DAMPIER

17^th July, 2012

We leave our beachside camp this morning and drive north to Dampier where we have booked into a caravan park for two nights to catch up on our household chores (laundry, restock the larder, refill a gas bottle and fill up the van’s tanks with town water).  Dampier is 20 kms from Karratha and the region’s main port.  Both towns have been built to service the huge mining services industry with iron ore being transported hundreds of kilometres from inland mines on Rio Tinto’s privately owned railway line.  As we pass mine sites and gas plants single worker’s accommodation villages (called dongas) can be seen.

These dongas are a bit more upmarket with nice gardens

Sometimes the dongas are like duplexes while others can have up to six dongas side by side.  There are also multi-storied dongas.  These villages accommodate resident workers but are mainly used by the FIFO (fly in/fly out) employees.  Seems to be a bit of animosity between the locals and the FIFO’s as the locals say the FIFO initials mean ‘Fit In or F ….. Off’.  Dampier was built on an island with access across salt flats which often went under water on high tide.  In 1965 a causeway was built and the amount of traffic trundling back and forth on this stretch of road is unbelievable. Mining machinery, road trains, cars with caravans, utes, bikes – you name it, we saw it!  Of course the salt flats became a viable business opportunity with a railway line and port virtually at the doorstep and Dampier Salt now produces over four million tonnes per year.  Many of you may have seen the recent Australian movie ‘Red Dog’.  Well we are now in Red Dog’s home territory and in a little park at the gateway to Dampier stands his memorial erected in the early 1980’s by the people whose lives he touched.

Bronze statue of Red Dog at Dampier

If you haven’t seen the movie then you won’t have a clue as to what we are talking about.  For those of you who are interested just type ‘RED DOG OF THE PILBARA/Facebook’ in your search engine bar and you can read all about him.  In the morning we hop into Mitzi to do a bit of sightseeing.  Our first stop is to be the North West Shelf Venture Visitors Centre on the Burrup Peninsula at Dampier.  This venture supplies oil and gas to Australian and International markets from huge gas and condensate fields located 130 kms off the coast on Australia’s north-west continental shelf.  On the way we pass the huge multi-million dollar gas burning pipe named Pluto which has only recently commenced operation.

Pluto Gas Tower

There is no way to convey the noise of the gas burning from this monstrous tower – and only one pipe had a flame at the time we were there.  The visitor centre was very informative and overlooked one of the gas processing plants.

North West Shelf Venture Gas Plant near Visitor Centre

Outside the visitor centre was a sculpture dedicated to the workers who have lost their lives or been injured in the oil and gas industry.

Workers Memorial at Visitor Centre

We left the visitor centre suitably impressed with facts and figures rambling around our already overloaded brains.  We needed a nice stroll in the countryside and not far from the visitor centre was a road leading to Hearson Cove – a lovely sheltered cove.  We backtrack to a dirt road that leads to Deep Gorge and hop out to take a walk.

Wok heads for Deep Gorge

A slight movement on the track catches Wok’s eye and he spots a small lizard trying to blend into the landscape.

'Lizzie'

At approx 5 cms long this lizard is just about the cutest thing we have seen and Wok would have liked it for a pet.  Luckily for the lizard it was way too fast for Wok and quickly disappeared into the spinifex.  It’s a shame too as we had already picked out a name for it – Lizzie!  Imaginative aren’t we?  The hills here are made up of a jumble of rocks – it’s a bizarre landscape.  

Wok trying to work out how to climb up the 'rock' hill

The Burrup Peninsula is recognised as one of the most prolific aboriginal rock art sites in Australia with over a million engravings.  We don’t know who counted them but after climbing around the rocks at Deep Gorge just behind the cove we can honestly believe that the number of engravings may have been underestimated.

The following photos are a small selection of the engravings we saw.

A lizard



A kangaroo



A possum



A spiritual figure or else someone with really long fingernails

From the top of the ‘rock’ hill we can see Pluto tower and even at this distance the noise from the gas burner is still quite loud.

View of Pluto Tower from Deep Gorge

We continue walking along the ‘rock’ track between the ‘rock’ hills

This pathway was just as difficult to walk on as climbing on the rocks

and find more engravings.

Long necked turtle



A spiral (we saw lots of spirals)

As we stand and look at the rocks it seems to us that nearly every rock has an engraving of some kind.  Some are easy to see and others have weathered over time.  They have been archeologically dated up to 10,000 years old so it’s no wonder that many are almost eroded away.  It was a warm sunny day and we were getting really hot climbing around the ‘rock’ hills.  Hard to imagine what it would be like here in the middle of summer.  We head back to Mitzi and enjoy our drive back to the caravan park in air conditioned comfort.  The caravan park has a very handy location – not far from the Parker Point iron ore loading facility.

Parker Point loading facility

All day and night the 2.2 km long trains haul their railway wagons from the inland mines to the port.  We are lulled to sleep by the sound of wagons being shunted through the circular dump pit where the ore is tipped out and then transported on equally noisy conveyor belts to the waiting ships. The movement of the wagons sounds like chains being rattled and the hum of machinery makes us glad that we are only here for two nights.  The scale of all this heavy industry is certainly taking its toll on the environment and further growth and expansion is set to continue.  What once took forty years to complete will now be done in seven years.  Simply astounding!  We wonder as to whether all this man-made chaos is good or bad.  Guess it will be up to future generations to judge.