Leaving Port Hedland

From now on the blogs will be more like diary entries, maybe then I can stay on of them and not forget things we have done!!

Tuesday 15th Of Feb:

Left Port Hedland about midday, rained all night up to the point of us leaving and kept raining all throughout our drive. Very strange weather for a town that 'never gets any rain' even the locals were stunned. We really didn't want to stay any longer though so once we checked if the roads were open we were off!

We went down the inland hwy and arrived at the Auski road house at about 4pm, the weather was still horrible so we decided to stay a night and see if it would be better tomorrow for Karajini National Park

We paid $1.72 for diesel, so expensive! Even the 'budget caravan park' was $35 a night for a powered site, and it's nothing special very old green toilets. even though there has been a heap of rain it is still shorts and t-shirt weather, the breeze is nice for a change though.

Wednesday 16th Feb:

Woke up about 6:30am and was still overcast, went to plug in my laptop and noticed we had lost power, we had a look around and found our caravan had been leaking water from the inside near the light switch, we were lucky it didn't catch fire! The rain held off a little while we packed up in the morning but as soon as we drove off it started pouring again!! We heard there was also a cyclone building off the coast, we may have to stop somewhere for a few days and wait it out.

We were meant to be stopping at Karajini National Park but the rain was full on, plus if we got stuck somewhere because of road closures we wanted it to be somewhere with power!

We stopped in and had some lunch at Tom Price, another big mining town.

This truck weighs 98,000kgs when empty!

We kept driving and ended up at a roadhouse called Nanutarra, we decided to stay here a night and see if the weather improves and at this point in time it was the only place in the west coast that was not raining!

We paid $25 for a powered site on the dirt and shouted ourselves some dinner at the roadhouse, for 3 drinks and 2 hamburgers with chips it cost us $51!!! I know we are in the middle of nowhere but that is still a joke.

The rain held off long enough for us to seal the holes and put a tarp up.

There are thousands of flies here so head nets were worn for the first time!

Thursday 17th Of Feb:

Woke up and went straight to the roadhouse to catch some news, turns out there is a blue alert for coral bay and exmouth and that's where we are heading!! We are going to be stuck here at least another day and there is NOTHING to do here. We are lucky though as it still has not rained much, a few light showers.

The roadhouse was starting to get busy as all the roads around us were closed due to flooding, we are lucky we took the inland road this far because apparently the road to Karratha was closed the morning we left, we are also lucky we left Auski when we did as they were literately closing the roads the behind us!

We passed the time by reading, watching a few movies and we also went for a walk to have a look around....

The ashburton river.

We cooked our own tea tonight, bangers & mash, very cheap compared to last night.

Friday the 18th Of Feb:

We got up and saw images of the cyclone and it looks like its heading out to sea so we are getting out of Nanutarra and heading to Exmouth, which is about 280 kms away from here.

We just drove past a pretty horrific crash about 50kms from the roadhouse, a car was upside down and there were ambulance, police and a fire truck, trying to get someone out, a reminder of how careful we have to be.

Port Hedland

After eighty mile the next stop was Port Hedland (after the pardoo roadhouse).

One of the mining trains, these things are never ending!

Trust us to get stuck on our way into town, sat here for about 15mins.

We were in Port to save some mulla, so day 1 we started to job hunt and went to every recruitment place to try our luck.

Brenton got a job working for Veolia, they go into BHP and hose all the Iron Ore off the machines to keep them running.

I got a job as a front end supervisor at Woolies, and also helped out at the caravan park on my days off.

Our first look at the mining equipment at BHP, Brenton had to clean this machines and they are HUGE!

The port.

Early days, still smiling.

The cost of living here is ridiculous, the caravan park for a week is $290, if you want to stay semi permanent it goes up another hundred bucks!!

Our spot at Cooke Point holiday park.

One of the great things about Port Hedland (and there aren't many) is the sunsets, amazing!

There were also a few wild storms, not a lot of rain though.

This day we had a dust storm.

I was lucky to have a few friends from high school in Port so we had a few dinner parties and nights out.

On the menu was fillet mignon, lamb shanks, veggies and cheesecake for dessert, spoilt!!

Brenton and his work mate Shaun

Fresh watermelon.

Rio Tinto Salt

Brenton after a hard day at work

We worked really hard here but there is not much else to do, Brenton worked 12 hour shifts outside in the heat, day and night 5-6 days a week, and I was working 7 days, but loved my job and the people at the Wollies. 

One of my friends from Woolies, Roselyn was an amazing cook and used to bring us in cheesecake all the time and chicken skewers, I think she thought we never ate!

A five minute walk from our van is a swimming spot called pretty pool.

We would usually only swim if there were other people in the water, it has been known to hold a few crocs over the years, we also watched a sea snake swim by.

Lots of shells here too.

Some trains can be 3kms long.

For christmas we house sat for our friends Sarah and Matt and had to also look after this fella,Tom.

He may look cute but he was a handful!

He loved Brenton

Attacking our little chrissy tree.

So we moved it to higher ground, we had plenty of pressies considering we were away.

Roast Veggies! Loved having an oven!

Christmas lunch for 2. Pork,ham and veggies.

We said good-bye to the Bundera that had gotten us this far....

And hello to our Mitsubishi Pajero, which we had sent from perth.

Red leather seats...they are going to get hot!

Brentons new toy.

We were starting to have a few problems with the Bundy so we upgraded, trying to get things done in this town is a joke though, usually have to wait 2-3 weeks to get the car looked at anywhere and they charge through the roof!! Roughly $160 an hour and that's only for labour!

Even buying a pair of work pants and shoes for me was hard, there is only Kmart to go to and they didn't have my size so I had to order them in.

Our pool at the caravan park.

A storm rolling in.

Watching a lightening storm.

Towards the end of our stay in Port Hedland we had a fair few storms roll through, I have never seen so much lightening in all my life and the thunder was so loud it hurt your ears! It was amazing to watch though.

We found this little fella after a storm (well he found us).

We had 2 cyclones approach whilst we were in Port and went to yellow alert both times, we tied down the caravan and went to stay with friends.

They never hit directly but we had plenty of rain and wind.

A random chicken just wandering about after the storm.

Another storm rolling in  a few days before we left.

We stayed in Port well over two months but were so ready to leave by the end of it, all people do here is work, drink and sometimes sleep.

We can recommend the Walkabout pub for a good meal, we also ate at the esplanade bit it's really over priced, also recommend NOT going to Bruno's pizza, the guys who run it are just plain rude (I even had a run in with one, after I got my pizza of course) and the pizza is not even that good.

We were in a great spot at Cooke Point Caravan park and they have really good facilities, we also made a lot of friends at the park and were sad to say good-bye (to them but not to Port).

I think that's about all we have to say about Port Hedland.....