Point Samson - Hedland

Had a lovely morning enjoying breakfast at the aptly named Honeymoon Beach in Point Sampson. Quite a windy day and whitecaps clearly visibly right up to the bay.

look closely and you'll see the old bus parked and the viewing platform (a stunning view to be had over the hilltop) on top with shade! These people know how to enjoy themselves!

Carried on to Cossack and enjoyed seeing the many heritage buildings that have been restored since we last visited. They also had a great local heritage section including mention made of the Hall family, synonymous with Mandurah, their son ended up moving to Cossack and starting up a pearling business there.

In Wickham, they are just plain bored these days, so they've resorted to taking up art for a living!

Then drove on to Roebourne to re-visit the old Goal that we enjoyed last time we’re there. Were surprised to see how clean the town was. They’d also had a huge upgrade to their school and had a huge new sunproof outdoor sports complex added (a huge steel cyclone proof structure) which really dominated the landscape. On further enquiry we discovered that the pub had been shut down and the general store also didn’t sell liquor, so Roebourne was now a “dry” town, thus creating a remarkable new possible Tidy Town entrant for 2008 – believe it or not! The old Goal had also been revamped and hugely improved over the last 10 years. The town had also had an upgrade, the creek to the east of the townsite was beautifully landscaped and even had reeds growing in the water (previous it was full of broken glass bottles). The disgusting pub was still open, holding the current owners Garage Sale of their useless old junk. The pub should have been shut down more than 20 years ago for just being a dive, but a couple of breaches of their liquor licence coupled with pressure from the local community finally saw its demise, and the town is so much better for it.

Next we moved on to the ever faithful Whim Creek Pub. We were going to stop there for a pub lunch, but missed the 2pm kitchen close of by 2 minutes! Its incredibly altered by the re-opening of the Whim Creek Nickle Mine right next door. The pub appears to have been bought by the Mine owners (as they were showing as the licensee of the pub) and the fact that a large pool, huge amounts of shade sails and decking and about 50 dongas, now graced the rear entrance of the pub. We were really happy that the pub wasn’t destroyed in cyclone some years back. Its still the corregated iron pub that we know and love, minus a few bites the white ants appear to have taken out of it!

We finally made South Hedland around 4pm. We headed to the never-changed South Hedland Shopping Centre. In spite of the huge mining boom, it still had vacant shops, and millions of security cameras gracing its dusty smelly walls. Some things never change!

We then went to check out our old house. We were saddened to see the lack of garden very evident. It look like an unloved rental house, not as we’d left it when we handed it over to Nick. Driving around the rest of South Hedland, we discovered the huge growth that had taken place in the last 10 years. They had just about completed the last “cell” subdivision, finally completing the crazy plan that the designer (who committed suicide) never actually got to see. We were still even more shocked to hear that a nice house in South Hedland was recently purchased for $750,000!

We then drove down to the Met office, to find Gavin not there, so headed round to his house to find he is retiring in 3 weeks time! Gavin is an institution in Hedland. He has been the OIC at the airport for most of that time, and to hear him retiring, is going to be a huge shock to the many who’d call to get their fishing forecast and the like personally of Gav. He will be missed, but we hope to see them round the traps on the road, as they head off south to check on their house being built in Two Rocks before they go. Had binge drinking levels of alcohol with Gav & Kezza before heading off to find dinner.

We were really shocked at how much building etc is going on around town, and that they had lost two restaurants (well eating houses) in Port Hedland (PH), leaving just the Pier Hotel (meals stop at 8pm) and Chicken Treat and a very dodgy Chinese Restaurant (that the health department should shut down) as being the only eating options in town!

Found a very noisy beachfront site to listen to the 24 hour loading of iron ore from, instead of sleeping. Cant believe the extra 2 loading jetties now installed, and still a que of a dozen or so boats waiting to get in. Gav said they costed the Finucane Island (the Governments preferred option) and annual dredging VS (BHP’s preferred option) to build a 10km long jetty out to sea to land even more boats on. The cost difference more than 5 billion dollars! They just cant load it fast enough! They currently ship 100 million tones of ore a year. They want to increase this to 350 million in the next few years. Gav’s daughter works at BHP and said they are allowed 20 incitements of dust level violations PA with the 100 million tones, and from 1st July this will drop back to 10, so don’t know how they’ll do it, let alone increase production! They’ve planted a few hundred trees in front of their plant between the train line and the houses, in the hope they can reduce the dust that reaches the houses, but they’ve got a few years before they’re useful! They have invested stacks of money on “greening” PH. Shame the shire never got round to that one, but they’d installed some great parks and gardens around the older part of PH.