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| ready for the Rio Tinto | mine tour |
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| old digger |
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| us drag racing the truck |
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Yesterday we were up and packed up early, said happy birthday to Jasmine and headed into Tom Price, this time early enough to make the mine tour. It was interesting, but a bit of a blur of numbers and statistics – the numbers are just so huge, in that they dig huge amounts of iron ore out of the ground each year, sell it for huge amounts of money, employ huge numbers of people, and all of the machinery is monster size, the truck wheels nearly come up to the roof of the coach we were in and they use a forklift to change the tyres (which takes 45 mins each tyre). It was fun driving along next to the trucks but otherwise I found it a bit horrifying to see what has happened to the mountain, and in fact the surrounding mountains (it went back much further than I realised), in that it used to be 100m taller than it now is. Having said that, it’s not a bad little town, Tom Price, full of families, 2 primary schools and a high school, drive in movie theatre, brand new swimming pool, Coles supermarket, Coles Liquorland and Coles servo - Rio Tinto isn’t the only company with a monopoly here! After we’d had lunch in the park, filled up with fuel and water, done a bit more shopping and bought some motivation from the town bakery in the form of a Pan au Chocolat the size of Conor’s face, custard tart, apple pie and chocolate brownie, and talked the kids into climbing up Mt Nameless, otherwise known as Jundrunmunhna. It was interesting to read a quote the other day in the Karajini NP visitor’s centre from a local indigenous person, questioning why the Europeans called it Mt Nameless, as it has had a perfectly good name for thousands of years….. Anyway the boys were absolute troopers and we very nearly made it to the top before stopping for the huge afternoon tea and enjoying the view. Of course the camera battery was flat so we have no proof…. It took us 55 minutes to get up, and 40 to get down as it was pretty steep. By this time it was getting kind of late so we drove only about 20ks out of town and camped by the roadside – all on our own which we haven’t had for a while. It was a nice spot though and it was nice to be able to light a fire and cook our dinner on it – in fact I was very impressed that we had a three course meal! Garlic bread, fried rice and yoghurt with biscuits crumbled on top, fantastic.
It was quite cool at night, I guess Tom Price is quite high up, and cool again in the morning when we got up, so it was nice to light another fire and we even made French toast on the grill Jenny and Peter gave us (which is going great by the way). It was also nice not to have to rush, as we knew it wasn’t a very long drive today. It turned out to take longer than we thought though, as it was dirt and corrugated the whole way, so it was kind of slow. The scenery was stunning though, past beautiful mountains and the road even wound through a gorge at one stage, not very deep but still beautiful cliffs up each side and a narrow road. A nice photo opportunity was our first Sturt Desert Peas growing by the side of the road along a lot of the way, the red eyed version. I’m sure that I saw some when driving in Cape Range NP at Ningaloo although we didn’t stop to check, so having seen them for real today feels like we’re really near the desert!
We were pretty tired of driving by the time we got to Millstream-Chichester NP for a late lunch, but happy that we could than relax for the afternoon, what was left of it. We’re at Crossing Pool campground which is right on the river, next to lovely white barked snappy gum trees (which makes me want to sing the Snappy Tom ad every time I hear the name) and some of the local palms, and creepers etc. It’s nice to be amongst some taller trees again, the literature keeps calling this place an ‘oasis’ in the surrounds and I can see why, because it’s really quite green. There’s still red dust everywhere of course, and while I said the other day that it was still new and cool, now I’m starting to get sick of it, because our hands, feet and clothes are always covered it in and feel filthy. The tent is covered in it, the car, the trailer, it’s even getting inside the car because it’s on us, just everywhere. I feel like even when we finally get to wash our clothes in Port Headland it will just cover them again! Still, can’t complain when you’re somewhere like this…. And speaking of a wash, we’re very overdue. We’re really stretching out the clothes now, actually mainly just the socks and undies since we wear outside clothes for days and days but try and keep the bits underneath kind of clean. I think it will have been 10 days between washing machines and showers by the time we get to Port Headland, which I think is the longest so far. Of course we’ve had swims in the sea and in the gorge pool at Karajini in that time, but still, it’s overdue J. The local ranger has donated a canoe to this campground, even with some adult and child life jackets, and for a gold coin donation you can take it for a spin down the river, which is what we did this afternoon. It felt very lazy, and was a great way to relax after the drive. Now the boys are making spears out of dead palm fronds while there’s still a bit of daylight left.
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| sturt desert peas! |
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| red dust all over the car |
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