They must have been thinking “a month in the Kimberley
walking (and some being carried) in the heat to an outrageous amount of gorges,
then to the beach for some R & R in Broome, now we find ourselves having to
walk around the red dirt again!!! I don’t think so, let’s blow up and make life
hell for them………”
We weren’t sure what to expect in Tom Price, I have had a
poo load of failed deliveries to customers in this town so the jury was out.
The Pilbara is certainly very scenic, rich in colour and
very rich in mineral deposit. We made camp and decided to drive up the highest
peak in WA called Mt Nameless. Low range needed, a little hairy but pretty
average hill 4wd’ing. The views were amazing from up there, and we had a great
view of the mine from 1128m in the air. This was pretty high and easy to drive
up, but I couldn’t help think that in the tour de france one stage has 2 x
2000m climbs, so those boys are certainly the best athletes going around, juice
or no juice….
A little warmer here that the National Park , and has all the basics. A
purpose built mining town to serve the employees named after the Yankee dude
that found all of the ore deposits and made it all happen.
We were able to get on to one of the local mine site tours
which the boys loved, and they were exceptionally well behaved. It’s amazing
what big diggers and lots of dirt can do for a young boys imagination. Just
seeing their eyes light up at the trucks and hoppers was worth the entry price
alone.
An interesting stat that resinated with me - they push 6
trains out of there each day, 234 carriages 2.4klm long. The sell price to
China for each train load is $3.5m – they do 6 per day – 365 days per year and
there is apparently 80 years of ore here…..and this is just one mine!! $21m
revenue per day wouldn’t be too bad if you could get it…..This mine alone turns
over $7.7b p/a.
The trucks use 20L of diesel per ONE klm!!!! The tyres are
$80k each!!! Strangely the drivers get $100k p/a, all this talk about drivers
getting squillions might be a myth…Train driving is where the coin is, senior
drivers are on 250k+.
The size of this operation is mind blowing and we were
certainly glad we did it, as you should and will be when you get here.
Rio Tinto own the largest privately owned and operated
railway in the world, 450 odd klms of it between all of the mines in the
Pilbara to the ports of Karratha and Dampier. They allow the public to use the
rail access road that runs alongside it to get from Tom Price to Karratha for
two reasons, it is 3 hours quicker than the normal unsealed road, and it gives
people the opportunity to witness the scale of what happens out here. A 20
minute safety video and a gold coin donation to the Royal Flying Doctors and
you are on board. We do this tomorrow and hopefully we can get beside one of
the big locomotives and get some photos.
Great stuff and worth the visit if you haven’t seen this
sort of thing before.
Karratha – Exmouth – Ningaloo – next ports of call….
Jase.....
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