Day 50: Eighty Mile Beach to Port Hedland

 

Having greatly enjoyed our stay at Eighty Mile Beach, we were back on the road this morning heading for Port Hedland. Once again there is a scarcity of potential stops along the way, but we did come across Pardoo Roadhouse at about the right time for a coffee and a comfort break. It was not an impressive sight from the outside.

The toilets, (Portaloo's)  contained some interesting advice on how to use the facility, whilst  toilets are labelled Unisex, the advice  seems to cover some feats not normally experienced elsewhere.

Inside the roadhouse, the decor was quite modern and a wide range of products and merchandise were on sale. The coffee was also quite good.

Onward to Port Hedland, we arrived at around 12 noon. We had heard that site access here was tight and roads narrow, but that was an understatement.

Getting into this site was the worst I have experienced so far. The road is so narrow that I was up on the site of the caravan opposite, just to get the space to turn the van. The high kerbs just made it more ridiculous. He offered to move his car to give me a reasonable go at it, but we squeezed in without that. You couldn't turn the corners inside the park without having to drive over parts of others sites as the turns were too tight. Everyone was well humoured and apparently often people need to move their cars from their sites to allow enough room for vehicles to manoeuvre vans to get into their site.

To make it worse we have the wrong site for extending our awning and are next to the garbage bins on the side our BBQ extends from, so no BBQ dinners here. The place is booked out !

We connect everything up and there is no water. We subsequently received advice that it had been temporarily turned off, but by then we were at the shopping centre topping up our pantry and cellar It was easy to have lunch there whilst at the shopping centre before taking on our shopping tasks.

By the time we arrived back at the caravan park the water supply had resumed, and we stowed our purchases before heading into town to the Tourist Information Centre. We have booked a tour of the Port for 4.15 pm, so thought we might go to the Centre (where the tour leaves from) a bit early to get some ideas for tomorrow. It seems that tourists needs are different on weekends and when we arrive at around 3.30 pm, it is closed. It was quite an effort to find it in the first place as signage is minimal.

Across the road was a cafe run by a couple of Asian ladies where we could get a decent cup of coffee.

As the tour time got nearer we saw a few more grey nomads starting to gather out the front of the information centre.

Like ourselves, most were wandering around the vicinity filling in time hoping they had the right pick up point.

Just behind the visitors centre is the town Observation Tower which is undergoing a restoration process and did not appear to be accessible. It apparently gives a great view of the port and town, but requires a bit of effort to get up to the top.

Also on the noticeboard outside the visitors centre was this notice about our next destination.

The bus arrives early and the crowd is gathering. We ended up with 19 people and a dog on the tour. Phil, the guide and driver owns the business and is excellent. He is full of facts about the town and port operations, far too much to begin to remember.

However here is some of it. Port Hedland LGA has a resident population of around 17,500 people. In addition to this are many fly in fly out workers who work in the mining sector. However much of the resources industry is automated and controlled from Perth. The bulk of FIFO's are maintenance workers.

Port operations are also remotely run from Perth with once again maintenance workers and tug drivers etc making up the workers.

Port Hedland is the largest bulk export port in the World and is growing. The map below was used to guide us through the tour, which started in the town near the blue marker and followed the yellow line around to Finucane Island.

The major miners all have their own berths for loading (coloured key top left)

Around 580 million tonnes of bulk cargo is exported per annum, about 98% of which is iron ore. BHP has the largest exports accounting for roughly 50% of the volume through the port. The large miners, BHP, Rio Tinto, Fortescue and Roy Hill ship their ore to the port from their mines by rail. The trains are roughly 3 km long made  up of 2 locomotives, 136 freight cars, another 2 locomotives and another 136 freight cars. Each train load is 35,000 to 38,000 tonnes and is automatically unloaded and stockpiled at the port. Rio Tinto' s trains are all driverless.

Train arriving

Rotary car dumpers

Rail cars are automatically unloaded using rotary car dumpers which rotate 2 cars at a time turning them upside down to empty onto a conveyor system. Rotary couplings joining the cars together allow for a 360 degree rotation without disturbing the cars adjoining. All of this process is automated.

Finucane Island has limited stockpile area, so much of BHP's ore is delivered to Nelson Point, stockpiled there, and fed to Finucane Island through a conveyor tunnel under the harbour for loading.

Junior miners still use road freight using rigs called quads which have a prime mover and 4 tipper cars behind which are side tippers making unloading very quick.

Mineral Resources built their own private road to the port and which it runs autonomous quads delivering ore to the port.

The infrastructure for loading and stockpiling is massive.

Iron ore in the form of magnetite is finely ground and shipped to port through an underground pipeline as a slurry. It is then dewatered through the facility below and the water returned to the mine for reuse.

The port is also use to ship salt, scrap metal, lithium ore, copper ore, tantalite, a few cattle etc.

A major port expansion is taking place at Lumsden point which will be a facility to unloading major machinery items up to 100 feet long and container traffic, relieving some of the load from Darwin and Fremantle.

We were fortunate enough to see a ship arriving to be loaded. It was one of the smaller ones we are told. The channel is single lane at the moment with plans to widen it so ships can pass going in and out. Exiting the channel is very tide dependent needing about 5 m of tide for loaded ships to exit sometimes with only 300mm under their keel if conditions are perfect. Sophisticated depth monitoring sensors are located in the port given such a fine margin.

Each ship requires 4 tugs and a pilot to enter and exit the harbour. The tugs are specially built in Singapore for this port, which has the largest tug fleet in the Southern Hemisphere. 

Before heading back to town we pull over beside the ocean to watch the subset and have a complimentary drink. Phil, our guide spends the time filling us with more information. The tour runs well over the 2 hours planned and is excellent.