Broome | Horizontal falls

Bar at Cable Beach

Boome is a tourist town, but well disguised, the development is well done, with the resorts hiding amongst the mangroves, so hasn't lost its open space feeling.

The airport is in the middle of town , but not a lot of commercial flights daily.
However if your in the coles carpark you will get a good look at the landing gear of a Qantas 737 occasionally.

The Beaches here are spectacular, well worth a look, there were people swimming, but there are signs warning of the usual, Sharks, Crocs and stingers, so we went fishing instead.

We dined in the pub at Cable beach,  looking over the ocean at sunset, beautiful spot even for a cynic like me!

Cable Beach

There was a beach function being setup, we later came across that evening with the music blasting, and ran into Tod Johnston, who was singing there at the event.

Telethon on the beach at night

He was keen for a yarn, and filled us in on the town.

View from the Bar at Cable beach, everyone taking pictures
 of the sunset while we enjoy a meal and drink at the pub.

Interesting fellow that has been in the entertainment industry for a long time.

We had been on the road for a while so our vehicles were in need of a service,

View South

Had great service from Broom Motors, the local Izuzu dealer who at short notice fitted us in,
They gave us a rundown of the town, fishing and eating spots,

The staff had a couple of Southerners that had relocated here after a short stay, pretty common, and why would you blame them, the weather here is pretty good.

They even shouted us a light beer when we picked up our vehicles, good blokes, highly recommend these fellows, if you need a bit of help mechanically.

The Girls went shopping so we went for a drive along the beach, looking for a fishing spot, but soon run into some pretty heavy sand, the ute started bogging down with nowhere to turn around, right in the middle of the nudist part of the beach.

This was completely by accident, and the sand was getting worse!
Butcho was now very busy driving as we looked like we had underestimated the beach.

I didn't want to walk the two kilometers back nude, so I instructed him to concentrate on the bloody driving and not worry about the scenery!

Don't tell him but the only nudist I saw was an aging male hippy that looked like he was left over from the sixties. Not Pretty!

Butchos skills got us through, saved a 2 Km walk.

So if your heading north on the beach, the sand is a bit soft, you need to leave your vehicle and clothes behind and walk instead!

Horizontal Falls Talbot Bay

The next day was a trip to the horizontal falls with
Horizontal Falls seaplane Adventures

This is a must do, even though you could fly to Bali twice for the same money!
Its a well run show, they pick you up at 5.30 am, and return you home at 5 pm in the evening, so a full adventure packed day.
You fly from Broom Airport straight to the falls and land on the sea near the platform in Talbot bay.

Here you have a full bacon and egg breakfast on the water, so very pleasant.
You have the option of a helicopter ride, and a swim with the sharks.I thought the helicopter ride was a bit more inviting than a swim with the sharks, but again we had a couple of keen intrepid swimmers so put them in.

You get a great look at the falls, and the highlights of Talbot bay, in a 900Hp speed boat, that's a bit of fun in itself.

After this you are picked up by the aircraft and flown over Buccaneer Archipelago, very picturesque, across to One Arm Pt, where you land on a dirt strip.

From here you are picked up by a 4 wheel drive and taken to Cape Leveque, for a great Barramundi lunch.

We then took the scenic route home on the bus, a pretty typical Kimberly dirt road, check out the video! all 95 Kms of it.
The tour is a bit over $800, and extra $100 for the helicopter ride, it seems a lot, but after the day everyone ranked the experience well worth the expense (swim with the sharks is free!)

80 Mile Beach

After a hard slog in the Pilbara, and Pt Hedland, we thought it was time for a bit of a break,
and do some fishing.
 (sounding a bit too much like Russell Coight!)

So we looked for a place on the coast, stumbled across The 80 mile beach caravan park, what a Gem!
The park is on the beach half way between Pt Hedland and Broom, about 10k of dirt rd in off the main highway.




The tide here is about 6 meters, so goes out about 1.6 Km at low tide, the only time the fishing was any good was at high tide.
While we were here, you could go out at midday for a couple of  hours or alternatively midnight, and spend the rest of the day relaxing.

There were plenty of fish being caught, but not by us, we were completely out fished by a 4 year old girl, with her family next to us on the beach, she even caught this small shark!

We went home empty handed, but a fantastic spot, you could easily spend a few days/weeks here.

Contemplating what we were doing wrong!

Port Hedland

Port Hedland isn't a pretty town, but plenty going on as far as Iron ore is concerned.
Stayed at the  Pt Cooke Caravan Park, probably the best spot in the town, on the beach, nice cool breeze off the ocean.

We were lucky enough to park next to Outback Paddy, a travelling Irish musician, who's now been here for 30 years, so I guess hes one of us.

