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.....