Day 26

Day 26 Dampier

 

We set off from Onslow, just the quaintest town we have come across so far. It really reminded us of what these towns were like 30 years ago. The streets are wide from the days of having to accommodate camel trains carting wool and have old trees planted in them. We got to the service station to get some gas and the guy had forgotten to lock the bowser over night. There had been a disaster recently when the supermarket and the liquor shop burnt down, so the local gymnasium is now the supermarket until the rebuilt one can be opened and the liquor shop runs out of an old restaurant that was a house before. No problems, no fuss, just getting it done.

Our campsite by the sea

Onslow main street

We drove back out to the main highway and turned left to go North. Next stop was Fortescue and then onto Karratha. The drive is lovely up here, the roads are good, one thing about the mining boom. The down side was the number of trucks picked up but they really are no bother now except when they decide to pass you on a bend when there is a car coming the other way. Fortunately the car new what to do and went off the road for the road train and we applied the brakes. There were a number of mines and quarries along the way and a really funny one near Pannawonica where they obviously wanted to get to a new pit on the other side of the highway so they built this huge hill, put a bridge on it over the haulage path and put the highway on it. You get to drive over the haulage path and have the huge Haul trucks go underneath, no need to let a little thing like a highway get in the way.

Onslow Museum

Onslow Museum

We got to Fortescue with the intention to get more gas for Trude but they don’t have it there so back onto petrol for the last 80 odd Kms. We drove towards Karratha and got to the Travel Stop roadhouse at the turnoff to Karratha and they had gas there for $1.07, dirt cheap as mostly it sits on $1.68. so on to Dampier. The drive in is fascinating given that you are driving through a very diverse mining hub. There are quarries that dig out huge granite rocks and cart them down the road where there are crushers set up to convert the big rocks into little stones of all different sizes that are carted off to places unknown for all sorts of purposes. Dampier salt mines have there big drying pans set up along the road, Rio Tinto have their rail terminal here to load ships so there are miles long rail trucks entering and the

Unloading th Beast

roads have been designed and built for them with dual lanes, wide turning areas and traffic lights that take an age to change, you got through all this to get to Dampier and you drive right down to the beach to get to our camp site.

Transit Caravan Park has got to be the smallest and cutest park we have seen so far. It has about 25 bays in total, you have power on each site but only a central water tap so we have to use our tank water which I did not fill up at Onslow mainly because I forgot, but also I expected that if it was powered, it would be water – trap for beginners here, never assume. The

Our Park Dampier

View of th harbour

bays are a little tight but nothing this team of gun backers cannot handle! The park is right on the beach, literally across the road. On the right we can see the loading for iron ore ships and there are 4 currently tied up loading; on the left we can almost see Dampier Salts loading facility, we will try and look there tomorrow. Behind the site is the rail line and we can see the trains coming in from the mines, but so far no noise from them, but Maureen is happy as we have wanted to see one of these trains in action.

The Beast up on chocks

Evening in Dampier

As we settled in, the manager mentioned that there was going to be a BBQ and sing-a-long at about 5:30, no worries except we did not have anything BBQ. The team swung into action and headed into Karratha for the shops. The town is huge, it is very spread out and I assume we must have passed other shopping centres that were not sign posted on the way, but we knew we were getting close to the social and culinary centre of town when we saw KFC, McDonalds and K-Mart and Target emerge on the horizon. Shopping Mecca, a real shopping centre! I found an ACROD bay right at the entrance, this is so cool, released Maureen out of the car and sat back and waited for her return, and waited and then she returned with some steak and mushrooms and stories of shopping delights beyond imagination! To think it has only been 26 days since our last real shopping centre.

The Concert

Harbour at night

Back at the park we drove in, I unloaded the Beast and the front left tyre was still down. I had hoped that by ignoring it and having inflated ideas about its abilities it might have fixed itself like James Bond and his re-inflating tyres, but no luck. So set about pulling tyre off and removing the tube for dunking, turns out I did not have 1 hole, I had 4 from the double gees at Giralia Station. Used the last of the glue and patches. At least it is easy to get off with the Beast stopped on the ramps, I don’t have to bend down and the little compressor works like a champ, even if it does look like I ran over it!

In the mean time, Maureen had tested out the toilets (big tick of approval by the way) and there was a

Sunset at Dampier

sign in there about the evening. The BBQ was a sausage sizzle done by the manager and would be gold coin donation and entertainment was by Kevin O’Shea, with a name like O’Shea you get a mind’s eye picture, if they had put “Kamal Tribute” you would have got a more accurate picture. Well that threw a cat amongst the pigeons, what were we going to do, Master Chef to the rescue, we will have steak tomorrow, crisis averted.

The evening was great, about 5:30 Kamal, I mean Kevin started his crooning of rock and roll and country – very good, and the manager brought out the sausages and salad and buns and started cooking. We sat around with glasses of wine and chatted away. We met some nice people from Melbourne, he had suffered a stroke and had his own gopher, well electric skateboard in comparison to the Rolls Royce Beast, with newly inflated tyre! As the sun went down, we enjoyed the music and the beaut food, chatted away and watched the sun go down. 

At the ripe old time of 7:30, festivities ended and we all retired to our vans. I went for a shower and I have to say 10/10. The water was hot and plentiful, no water saving nozzle here, the floors stayed dry so you can put your clothes on dry, excellent.

Tomorrow we go sight seeing round town.