After talking to a few people in Karijini we were pretty much told don’t bother going to Karratha there’s nothing there and it’s too expensive, we decided not to take their advice and headed there anyway. We had to go nearly all the way to Port Headland and then head down again, RIO Tinto have a road going to Karratha, it’s a (red dirt) service road for their train line but you need to sit a 20 minute induction course to use their road, with us trying to avoid the red dirt roads the long way it was.
There’s not much on the way to look at just a few cows dead on the side of the road all puffed up looking like their about to explode and a lot of road trains some with up to 5 trailers on the back.
Arriving in Karratha we decided it wasn’t as bad as we were expecting there’s a lot of new building going on and the caravan parks were the same as everywhere else, after getting cleaned up (there’s nothing nicer than a shower after a few days in the wild) we tracked down a pub to watch the Bombers beat St Kilda.
As Chris was waiting at the bar he got talking to the barman and it turns out his from Noosa and used to work at Zackary’s, then about 1\2 an hour later a young guy comes up to us and says “don’t I know you didn’t you used to coach me in footy back in Noosa “he’s just moved here with his girlfriend to work for a while, it’s a small world. (the young guy was Jack Troddel)
We found out the local footy started at 6.30 because its to hot to play any earlier so of course we had to go and check it out, it was the two Karratha teams playing the Falcons beat the Kats that’s about all I have to say about that, we stood watching the footy in a tiny little roped off area where you could buy a beer I think there was about 100 people in this little area.
The next day we drove out to Dampier for a look, on the way we passed a statue of the Pilbara Wanderer, Red Dog the northwests favorite canine. Dampier is named after the English explorer William Dampier, he arrived in WA in early 1688 after a violent storm had blown him and his ship the Cygnet on to the coast where he found shelter to repair his damaged ship.
Dampier was built by Hemersley Iron in 1965 and is now one of the largest tonnage shipping ports in the world, there not a lot out there, a few beaches with lots of rocks and a pub, and of course a very big ship loader and a gas plant.
We then traveled out to Point Samson for a look it’s a nice quiet little town with a few nice beaches the sand in the Pilbara is more of a reddish brown colour than white and there’s lots of jagged rocks at low tide.
The next day we decided to go bush again, so we headed about 20 kms north to Cleaverville, we found ourselves a nice secluded spot right on the beach and settled down for some peace and quite, we had a nice relaxing day, I did a bit of exploring among the rocks and found the skeleton of a turtle, he must of come in on a high tide and got stuck when the tide went out, when I turned his shell over there was his little head tucked away inside poor little thing.
Next stop, Port Headland.
PS: When traveling in the Pilbra leave all your white clothes at home.
CameronCorner 