So a sort of Irish Slim Dusty, but not quite as tall!

So he was a bit of fun, a very interesting fellow, loves his new country Australia and the outback, writes and performs his songs around the country.

And and he got me, managed to get $20 out of me for one of his Cds.

Click here for a sample of Outback Paddy's easy listening music.


Click here for further details on a Stockgrumble look at The Pilbara. 

Karajini National Park

Karijini National Park is one of those places that is a must see, you really need to set aside several days to take full advantage of it.

There are plenty of walking tracks, and gorges to explore.

Unfortunately this year has been a very dry with no wet season to speak of, so many of the gorges had limited water.

We once again put our intrepid swimmers into the water, no one drowned, and even though it was a bit cold, all enjoyed the experience. ( you can see them up at the waterfall on the left, this was close as I was allowed to photograph!!

We stopped at Dales gorge and camped for the night, there is no water or electricity in the park, but eco toilets are available, we didn't bother starting a generator up, but you can, you can camp in a designated area if you need to.

 Parks WA have volunteers that man the park, and guide you to areas in the park that are set aside for different types of camping.

We parked near the spinafex and mulga, with no problems, but there are plenty of ants, like most camping in WA. 

Mt Tom Price

Mt Nameless

Stayed at the Mt Tom Price Tourist Park.

Great spot at the foot of Mt Nameless, just south west of the township of Mt Tom Price.

Tom Price is a Rio Tinto town with the Mt Tom Price Iron Ore Mine the only game in town.
Its a great small town , very quite and because its 2400 ft above sea level, temperature is a bit cooler.

There is a 4 wheel drive track up mount Nameless, that is truly a genuine 4 WD track, but worth the effort, however the mountain had a few more name suggestions by the time we finished!
I thought Emma might be a good name!

From the top you get a great overview of the Pilbura, and the mine site, hard to describe, but cameras don't do it justice, you have to see it, the colours are amazing.

This is easily the best part of the road
 up Mt Nameless

Fashion Note:   If you are going to be colour coordinated in the Pilbura you need purple shoes!

Rio Tinto offer a mine tour, which is worth the time, the mine is a series of cuts that are about 16 km long, so more of a hole than a mountain, most of Mt Tom Price is now probably in China holding something up.

However they have also run a conveyor belt about 24 kms to a new cut, so plant life at Tom Price is probably another 30 years.

Butchos legs are tanning up quite nicely?

Pilbara drive to Mt Tom Price

The road from Karratha to Port Headland is pretty quite, but as soon as you head down towards Mt Tom Price, the road trains carting ore become quite frequent.

However the numbers drop off the further you go, so must be used to service smaller mines with no rail access.
They didn't cause us any trouble and all seem speed limited to 90 km, so if your driving a van, just match the pace, seemed to work fine.

However there are quite a lot of dead cows on the side of the road, so probably best to be off the road at night!

The Scenery is spectacular in most of the Pilbara.

Karratha Dampier

The Drive from Exmouth to Karratha,gets quite dry with areas that have recently been burnt very denuded of vegetation giving away to sand.
Pulled up for lunch, bloody hot, a good 38 Deg C

Snapped a picture of an old site van, noticed it has 3 air conditioners on it, so probably gets a bit hot here!

The ranges around Karratha look like someone has dumped massive amounts of rock randomly, but they are completely Natural, and make for a striking landscape.



Karratha is very much a mining and mining infrastructure town ,so the recent downturn has meant a lot of redundancy's
Talking to the locals in the park, the town at its peak had 35,000 people here, this is now reportedly down to around 25,000, so a big change.
Much of it though was probably going to happen once the infrastructure is in, it doesn't take many people to run the place.
The new offshore rigs are pretty much unmanned and automatic.
And average iron ore train carts 125 tonne per wagon, 240 wagons, 30,000 tonnes, one driver!

Went to Woodsides North West Shelf Projects site, a $34 Billion Investment.

Its massive, and now its running is pumping Gas 24 hrs a day.
I have recently bought a few more Woodside shares at just under $30, but they are still a bit underwater.
However having seen this project, this will be a cash cow for Woodside WPL for many years, certainly gave me a lot mre confidence in them!

The Iron ore loading facility at Dampier is also massive, 30,000 tonne trains directly into port and straight onto a waiting ship, very efficient.

Red Dog Statue at Dampier

Had a look a the Red Dog statue, The Pilbara Wanderer Great story.

Stayed at The Pilbara Holiday Park, great park with very friendly staff that were extremely helpful.

Although I'm not sure what the Goanna was going to do when it got into the laundry?

Wheres Red Dog When you need him!