Bigger is better

We've decided 'bigger is better' should be the new town catch-cry for Port Hedland. Not expecting much, we came to pick up supplies purely as a stopover on the way to Broome.

Forty kilometres out from town the excitement began as we saw three quad (four-trailer) road trains sitting at a roadside stop. From there, the trip into town was a noisy one as Suzy Q was filled with load 'hooooooooooooonks', which, since the Nullarbor, is the noise we make upon sighting a road train.

For your future travel reference, and in case there are any road-train chasers out there, forget the Nullarbor - the place to see road trains is Port Hedland. Lukas counted 37 quads in about 20 minutes.

And then came the massive trains full of iron ore, looping around the highway as they made their way to port.

These are up to 3.6km long and as hard as we tried we lost track of counting carriages. We later learnt that there's one engine for each 127 carriages which makes the counting a bit easier and also provides some good maths opportunities for the big boys!


The massive white hills of salt on the way into town stand out in their brightness against the stark reddish-brown landscape. It's a bit surreal seeing cranes and bulldozers working on top of mountains of salt, apparently a lot of it is destined for Europe and America where it is used on roads during winter.

And then of course there's the huge ships that come into the port. They're each brought in from anchorage with four tugboats and a pilot captain from the ports authority flown out to them by helicopter.

Now if that last sentence sounded like I knew what I was talking about, it's because we decided to jump on board a port tour with the seafarers centre. We were the only tour-goers and they took us out on the boat that they use to ferry the crew from the ships to the shore -  basically a water taxi / welcome to our country / support away from home kind of service for the sailors. 

It was fascinating to go along for the drop-offs and pick-ups around the port and see the ships being loaded with iron ore while being completely swamped by their massive size up close. And we are now repositories of huge amounts of information about ships and ports - what the colours and markings on the ships mean, how they're loaded, how they turn around, how many crew - you name it, we'll be able to tell you!

 

So Port Hedland proved to be a pleasant (and educational) surprise and just goes to show that there is always adventure to be found.

Oh, and the boys wanted me to include this photo. Not technically in Port Hedland (it was in Wickham, 200kms earlier) but it is definitely big.