Port Hedland
After 5 nights in Eighty Mile Beach we drove another 250km down the coast to Port Hedland. We had been told on the road to make sure we stopped in and had a look around Port Hedland and wow we are glad we did. We stopped in the free camp which has been set up at the Port Hedland Turf Club. You are allowed to stay here for 72 hours if you a fully self contained, which we are. There is a toilet and dump point about 100m from the camp site. We arrived around 11.30 in the morning and there were already around 50 or so caravans and by later in the day there would have been around 100 vans – Amazing really. When you drive into Port Hedland we were stunned by the huge trains running on numerous lines towards the massive Port. Each train was about 3km long – a really amazing site. We were also amazed by all the mining infrastructure around the place and most of all we were in awe of how huge the massive ore ships were. Neither of us had ever seen such big ships before and the fact that you could walk to the top of the Main Street and watch these massive ships being bought into the harbour by 4-5 tug boats was just amazing to watch. We spent a good few hours just standing and watching these massive ships that were about the size of 5 Olympic swimming pools cruising past – totally awesome. It’s just so hard to comprehend there size until you are standing watching them, hard to believe that such a huge thing can actually float. We did a twilight industry tour as the harbour cruise was unavailable whilst we were there due to the wharf being repaired. The tour we did though was very interesting as they took us around the harbour and explained how the ore train carriages are connected by a rotating pin and are driven through a huge shed that picks up 3 carriages at a time and rotates it to empty it into a pit beneath and then conveyored into heaps that eventually end up at the Port and onto a ship. Apparently it takes three of these huge trains to fill one ship – Now that’s a lot of ore. The whole place is just amazing as half the iron ore mined in WA goes through this massive port. A really great place to call in for a few days and be amazed by how finally tuned the mining operation is – Big Business !!!
