Karratha, Western Australia, AustraliaTuesday 28th July 2020: Today is just a day of travel, moving from Exmouth to Karratha, a distance of 548 km which ends up taking us most of the day with the stops we made. We track back South a bit from Exmouth to Birkett Rd which takes us across to the North West Coastal Highway and we immediately enter the Pilbara here with it's red dirt. The Robe and Fortescue rivers bothhave some water in them. We are lucky to get the last 2 bays at the Discovery Caravan Park Karratha - they have not opened the Balmoral one this year that we have stayed at before.
Wednesday 29th July 2020: Our plan today is to do Dampier and our first stop is the visitors’ Centre where we see a very helpful lady when we say that we plan to go to Millstream tomorrow. Part of the road there is a Rio Tinto road and you have to have a permit which is given after a video induction which we do there – Mark and I are now licensed to drive this road for 30 days – the video was done in 2008, so lots more bitumen has been laid since then – apparently there is a 20 k detour around roadwork, but hopefully all OK for the motorhomes. She sent us out to the Parks & Wildlife building to book as Millstream is in a National Park – managed to get 2 sites together for 2 nights. Our first sighting of Sturt Peas in the gardens of the Visitors’ Centre.
On our way to Dampier we go past the salt ponds. Dampier Salt started here in 1967 and since then Rio Tinto has exported more than 200m tonnes, making it the world’s largest exporter of high quality (bulk) salt, exporting to Japan, China, Korea, Indonesia, Phillipines and more. The salt is taken by conveyor belt and stockpiled ready for export.
Coming into Dampier a must stop is the ‘Red Dog’ information bay and you get your first taste of the ‘rocky terrain’ which is Dampier. Since we were here last the foreshore down from the bowling club as been enhanced with a lovely playground area, but still with that stunning view through the palm trees, across the water to the conveyor belt and the salt stock-piles. Across from the foreshore and up the hill is the ‘Soak’ restaurant – a lovely lunch with a stunning view. Karratha may have taken over the community and housing aspect of this area, but Dampier is certainly the hub of industry with the salt, iron-ore and gas. Around from the salt loading in the harbour we saw iron-ore being loaded and out on the Burrup Peninsula the gas project is enormous. Unfortunately the interpretive centre there is only open on a Wednesday morning, so we missed out. We had done this previously with Peter and Pam and could thoroughly recommend it. Margaret had worked for Hamersley Iron in her younger days and with Holly and Ash well entrenched in oil and gas at Chevron they have an added interest in the industries up here.
Back into Karratha we toured the Red Earth Arts Centre, an amazing building with a fantastic library and theatre/cinema complex, outdoor amphi-theatre and more. It was completed in 2018 at a cost of $54m.
A spot of shopping for dinner at the large shopping centre and then an enjoyable dinner in the BBQ area with Marg & Mark and Jeanette Flavel and Phil who are also staying here.
2025-05-22