Jun 2008

We had waited as long as we could. There had been no morning call from Glen and Sandy, fair enough; the two hour flight can drain even the hardiest of travellers, but no. Corinne’s phone had been on the fritz, they had actually spent the morning hiring a scooter rather than having to wait for us. They had already eaten and checked the CBD area out. We caught up for the hovercraft tour.

The mouth of the Fitzroy River was once here in Broome, passing through the eons old iron ore it deposited minerals over the Jurassic footprints pressed into peat in the land Gowanda and turning the bay pink.

We were on the smaller of the two oldest, maybe the only commercially operated hovercraft in the southern biosphere, our mighty captain made jokes about the lack of seatbelts and flipping over, no one laughed, maybe because of the background noise but probably because he probably wasn’t joking. He had a skipper’s ticket and a hovercraft licence, but seemed just as incompetent as the rest of us, which was strangely reassuring. In convoy we travelled across Roebuck Bay to an innocuous sandstone shore to see nothing spectacular and to some, nothing interesting.

Across the limestone flats two metres apart were circular shallow pools or slightly raised mounds, these were where dinosaurs had compressed the soft soil under each 15 ton step, these prints buried under mud and pressed ‘till it became solid. Uncovered in time the softer sandstone had eroded away leaving the hardened footprint providing a cap to protect the soft limestone underneath so that these eventually became mounds as surrounding unprotected stone was washed away. The technical term provided was ‘cowpats’, even these eventually get top heavy and break off leaving small pools (see picture above showing people standing in each foot print). A passer by would step past, never knowing what had formed the pools or mounds. There were obviously fossilised roots that had turned to iron in the immediate area but these were not mentioned. This is, according to our guide, one of the richest deposits of prints in the world, also at this area was the nearby cliff showing the sedimentary layer below a layer of pure iron conglomerate deposited by the ancient Fitzroy, and on top is the current loam. Yes we were interested, but most weren’t so we rounded up and herded back into to carriers for feed and watering.

The pilot went through some rudimentary manoeuvres say ‘you couldn’t do this in a 4WD’ after each one. It was very tempting to ask him to put it into a spin for a G force experience because I know any 4WD can do these, but before we could ask he said rapid turns may break the surface tension and the craft may sink or flip or some other nonsense, so we thought it best not to ask.

After a little scouting around they found a place to land and set up picnic tables and savoury snacks, Glen and Sandy were wisely into the BYO drinks before noticed the wet sand beneath our feet alive with all manner of creepy crawlies and the more we looked the more seemed to appear, each leaving its own tiny trail to be buried by the lightest breeze metres from trails set in stone that had survived a thousand cyclones. Best not to look too hard at the sand so we watched the sunset turn the sand gold and form a stairway to the setting sun as we drank.

Awoke early and had a quick breaky and on to Broome. Arrived mid morning and checked out the tourist office. Time now to head in to town and try and find Terry's office and surprise him. Arrived mid morning and checked out the tourist office. Then went to surprise Terry, and boy was he surprised, but so were we, as his birthday isnt till 22nd July not June!

Oh well, went and had a well earned shower at Terry and Angela's fab CBD house, and did a much needed load of washing!

Feeling much better, we loaded up the dogs into their F250 and trundled down to Gnatheaueme Point with champers and nibblies and watched the sun set. What a great start to our time in Broome!

Back to pick Glen & Sandy up from the airport. Glen looking resplendent in finest Mandurah casual wear, Sandy squinting through puffy eyes into the early afternoon light Headed straight out to dinner at the Sunset Bar @ Cable Beach Hotel. We had a great night eating and drinking and were one of the last ones to leave. Dropped Glen & Sandy back to their hotel - the stunning Rendezvous Sanctuary Resort. They checked in, and we raided our trusty have-with-you-any-where-bar-fridge and bought in a couple of ice cold bottles of champers. Stayed till I couldn’t hold my eyes open and wearily headed back to our comfy bed at Terry and Ange's for some much needed kip.

Today we visited PH and had a drive around the changes to the old townsite. BHP are the main sponsors of a fabulous world class Art Gallery. Their latest Aboriginal Art Exhibition attracted buyers from Melbourne and Sydney! Most of the pieces were sold! An excellent setup!

They also had the Dalgety Homestead dating to 1901 now running as a museum. The Hedland Hotel has been purchased by someone and turned into housing quarters, thus leaving just one pub left in PH! This was purchased about 3 years ago for 1.5m and is now on the market for 10m! Turnover is a massive $95k/wk! That’s a hell of a lot of alchopoptax!

this artwork is called Cyclone. Its a Hills Hoist wraped around a post!

On the way out of PH we dropped in for a final bye to Gav who was on duty. We had a final look over the Met Office, which is due to be replaced next year with a new building. Don’t know why, as the tec has left and wont be replaced (Steve’s old job) and Gav isn’t being replaced when he goes, so it will be a 1 x bum station – why bother with a new office!?!

look had and you'll see the workers hard hats on top of each termite mound - approx 30kms out of Hedland - towards Goldsworthy

Took off towards Broome and past not the one usual train line, but now three! Boy they just cant build it fast enough round here. There is donga city after donga city as there just aren’t any houses to put the people in!

Went up to Cape Keraudren to go and spend the night, but there were about 5 NO DOGS signs plastered at the entrance of the road, so we thought we’d head on to Eighty Mile Beach and try our luck there. There was a sign on the highway saying no free camping and no dogs allowed. It appears that we’re throughted at every turn! Headed to Point Smith. Appears they accept dogs there, but road is just too corregated go, so camped at the Park just north of there - now just 150kms from Broome.

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.

It was dark when we arrived at Onslow so we missed the tedious road on the way in but couldn’t avoid it on the drive back to the highway in the morning. When a single tree becomes a tourist stop then you’re suffering sensory deprivation. Thought I should mention it.

We stopped a Fortescue River for our lunch break, this is where I (Steve) walked a dog to the top of a hill where it fell off to it’s death (many years ago), there were no witness so it was a accident, Corinne didn’t go for a walk with me to the cliff, neither did Midget.

Our next stop was Karratha Shopping Centre. We used to drive 100s of km to bask in the air conditioned luxury of this retail heaven in the old days, it hasn’t changed at all and felt just a little mediocre now that we’re sophisticated Mandurians. Had to look at the new Dampier, the traffic is non stop to the Burrup and the whole area has sprouted pipes, tanks and frames. It’s all brutally magnificent.

At only fifty kms to Point Samson for that night’s restaurant meal we made for Trawlers restaurant. There were lots of nooks to hide away from the camping Nazis but we couldn’t be bothered finding them so slept in the car park overlooking the ocean and the queued ships.