Moving Southward

Saturday, 2 June 2012

The "Mini Pinnacles"

Beach at Barn Hill Station Stay

Rocks at Barn Hill

Barn Hill Station Stay was our destination today. Situated on Thango Station, a working cattle station of approximately 43,000 acres, stretching 85km along the coast between Broome and Port Hedland and running 8000 head of Brahman cattle, the campsite is a little oasis for travellers. There is a small shop/office and a real "lawn" bowling green, 'well it is grass', and they put on a great 3 course roast dinner on Sunday nights for $15 per head plus entertainment which anyone can join-in with, if they can, and dancing is encouraged. We all took our own chairs, tables, crockery, cutlery and drinks and they served about 150 meals and we all had a great time. The power situation is very limited and you pay for what you get, none of it will run anything with a heating element. We chose no power. The ammenities blocks have no roofs but do have hot water, some provided by black poly pipe lying on the ground during the day. Frogs were common in the toilets and they attract snakes but we were fortunate not to encounter any of the snakes. The view of the beach and ocean is brilliant and the rock formations, known as the "Mini Pinnacles" are great. We tried fishing without success but we did see dolphins swimming in the area so that ended the fishing excercise.

Thursday, 7 June 2012

Cape Keraudren campsite was our destination today after a 12km rough gravel road trip from the main road. There is not much at this campsite, no power, no water and not much beach. The men decided that it wasn't worth trying to fish in this area so we had a couple of quiet days before we moved on to Port Hedland.

Saturday, 9 June 2012

Port Hedland Golf Club was our resting area as all caravan parks were booked out by mine workers or the early travellers. The amenities in the club house were good and we stayed for a few days. Port Hedland isn't the prettiest town in the country but it could be described as interesting. The whole town is covered in a layer of red dust from the iron ore mining operations in the area and as most of the housing is occupied by the mining industry workers who won't be in the town for many years and don't own the houses, many are in need of some tender loving care.

Iron Ore Loading facility

Iron Ore Train

Port Hedland has a large port area for loading ships with iron ore and salt. There is a huge salt production plant where sea water is pumped into large ponds, dried naturally by the sun and then scraped into piles and loaded onto trucks before being loaded onto the ships. The iron ore is transported to the port by very long trains, up to 220 trucks and several kilometres long.

Salt Stock Pile

Iron Ore Ship

Broome, WA

Thursday 24 May to Friday 1 June 2012

We arrived in Broome just before lunch and booked into Tarangau Caravan Park, managed by Bevan & Lorraine Reid from Temora. It was starting to look like a back to Temora week at the park as there were several other couples from Temora there. We had a great night at a sausage sizzle fundraiser for the RFDS at the park BBQ area. One of the park regulars sang and told a few jokes and anyone who could perform was welcome to join in.

On Friday we had a look around the town, lots of pearl shops and many houses built with corrugated iron. Some of these houses are valued at 1 million dollars or more. They are no doubt very nice inside but all look much the same from the outside, with varying shades of grey corrugated iron on the roofs and walls.

Shops in Broome, WA

The old town area is very plain in appearance and obviously designed to withstand the cyclones that hit this area. Broome has a port area with a long jetty where large ships dock to load cattle for the live export market in Asia and the middle east. Broome also has very high tides so the jetties are very long and high. We also took a tour around town on a red double decker bus from which we could see some of the most interesting parts of Broome.
Broome still has an operating open air movie theatre complete with deck chairs.


Cable Beach at sunset, Broome, WA

Cable Beach, Broome, Wa

A visit to the museum proved to be very interesting. We spent a couple of hours there one afternoon and at closing time we hadn't seen it all so they said we were welcome to come back free of charge within the next week to finish the tour. This museum is particularly interesting because of the many different areas that it covers, from the aboriginal history, the pearling industry including the aboriginal and asian workforce, the cyclones, World War II bombings and the cattle industry.

Other interesting sites in the Broome area are Dampier's Chest, the story says William Dampier, the explorer, buried treasure in the area but it has never been found, and the Chinese and Japanese cemeteries. As usual, the chinese ran the market gardens and many of the shops in the town and the japanese and other asians were particularly skilled in the pearling industry.





Cable Beach, possibly Broome's most famous attraction is interesting, with the camel rides and photo opportunities at sunset being the main tourist attraction.