Karratha, Dampier and a bit further

Wednesday, 13 June 2012

We were on the road again today heading to Roebourne, Karratha and Dampier. Roebourne caravan park was the only park with vacancies as all the parks in Karratha and Dampier are filled with mining industry workers. Roebourne has many old buildings including the Old Gaol which now days houses the Visitors Centre.

Old Building at Cossack, WA

Cossack is also another very old town in this area with a lot of old buildings but it is almost a ghost town with only the tourist trade to keep it going.

Dampier is named after William Dampier, explorer, who was one of the first Europeans to visit Australia. The town is best known for it's development by Pilbara Mining Company in the 1960's as an iron ore loading facility. Now days it is also known for it's salt production facility and Woodside Liquid Gas production plant. The North West Shelf Project Visitor's Centre provided us with a great overview of Australia's largest liquefied natural gas production plant.

Liquid Gas plant, Dampier, WA

"Red Dog", Dampier, WA

Dampier was also the home area for "Red Dog", a dog well known in this area in the 1970's and about which a movie was recently made. A statue at the entrance to town commemorates the bond between this dog and his master.


We also took a bus tour of the Rio Tinto iron ore facility which provided great information about the mining industry.

Iron ore train, Karratha, WA

Iron ore loading facility, Karratha, WA

Sunday, 17 June 2012

Exmouth was our destination today. Along the way, known as the "Wool wagon Pathway" we encountered the first sheep since leaving South Australia. Exmouth is on a peninsular, mostly national park land and has many great beaches and gorges to view and explore.

We drove to Charles Knife Road Canyon where you can look down into the canyon below. After lunch at Pebble Beach, so named because it consists of millions of pebbles of varying colours and shapes, we drove through Shot hole Canyon and viewed the towering cliffs around us. This canyon was named because of the shot holes left there after explosions during oil searches in the 1950's. The layers of rock changed from pale cream to yellow and then to dark reds and browns. We met a couple of geologists who had found a piece of rock with sea shells embedded between the layers. This rock layer was hundreds of feet below the rim of the gorge, a remainder of the inland sea which once covered much of the land.

Charles Knife Canyon, near Exmouth, WA

Yardie Creek Gorge, near Exmouth, WA

Yardie Creek Gorge was also very pretty. Here we saw, kangaroos and Black Faced Rock Wallabies. The wallabies are very hard to see as they live on ledges in the rocks and their colouring is very similar to that of the rocks.

Smallest Airline terminal, near Exmouth, WA

The highlight of the stay was our trip on a glass bottomed boat to the Ningaloo Reef to view the coral and beautiful fish. We also were able to snorkel around the boat for the best part of an hour. We also saw large turtles in the water and fortunately no sharks. The Ningaloo Reef is breathtakingly beautiful.


Other interesting sites around Exmouth are the "Mildura" shipwreck, a cattle ship which sank near the coast in 1907, and the E H Holt Communications Base, set up by the US government during the 'cold war' in the 1960's to provide communication with submarines all around the globe, even underwater. The base is still guarded by the Australian Federal Police.