The Pilbara

Posted by efloow on September 22, 2015 in Uncategorized | 4 Comments

September 21-22

From Broome we move to the next phase of the trip to the northwest corner. We started our journey along the Great Northern Highway with the stunning Eighty Mile Beach to the north and the Great Sandy Dessert to the south. It was over 500 km, or 4.5 hours of flat, featureless semi arid desert, in 40 degrees to get to our first stop Pardoo Station.

Pardoo was a great place to spend two nights. It is beautiful barren country side, full of bird life, and we spent our day exploring and fishing the creeks. As usual, despite its reputation as an excellent fishing spot, Alex was the only person catching an edible fish. The rest of us caught an array of as yet unidentifiable little things, but we had fun trying!

 

After Pardoo we travelling the next 500km to Karijini National Park, stopping off at Port Hedland for supplies, an impromptu visit to the barber for Alex (he has mutinied against my efforts), and lunch.

Port Hedland is the mining Port for BHP Billiton, where iron ore gets shipped to overseas. It looks and feels like a remote, dusty, spread out mining town where you stand out if you are not wearing something with “high vis” yellow or orange! We had our first encounter with the impressive 2.5 km long trains full of iron ore going to the docks, and marvelled at the massive salt piles.

Lunch was at Jules (from Kimberly Costal Camp) award winning cafe, the Silver Star. The cafe is a converted rail carriage and we all left over fed and ready for a nap. Not a four and a half hour drive!

The drive to Karijini was a good way to celebrate 3 months on the road. Heading south out of Port Hedlad there must have been at least 10 road trains for every car. They are all travelling to the myriad of iron ore mines that are the Pilbara. It was a good thing the roads are long, flat and straight or it could of been a slow tedious drive rather than a drive filled with the exhilaration of overtaking these monsters.

A new feature to the already spectacular scenery as we headed inland towards Karijini were the patches of brilliant colour that are the wildflowers of Western Australia. The flashes of pinks, yellows, reds and whites are eye catching. September is the end of wildflower season up here, but it seems we are fortunate that they are still everywhere due to late rains this year.