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!