Woodies on tour!: Port Hedland, Point Samson and Karratha

We left Barn Hill earlier than we would normally leave a caravan park as we had a long way to go. We were heading for Port Hedland and the Golf Club, they take caravans for $30 a night better than paying $54 at the Big4 caravan park.

It seemed to take us a long time but we did tow 489kms... The lady in the Golf club was very pleasant when we asked if we could stay for two nights. She gave us a key for the back door that enabled us to use the shower and toilet area of the club. We soon had neighbours and the gentleman told us about the tour he was going on the next day, it was the tour Helen had heard about that takes tours on a coach around the very famous BHP Billiton Iron Ore wharf facility. Helen immediately telephone the Information Centre in Port Hedland and booked both of us on the tour. Our next step was to contact Jonathan and ask where we could find him! Lo and behold he was only a few kilometres away. Richard went to collect him and we all had a great meal in the caravan, courtesy of Mrs Helen Wood. It was so silly of us not to take a family pic...but we didn't!! Richard had to take Jon back to his motel type room quite early but thank goodness we will see him again tomorrow.
The next morning we were up and about using the Golf Club facilities, then had a trip into South Hedland shopping mall. We wanted to buy some reasonably priced snorkelling equipment that a friend suggested we did before getting to the Ningaloo reef.. We found Kmart but nothing to be had!! We had to head into Port Hedland for our tour, we were looking forward to this. The area around the tourist information centre was full of 4wd Utes and 4wd Utes with caravans still hitched up... Port Hedland is not RV friendly and it showed as people were trying to park up to leave their rigs and obviously they were booked on the tour!

Our coach trip

We were escorted to our bus and took our seats, our tour guides were two gentlemen ex bus drivers of BHP who now do the tour around this massive site. We were given so much information about how much Iron Ore is produced and shipped by this company but now most of the gigantic equipment is all controlled from the big city of Perth, quite incredible to say the least!! One of the pieces of information we were told that if BHP Billiton didn't like the look of the ship they would reject and pass it on to Fortesque Metals, then Gina Reinhart company then the next company in the pecking order, we thought this comment was a little sensational!!
We decided to check out the Esplanade Hotel for maybe eating here tonight. What a beautiful restored building, so sad that the staff and general malaise of the staff wasn't up to our standard, we only asked to see the menu!!

This evening we had to cook once again and it was another lovely dinner and evening with Jonathan in the caravan. So bad of us not to take photographs!!
Jonathan was flying out early in the morning and so were we...

We were up again in reasonable time and off to stay in a Caravan Park at Point Samson near Karratha. What a great journey we had. It took longer than we anticipated as we could hear lots of chat on the 2way radio as we eventually found out we were following a wide load. Because it was so wide we were not keen to overtake unlike some other caravanners (stupid) we were quite happy to stay behind them for maybe 70kms and had few chats/banter with the pilots and the driver of this major big rig. We listened on the 2way to the concerns of the main driver about the route through Roebourne and he hoped that there wasn't many vehicles parked in the main through road. Well, needless to say big issues manoeuvring this major rig became quite difficult! The pilot who was at the rear had is job cut out, he was zig zagging the main street...Helen saw a situation and tried to tell them on the 2way but the damage had been done, a mirror smashed off a Ford F250... we had to wait for the owner to arrive, but instead it was a café owner and what a debacle!!
The hauliers/professionals decided to wait at the next large area for the owner to approach them. We said our farewells over the 2 way and wished them luck.

Travelling behind the big rig

Another view of the wide load we were following

Our next stop was at Point Samson caravan park where we will meet up with Len and Janice... It is a really lovely park with the most amazing concrete spots, it looks like it was really planned out for a caravan park. We had a lovely happy hour with Jan, Len and Max unfortunately they were leaving the next morning, so we said our goodbyes.

Point Samson Caravan Park

One of our interests in this area is to see the town of Dampier and the sculpture of Red Dog, which is one of our favourite Australian films. We couldn't believe we were actually here in Dampier such a special place.

We later spent sometime up at the North West Gas Shelf, what an unbelievable vista to see and the gas flares off's this place was something we have never experienced before!! Nothing in the UK or NZ could ever compare!!