After leaving Bullara Station on Thursday we travelled southeast until we hit highway 1 again and then headed back north. We stopped briefly at Fortesque Roadhouse for a bite to eat, where the biggest damn truck I’ve ever seen was. This was a B Quad, four huge trailers being towed by the one prime mover. Unfortunately I didn’t get a photo, as it was pulling out of the roadhouse as we pulled in.

We are right in the Pilbara now and its all red dirt, not like it was further south, this red “dirt” is really not dirt but solid rock, basically its iron ore. In places the ground is more a purple hue than red but its just rock hard, its like the ground is massively rusted. There are huge mines everywhere, I’d suggest the whole north west of WA could supply iron ore to the world for many many years. It’s no wonder there is so much money in WA. We waited at a rail crossing for 10 minutes as an ore train passed us buy with huge trucks of ore being pulled behind 3 engines, just amazing the amount of ore in the one train going to the port on the coast.

We left Fortesque Roadhouse and travelled further north to a free camp off the side of the highway about 20 km’s south of the Robe River Mine and about 200 km’s south of Karratha. The free camp was just a roadside gravel dump but we had a fire and sat out and looked at the night sky and all the stars, just a great sight. We managed in a short time to count 11 satellites that flew over us. In the middle of nowhere without city lights you can easily see the satellites as the traverse across the sky.

Saturday morning it was up and heading north again. We stopped in Karratha for some shopping and lunch. Karratha was a very clean and modern town, not what I expected. From Karratha we travelled a further 50+ km’s to Point Samson where we’ve been the last 2 days. On the way we were stopped for a breathalyser at Roebourne which was rather surprising. Seemed to be more police than people in Roebourne.

Point Samson is a very small holiday town but a bloody big port for all the ships that come in for the iron ore mined in the region. At one stage we counted 11 bulk ore carriers all waiting to dock and load up with ore. Samson Beach was very inviting so we had a quick swim, not used to swimming in June in Australia, feels rather strange.

We also visited Cossack which is a “ghost town” about 20 Km’s from Point Samson on the coast. In the 1870’s it was the centre of pearling in WA, in fact 51 pearl Luggers plied their trade here. Unfortunately cyclones kept hitting the town and in the late 1800’s the pearling shifted to Broome after the beds were fished out and the town damaged. So the history of pearling is not all about Broome. There is not much left of the town but they have restored a few buildings and we had lunch there today. We leave tomorrow for Port Hedland, as the saying goes, “on the road again”.

Stay safe everyone!