on the Japanese who never did find the base despite serious attempts to do so. Dreadful conditions to live and work in: extremely hot, living in tents with very little water. (The water in the pipes was so hot they couldn't shower until late at night!) It was in the middle of nowhere and must have seemed like the end of the earth! Dry, hot and barren.The skewed cross shaped runway is still there but as there was little infrastructure, nothing else much is apparently. We didn't go out but there are many photos and written descriptions in the area.

A train is arriving and dumping its load while another leaves. How can you say this is a dead place! Ah well. We will see what tomorrow brings with Glen's tooth.