Monday, 22 April 2013

Mount Tom Price and Karijini

It's a bit of a drive out to Tom Price but then again it's a bit of a long drive to anywhere out in these parts. But I did do my bit to cut 50 klicks off the trip from Coral Bay to Tom Price by taking a dusty detour around the back and therefore avoiding Paraburdoo, not that it impressed Amanda much as everything got covered in red dust and it was a little bumpy in parts. Still it was an adventure and the scenery was awesome, lot's of hills made out of iron covered in red dust.
Above is a picture of my feet and Mount Nameless in the background. As you can see it is fairly steep, Amanda will tell you all about when we return because her car drove up almost to the top although her eyes were closed for some of the descent! Fun, adventure and good view from up there.
Tom Price is quite an oasis, very green and full of young people, I think I was the oldest person there. About 800 people of the 2,500 local population work at the Rio Tinto mine. There are about 500 FIFO's and it has one pub and one petrol station. So in effect the town has one iron ore mine and two gold mines. 

Callam made some friends in the camp groung. We had been feeding Galahs and Corellas until I saw a sign saying not to feed them. Apparently they are a real pest around town and that have expulsion weeks where they let off sirens to get rid of them. Anyway they were fun for a while.



We all went down to the mine on a tour. Here we are nice and clean before the tour.
The tour itself was very informative, of course, so much so we only remember snippets. Tom Price was an American who took a helicopter ride out here and said "Wow, look at all that black stuff sticking out that mountain...it's pure iron." When he told the Australian government they said "Yeah, so what mate. It's miles from bloody anywhere you can go and scrape it off the mountain." Tom Price died before the mining started in the mid sixties, we named the mountain after him but not a nearby mountain called Mount Nameless. Rio Tinto owns the mine and the railway that runs 236 wagons of iron ore rock and fininings out to Dampier each day. Rio Tinto don't like Twiggy Fortescue so they won't let him use the railway so they have sole use of it. Twiggy has loads of four wagon road trains that run up and down the road from his nearby mines to Dampier every day. It's very hot and dusty at the mine and there is quite a bit of very heavy and big machinery. Look at these pics.

Finn and Cal sizing up an old Tonka.



The boy and girls that drive the big trucks like to beep their horns long, hard and often as they pass.

The red dust gets everywhere and it wise not to lean against anything. Look at Marley's leg.

They dig big holes up here as you can imagine.

As impressive as the mine was for all the human ingenuity that goes into its workings there was also the natural beauty of Karijini National Park to visit as well. The park is the second largest national park in WA and the little part of it that we decided to visit was the Dales Gorge area. It had an excellent visitors centre which is that well designed that it blends into the environment, we only found it because Finn hit it with his head whilst searching for somewhere to pee. From the outside it looks like a huge rusting ships hull, on the inside it is full of really interesting stuff. The video commentaries by the local indigenous people are great as are the stories that that explain the lanscape and some of the star constellations. 

It was nice in the aircon of the visitors centre but we had a trek to do. "Not far" I said "Quick walk and a swim and back for a picnic at another swimming hole." 2 and half hours and five 5km later we had walked along the top of the gorge, clambered down a cliff, swam in the beautiful circular pool and trekked down the bottom of the gorge and had a swim at Fortescue falls. There was a twisted ankle, a bloodied shin, an unplanned slip and swim and some hot faces but by crikey it was a good adventure.
Ahhhh, the swim after the long climb down. 

It's lovely Dad, but it's hot.

Are we there yet?

Just prior to our second swim.

Macho macho men.


The kids decided that this pool would look good in our back yard, scaled down perhaps.

Surely this has to be one of the most beautiful places in the world.








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