8^th August: Point Samson

I suppose the Ekka is on now. I hope it is not too cold and windy! The wind has dropped here, thank goodness. (The van is going up! Glen is jacking it up on one side to check a bearing! At this time of night? Despite that, someone has just walked between our van and the car, through our site. And there is a path the other side of the car!!!)

We explored Dampier and Karratha today. The Port of Dampier was built by Rio Tinto in 1963 to export iron ore from Tom Price. A dedicated railway line brings the iron ore from Tom Price and Paraburdoo. Rio Tinto has built huge facilities in 3 places to meet the growing demand for the iron ore – mostly China. This port, like Cape Lambert, is dedicated to iron ore while Port Hedland is a bigger facility that handles a number of minerals.

Salt has been harvested for 50 yrs or more and when Rio Tinto built a deep water port in 1960, they have also built a specific facility to export that. (They used to just push it over a cliff onto the ship!) Dampier Salt, which includes Port Hedland salt, is the biggest exporter of salt in the world. It is used in the glass and chemical industry and for food production and road de-icing.This is also a huge facility and it was impossible to get close to it.

Our first stop was at the statue of the Red Dog. I guess most know the story since a film has been made. This statue was built by Rio Tinto as a tribute to a true hero of the Pilbara. There are lots of items for sale that celebrate this story.

(Someone is singing opera with a decent tenor voice!)

We then went to Birrup Peninsular to see the world famous petroglyphs. These are engravings in the rocks made by aborigines an estimated 6000 to 30,000 years ago. They are in area that looks like a heap of degraded red rocks. There are many lines of hills and gorges of these rocks all over the place. (They look like mining tailings. In fact Gail though they were when she first saw them.) We spent a lot of time looking for and photographing the engravings and drawings. However, they don't translate well onto the blog! 

A painting, engraved in part.

 An engraving. I don't know what it means!

 

Also on this peninsular is the North-West Energy Venture. This is truly huge!! they drill for oil and gas 400 kms off-shore using very large platforms anchored on the sea floor and pipe it in along the sea-bed. It is a $27 billion venture and the liquified gas is shipped mainly to Asia. Some is piped to Perth for domestic use as well. The oil is now sent, I suppose, to Geelong or Singapore as I believe Kwinana in Freemantle has closed.

After all this industrial activity, we returned to Karratha which is the town built in 1960's house and provide services for the workers. The place is full of mine utes! It has certainly expanded since 1977 when most people lived in the caravan parks. There are hundreds of very new modern houses some very large,as well as a large number of 80's houses. Everyone seems to have a boat and/or a caravan!! TAFE,a private school, a hospital etc etc. If the mining industry is in decline, there is very evidence of it in the Pilbara!! What happens when the iron ore runs out, I don't know! We shopped in the Centro complex where they have both Coles AND Woolworths.