The alarm woke us at 4:45am to remind us its ANZAC Day and Bills Birthday, (Happy Birthday Bill) the Port Hedland dawn service was around an 8k ride for us campers with a tent bolted to our vehicles roof. With the moon only a couple of days short of full and the WA landscape so flat we set out ridding into the moon light near its brightest, it looked very similar to when a full moon rises, large and bright with a tinge of yellow or orange.
A trip difficult in the dark with half the towns population heading to the service, all driving Toyota 4WDs with company logos of all sorts. We got the dress code horribly wrong and stood out like tourists with our lack of fluro yellow or orange, maybe it was the work clothing that coloured the perfect moon this morning?
The large sandstone block Esplanade Hotel and the Iron Ore Shipping Port was the backdrop for a recently completed RSL Memorial not like the Cenotaph we are used to in the East with a statue but good in its design with stone walls listing WW1, WW2, Korea, Borneo, Malaya, and Vietnam in large writing.
Around 500 people gathered around the memorial as proceedings got under way, we got the standard church talk, I’m still not sure what the church has to do with ANZAC day but they keep turning up as I do.
A few readings and the soothing sound of the Last Post blasted out the speakers to fill the void left by the silence of the gathered crowd paying their respects. Then we got something I had never heard before at a dawn service, The New Zealand national anthem, it was great and should be played at all dawn services. Next up was Advance Australia Fair, again a first for a dawn service we had been to, we got the full version even the verse no one knows!
Shelly later told me she thought the last post was the best version she’d heard, I waited a little bit before I told her it was a recording (blonde moment #1178)
By this time the sun had lit up the town of Port Headland and by the time we began our ride home along the water the sun was a full fire ball rising above the glassy water stretching out to Cooke Point and our home for the next couple of days.
We showered up, I put the Bombers jumper on and had breakfast, then a quick chat to old mate and his miss’s from Goulburn that we have seen in most places for the last few weeks. I called Jezza Watts to say g’day and see if we would catch up at a local pub to watch the Bombers. Jezza moved from Noosa to Port Hedland 12 months ago in his job with Reece Plumbing and he’s in the Bombers circle of trust. Jezz told me how good the local pubs were so we decided we would catch up tomorrow.
I ripped the TV out and set the scan for the local channels… NOTHING!!!
Sitting in the hot sun with no great options when a guy in the park dropped in when wandering by and noticed me trying to fix the TV, he had a satellite dish and was getting channels from Brisbane and Perth but not the footy. He said he was heading to the Pier Hotel and offered for us to join him and his Collingwood wife. We decided we would head to the local around 2ks down the road and save riding to far whilst drinking.
We arrived to find only a few in the bar a good size flat screen with a fuzzy at best picture with the pre match on. I ordered the beers and the young barman to volume-ise the TV. We pulled up a couple of stools and a table to observe a minutes silence and the always amazing Last Post.
Before the ball was bounced the guy, his Magpie wife and 2 young kids walked in “what happened to the Pier Hotel mate?” I asked, he raised a brow “shit pub with SKIMPIES not great for the wife and kids” he said as a large smirk came across his face. As he came past us on his return from the bar he stopped to ask me “who will kick the first goal” Not being a punter I hadn’t given a thought to this point. I watched the camera smoothly roll past every player as I ponderd an answer.
“David Zaharakis” The Magpies husband nodded his head and moved on.
As the game got underway 8 younger guys (30’s) wandered in and ordered cans of rum and coke, bourbon and coke and made more noise than the 93,000 at the G before the juke box burst into song to piss everyone off watching the footy, all 4 of us!
When number 11 for the Bombers slotted though the first major I noticed the Magpies man going off and thumping the table to his wife’s disgust, being from Perth I knew he was an Eagles man, soon after he appeared “what are you guys drinking? its my shout” I said we are ok but thanks. He insisted “I want to buy you a drink, without you I would never have backed Zaharakis for the first goal, I didn’t even know who he was”
We should have accepted the offer because the next drink I got was the warmest beer ever served from a tap! We stuck it out to half time before riding home to watch the remainder on the iPad, small picture but clear and we could hear the commentary. If anyone missed it the Bombers cruised home to make it 5 from 5, things are going ok at Windy Hill unless your listening to Caro!
As you would have expected every day since leaving Kalgoorlie has been in the 30’s with reasonable humidity, ANZAC Day in Port Hedland was HOT around 38 with high humidity the highest we had encounter since coming to WA 12 months ago. To top this off the night didn’t cool off and it was dead still, in our Penthouse we can open windows on all 4 sides to allow it to cool us, no good on this night! The most uncomfortable night I have spent in many years. HOT & HUMID!
We had planed on staying in Port Hedland so I could play footy on Saturday Night, I had trained with the Karratha Falcons and they would be playing in South Hedland and offered me a game after seeing my blistering pace on the track. But the HOT night and the lack of things to do around Hedland had us thinking we would head to the Eighty Mile beach to the north for some camping in the wild.
We packed up and drove only a couple of blocks to 41 Moore Street, Port Hedland where Shell lived in 1971c, we took a photo of her out the front to match the one that Rob tells was taken out the back of 41 Moore St with her sister Sam.
We then drove the 10ks to South Hedland in search of a TV antenna for the next Bombers game.
I stopped just short of town to get a quick snap of the blue water tower bearing the towns name like those in the movies, before taking a short cut around the back of the water tower to the town center. As we drove under the water tower I noticed a Reece plumbing ute with a guy on the back, hard to believe but Jezza turned around to see me giving him a wave from behind our bug stained windscreen. We spent 15 minutes chatting to Jezza and Mrs Jezza about life in the Pilbra before heading to the local shopping center to stock on supplies for the wild (and the TV antenna).
We headed North past Port Haven a BHP accommodation camp that I once stayed at whilst working, towards Pardo and the Eighty Mile Beach. After the dead calm and humidity of last night the weather was turning for the worst when we arrived at the Pardo Roadhouse and our turnoff for the beach the wind was whipping up the red dirt to create a red canvas reaching up the sky, we filled our 165 liter tank @ $1:98 per liter as an old Grey Nomad couple sat in the open air bar of the roadhouse enjoying an Emu beer stared out at me.
No camping in the wild for us tonight we are heading north for Broome.
CameronCorner 